Swinging away after an injury
Go down swinging, coaches often tell their players.
Timber Creek right fielder Parker Smith came up swinging.
Just a little more than a year ago, the Wolves slugger was not standing in the batter’s box. He was sitting in a wheelchair, a rod and screws holding his left leg together.
Today, the 17-year-old senior has an on-base percentage of .447 (tied for second on the team behind Marcos Roque), and leads the Wolves (17-7) in RBIs with 20. He has smacked three home runs for a squad that plays for the Class 9A, District 6 tournament championship vs. Oviedo tonight at 7 Colonial.
The journey back is a testament to the teen’s toughness.
“I’ve always been swinging,’’ said Smith, who’s played baseball since he was 5.
But on that November night in 2016, Smith wasn’t swinging a bat. He was making hits as a linebacker for Timber Creek’s football team in a first-round state playoff game against cross-county rival Apopka.
The dual-sport player was on a kickoff return when an Apopka player’s helmet connected with his left leg, breaking his tibia and fibula. Smith remembers trying to get up after the play and Timber Creek’s athletic trainer picking up his leg and saying she could feel his damaged bones.
“First thing I thought was that my athletic career was over,” Smith said.
He was taken to the hospital to have surgery to install a rod and screws into the leg.
Smith stayed in the hospital for four days, and that was only the beginning of a long and often difficult road back to normalcy. The simplest things he was accustomed to doing for himself around the house had to be handled by his family.
“It was humbling to see what I had taken advantage of,” Smith said. “I’m a better person now.”
It took several weeks for Smith to be able to walk without crutches, and six months to be able to run.
Remarkably, Smith is running faster after his injury. He attributes that to pushing himself harder than before and doing what he loves: working out.
Smith lost 40 pounds after his injury but is back among the area’s most physical baseball players.
“I work hard in the weight room because it transfers over to the baseball field,” he said.
Smith also had ground to make up in his recruiting.
“We only had him for half of the year, and he couldn’t play in the summer,” Timber Creek head coach Tim Beaman said.
Smith dealt with that adversitity, and now he’s thankful to be able to say he has a verbal commitment from Rollins College.
Smith was given a few offers to play college football, but none that sat well with him. He decided to focus solely on baseball and said that when Rollins came calling, it “felt exactly how it was meant to be.”
Beaman boasts that Smith’s work ethic and focus sets the pace for the team and is the reason he is a team captain and leader. On Wednesday he made a circus catch in right field to help the Wolves win 5-3 against Winter Park in a district semifinal.
Smith said that he pays attention to the little details to improve. He shows up early and stays late to practice to get more time in the batting cage.
“Parker works harder or as hard as any kid I’ve ever coached,” Beaman said.
Smith’s teammate, centerfielder Parker Wood, said Smith is a selfless leader.
“He looks out for the other guys on the team,” Wood said. “He puts the team before himself; it’s something you don’t really see from guys in baseball today.”