Kayla Burks recalls the screwball she threw, the batter who turned on it, and the seams that appeared right in front of her face.
The Commerce pitcher couldn’t raise her glove fast enough as a shield. Burks jerked slightly, just enough to expose her jaw. She twisted to the ground after impact.
Her parents watched her grab at her face and throat, believing she looked to them and whispered, “help me.” But no words came. No tears fell. Time seemed to stop.
Her teammates froze, too. They mainly recall the silence that gripped the ball field, ever so briefly.
“We didn’t know what to do,” said JP Parkerson, a classmate and shortstop on the team. “Everyone was quiet. Then, there was just this scream.”
The moment sticks with most of the players, parents and coaches who watched the harrowing ordeal on Sept. 25, 2010. Yet, few if any people discuss that day, including Burks.
But her injury and comeback was a major storyline for the senior and her Commerce team this softball season.
“I’ve seen two terrible injuries. Hers’ was one of them,” coach Pam Canup said. “Kayla’s was also the reality of what it could’ve done.”
There’s no telling what could’ve happened if Burks had not turned her head. In fact, her parents Lee and Kedra Burks thought the impact ruined her daughter’s ability to breathe.
“I’m not one of those parents who, when she gets hurt, rushes out there,” Kedra Burks said. “When it hit her, she looked like she grabbed her throat and looked at us and said, ‘Help me.’ It absolutely scared me to death. I thought she’d crushed her windpipe. The whole field went completely silent. Everyone knew something was broken.”
Within seconds, the teenager was surrounded as she struggled on her hands and knees, blood coming out of her mouth. Burks’ father, a paramedic, assessed the damage as a professional. Then he calmed the patient as a dad.
“It was obvious she had a fracture, her jaw immediately started swelling up,” Lee Burks said. “I calmed her down, made sure the airway wasn’t damaged. The way the ball hit… if she had not tucked her head, a natural reaction, the ball would’ve crushed her trachea, which is her windpipe. She absorbed the brunt of the impact.”
It was not the first time Burks, who has played most of her life, suffered a direct hit. In fourth grade, a baseball slammed her mouth and chipped her teeth, requiring a dentist to apply false caps.
This time, she suffered four cracked molars. And her wisdom teeth, which had not even budded through the gums, shattered on both sides of her mouth because of the powerful impact. A CAT scan also would show three separate breaks to Burks’ jaw on her left side and around the front of her chin.
Additionally, stitches from the softball soon appeared on her collarbone as clear bruises, which Burks “thought was the coolest thing.”
Not OK with Burks, however, was the closed-in space of the CAT-scan machine or the thought of having her jaw wired shut for six weeks. She chose surgery instead. Three plates and 12 screws secure Burks’ jaw and mouth today.
Through the whole ordeal, the teen recalled crying just once.
“I am really close to my parents,” Burks said, smiling. “I teared up a little as they wheeled me into surgery.”
Visitors streamed into her hospital room during her stay at Athens Regional. They later arrived to her home in Commerce. At one point, the entire softball team showed up by bus after an away game. They delivered hugs and a laundry basket filled with the only food Burks could eat for six long weeks – pudding, jello and grits.
“It made me feel so loved,” she said of her visitors.
Burks’ recovery, achieved largely without painkillers, included sleeping with special ice packs that encircled her head, wearing braces and eating about 150 containers of mashed foods like pudding, a food Burks loathes now.
She returned part-time to school within a week. That Burks would take the mound again on the softball field her senior year was a given, those who know her said.
“Kayla is very determined with athletics and academics,” Canup said. “She has that drive.”
After all, Burks asked to stay and watch the end of the game before her parents took her first to the Nicholson ambulance station for an IV to curb her dehydration, followed by a ride to the hospital.
Her only sacrifice after coming back to softball in August: wearing a facemask. Steadfastly opposed to masks before, Burks realized she’d not be allowed to play without one this season. Another hit to her head could cause more significant damage than the first.
“I was really nervous that first time she got up there and pitched,” Kedra Burks said. “Not just nervous for myself but nervous for her, too, getting back out there and facing that first live better.”
Tensions eased after that for everyone, including Burks who reported early in the season that her first outing “went better than she expected.”
“From the day it happened, Kayla has never discussed it, never looked back,” her dad said. “I know she thinks about it, but she doesn’t let it interfere with her work or drive and determination to get back on the field. She looks at it as something to learn from.”
Burks, whose school involvements are extensive, hopes to attend the University of Georgia and perhaps the Medical College of Georgia to pursue her love of science in the medical field.
Her own serious injury and hospital experience has neither intensified nor lessened her desire to pursue such a career, she said.
However, Burks does acknowledge the incredible “what if” that shook Commerce High’s softball community one day last year.
“It could’ve been a lot worse,” Burks said. “If I hadn’t of ducked, it would’ve hit me straight in the head and I could’ve died.”
