{"id":7957,"date":"2015-09-23T21:16:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T02:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/?p=7957"},"modified":"2015-09-23T21:16:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T02:16:26","slug":"barn-tryout-changes-lives-of-softball-player-and-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/barn-tryout-changes-lives-of-softball-player-and-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn tryout changes lives of softball player and family"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Haven<\/a>
Haven Payne Reece today with her daughter enjoying a football Friday night at Pisgah High School.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

David Payne was a logger by trade and he had carved out a nice livelihood for himself, wife Juanita and two daughters in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The first time I saw David was in 2004 and it wasn’t in the woods or at a sawmill.\u00a0 We met one another at a high school softball playoff game in late May at Enka High School <\/a>in Candler, N.C.<\/p>\n

While I was walking around the ballpark, as we high school\u00a0sports scouts tend to do prior to a game, a fairly\u00a0stout fellow about 6 feet tall stopped me along the fence bordering the left-field foul line.\u00a0 At first glance, some might\u00a0venture he had hit on hard times.\u00a0 He was wearing faded overalls that were far from clean and a short sleeve, cotton shirt that had been worn so man times it was nearly threadbare.\u00a0 What had once been a white undershirt had turned brownish gray from\u00a0steady use.\u00a0 He had the expression of a man who had been through a hard day’s work.\u00a0 His shoes were the heavy, brown\u00a0leather kind you see men wear who ply their trade outdoors.\u00a0 They were scuffed and had dried mud along the soles.\u00a0 The hand he stuck\u00a0forward for me to shake had enough dirt under\u00a0the fingernails to fill a small Dixie cup.\u00a0\u00a0His cap had the word “Poulan” printed across the front, but it was so grimy that I could hardly make out the name.\u00a0 Being camouflaged didn’t help.<\/p>\n

All this was familiar to me from way back.\u00a0 Growing up in rural Southside Virginia, I’d known\u00a0lots of men just like\u00a0this salt-of-the-Earth man,\u00a0so his appearance wasn’t weird to me at all.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0I instantly had\u00a0a healthy degree of respect for\u00a0him.\u00a0 As things turned out, our meeting was fortuitous.<\/p>\n

“My name is David Payne,” he said while removing his cap and tilting his head downward slightly.\u00a0 It’s a gesture\u00a0we used to see everywhere in the South back in the day, but you\u00a0don’t see much anymore.\u00a0 It was a sign of respect and good manners.\u00a0 I was impressed.\u00a0\u00a0He didn’t waste any time getting right to the point.<\/p>\n

“My daughter is a pitcher for Pisgah,” he stated.\u00a0 “She’s a junior and a pretty good little ball player. \u00a0I was wondering if you would take a look at her.\u00a0 Her name is Haven.”<\/p>\n

“Mr. Payne, I’d be happy to.\u00a0 When do her travel team practices start?\u00a0 I can come by then and see her,” I replied.<\/p>\n

“Well, that’s not for a couple of weeks.\u00a0 How ’bout if you stop by the house and watch her pitch.\u00a0 She can play anywhere at all, and when she’s not pitching, she usually plays shortstop.\u00a0 But pitching is her best position.\u00a0 Could you stop by this week?” he asked.<\/p>\n

I looked at him, a bit puzzled by the invitation, but anyone who would drive 20 miles to a ballgame just to look me up was serious and I took it that way.\u00a0 If I denied this invitation, I suspected, that would be the end of the opportunity for both Haven and me.<\/p>\n

“I’d be happy to come over Thursday night,” which was two days later.<\/p>\n

He gave me his address and directions to his house.\u00a0 GPS was not yet widely used, but I’d just bought a Garmin a few days earlier and was anxious to give it a go.\u00a0 We set a time and agreed to meet.<\/p>\n

When I drove up to the Payne home, I looked around to see where Haven might pitch for me, but there was no home plate or pitching rubber visible.\u00a0 The house was what we call a double-wide — two trailers put together to make a larger home.\u00a0 It was white, looked\u00a0to be fairly new\u00a0and had cinder-block front steps stacked up in three rows to the front door.\u00a0 The house was positioned in what at one time had to be a pasture.\u00a0\u00a0A barbed wire fence had been moved to around behind the house, 50 feet or so, and a children’s swing set stood lifelessly between the back of the house and the fenced-in pasture.\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0dozen or so cattle were grazing in the day’s fading light.<\/p>\n

To the right of the house, about 50 yards up a slight incline was a wood barn.\u00a0 It was old, never been painted, but in good shape by outward appearances.\u00a0 The property was well maintained — no high weeds along the fence posts, barn’s foundation or around the house.\u00a0 The dirt driveway to the house cut between the barn and the Payne’s\u00a0house.\u00a0 The house and barn sat in a little depression between two rises that were covered with the lushness of late spring.\u00a0 Wild flowers dotted the landscape along with dark green grasses and the occasional hardwood tree.<\/p>\n

David opened the front door and emerged from the house as I shut off the car engine.\u00a0 He\u00a0took a long step down to the first row of cinder blocks, then a shorter one to the second and finally the ground.\u00a0 He waved.\u00a0 David looked like an entirely different person.\u00a0 All cleaned up for our meeting, he wore a clean pair of jeans, ironed at that,\u00a0with everything else, absent the overalls, pretty much the same as our first encounter, but newer.\u00a0 He wasn’t wearing a cap.<\/p>\n

Behind him\u00a0followed\u00a0a young girl\u00a0I assumed was Haven. Painfully shy,\u00a0she hardly\u00a0raised her head to make\u00a0ever so brief eye contact when her dad introduced her to me.\u00a0 She was a\u00a0dark-haired\u00a0girl of 16 or 17. Her hair fell to her shoulders.\u00a0 It was straight with natural curls on the ends.\u00a0 She may\u00a0have been 5-5 but\u00a0her short sleeves revealed\u00a0some unexpected muscles on her arms.\u00a0 That wasn’t uncommon for a\u00a0girl who lived on a working farm, however.\u00a0 At some\u00a0point in the day,\u00a0everybody in the family chipped\u00a0in here and there by doing this or that chore.\u00a0\u00a0Haven’s\u00a0job was milking three cows every morning and evening.\u00a0 Anybody who’s ever pulled on a cow’s teat\u00a0and\u00a0tried to coax milk\u00a0from it\u00a0will confirm that it will produce\u00a0strong\u00a0hands and arms like Haven’s.\u00a0 She held two gloves and a softball in her arms.<\/p>\n

We exchanged greetings and pleasantries as is the Southern custom.\u00a0 “Where’s she going\u00a0to throw?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Follow me,” said\u00a0David, striding toward the barn.<\/p>\n

As we\u00a0walked, I\u00a0made small talk about the farm and livestock.\u00a0 In the South, if you go on a man’s farm, you’re wise not to dally in complimenting his place for risk of offending him.\u00a0 Once at the 10-foot-high\u00a0door hanging\u00a0from a long, steel\u00a0track, he tugged it open to reveal a home plate about six feet\u00a0in front of us and a pitching rubber about halfway up through the barn.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0presumed it was the\u00a0proper distance for\u00a0regulation high school softball.\u00a0 Regardless, this was not the time to question the man’s integrity\u00a0on such trivial matters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0David reached over to the\u00a0barn wall and flipped on a light switch turning on four, overhead light bulbs hanging by wires from the rafters above.\u00a0 They were at least 100 watts and most likely 150 to light up the place as brightly as they did.\u00a0 The three of us looked at one another, smiled and said nothing.\u00a0 For some reason, they already knew that I was\u00a0entirely comfortable in this setting and made no attempt at explaining it or making excuses for it.\u00a0 Nor did David have to tell me that the barn gave them a cool place in the summer and a warm place in the winter to practice.\u00a0 It was a necessity of invention.<\/p>\n

David\u00a0nodded to Haven toward the pitching rubber and said, “Let’s get warmed up now.”\u00a0 She did as told and\u00a0walked, glove and ball in hand, to the appointed spot while\u00a0David sat behind home plate on a white plastic bucket with his mitt at the ready.\u00a0 I\u00a0leaned against a stall door\u00a0halfway between them, not saying a word.<\/p>\n

As Haven commenced to throw pitches, it was apparent that she had excellent focus.\u00a0 Outwardly at least, she wasn’t intimidated by the scenario. \u00a0This was no ordinary practice session and she knew it.\u00a0 Over the next half hour, a college scout (that would be me)\u00a0would determine if she had the skills to pitch in college.\u00a0 She was into it, as was David, and truthfully, so was I.\u00a0 This would be a defining moment for Haven and her family and its importance wasn’t lost on me.<\/p>\n

When she had completed her warm-up, David asked, “Are you ready?”\u00a0 She nodded and went to work\u00a0hurling the neon yellow softball underhanded and windmill style,\u00a0pitch after pitch, to her dad.\u00a0 For 30 minutes she hit the target David gave her time after time.\u00a0 Fastball, curve, drop, rise, change-up.\u00a0 No matter what David asked her to throw, the ball landed in his glove with a loud smack.\u00a0 The girl could pitch.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I moved around from behind her to behind David in an attempt to see the kind of movement she had on the ball.\u00a0 Not bad.\u00a0 Not great, but not bad by any means.\u00a0 A couple of times I asked her to repeat the same pitch and to take a little speed off the ball or to throw it harder.\u00a0 The impressive thing was that Haven did not stress over any of it which told me that in a pinch this girl would stay locked on regardless of the game situation.<\/p>\n

After a little more than a half hour, I said, “I’m good, if you are Haven.”<\/p>\n

She said, “Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

The three of us gathered at the barn door, Haven sweating profusely and David grinning with pride.\u00a0 He knew she had done well.\u00a0 The anticipation in both of them was almost palpable.\u00a0\u00a0Then I said, “Haven, there is no question in my mind that you can pitch in college.\u00a0 Pitch command is really very good and you have superb control.\u00a0 You are throwing your fastball in the high 50s, so right now you could pitch for a D-III or NAIA school.\u00a0 If you raise your speed a mile or two per hour and get a tad more movement on your drop and rise ball, you would have a shot at going D-II.\u00a0\u00a0But if you wan to get college-ready, I\u00a0suggest that you stop throwing the curve and focus on your rise, drop and change.\u00a0 In college, you will seldom get a fastball by a hitter, regardless of the speed,\u00a0so movement is everything to a coach.\u00a0 The more movement you can produce, the more valuable you are to the team.”<\/p>\n

Haven and David looked at each other and smiled.\u00a0 David then said, “OK, let’s go inside and get this done,” referring to enrolling Haven with me and NSR.<\/p>\n

We went inside and finished the business side of\u00a0my visit.\u00a0 From that moment on, Haven was an even more determined player than when I had initially seen her.\u00a0 During\u00a0travel ball season she consistently threw well from the circle and hit nearly .400, although it must be said that her mother kept what I would call a liberal scorebook.\u00a0 With that in mind, I\u00a0assumed Haven was closer to the low- to mid-.300 mark.\u00a0\u00a0No matter, she had a great summer.<\/p>\n

The following spring she led the Pisgah High School <\/a>softball team to the state playoffs, getting knocked out in the second round by a team from Bandys High School <\/a>near Hickory.\u00a0 By then she had visited several college campuses, met the coaches and eventually decided to attend Montreat College in Black Mountain, N.C., an NAIA institution.\u00a0 She went on to make All-Conference three of her four years and earn her\u00a0business degree.<\/p>\n

Haven became the first member of her family to\u00a0get a college diploma and it all started with a father who\u00a0decided that it was time to forever change the course of his family’s path.\u00a0 His plan worked, too.\u00a0 Haven’s sister followed\u00a0in her footsteps, also earning a college degree.\u00a0 Changing lives is\u00a0the mantra of an NSR scout.\u00a0 We live for these life-changing\u00a0opportunities. When they come, we jump at them without reservation because to alter an athlete’s life in such a positive way is\u00a0an accomplishment which lives on\u00a0long after\u00a0the athlete’s competitive career ends.<\/p>\n

In Haven Payne’s case, a tryout in a countryside barn offered the\u00a0hope and opportunity for her to lift up her family and take them in a different direction.\u00a0\u00a0She did both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Payne was a logger by trade and he had carved out a nice livelihood for himself, wife Juanita and two daughters in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The first time I saw David was in 2004 and it wasn’t in the woods or at a sawmill.\u00a0 We met one another at a high … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[11,31,169,229,56,222],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7957"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7968,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7957\/revisions\/7968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}