Ex-Valley Tech athlete turns spinal injury into bonding experience

UPTON, Mass. (AP) — It has been almost four years since former Valley Tech softball star Bella Picard fractured her neck diving into second base in the first inning of a game at Fordham during her sophomore season at St. Joseph’s University.

“I’m not sick of telling my story,” Picard said during a recent interview at her family’s home.

Picard lost feeling and movement on the right side of her body when her fifth cervical vertebra (C5) was broken. In the last 45 months, she has undergone numerous surgeries, dealt with complications of C5 spinal injuries, like two bouts of pneumonia and autonomic dysreflexia (sudden onset of high blood pressure), which caused her to black out, as well as a right knee issue.

She continues to rehab on an outpatient basis at Spaulding Rehabilitation in Framingham, and in Florida, where she lives part of the year with her grandmother. Picard has found the warm weather very beneficial.

Through it all, Picard, 23, has remained determined, defiant, confident, inspiring and unwavering in her faith.

She has progressed from wheelchair to walker to cane to — yes! — walking on her own. She remains paralyzed below her right knee — her lovable yellow Lab, Benny, drops her three lower-leg braces on her bed every morning — but has regained a little bit of plantar flexion in her right foot. Always a workout devotee, Picard’s cropped shirt revealed her sculpted arms and abs.

“In some aspects (I’m ahead of where doctors thought I would be),” Picard said. “I kept progressing last year and they were like, ‘Oh, yeah. Maybe we should get her to journey forward, get her running.’ Then my knee started happening. Then they say, ‘Maybe she’s plateaued. Maybe this is the best it will get.’ That’s their professional medical opinion and that’s where I’m like, ‘Nah. Nah. Nah.’”

Picard focuses on the future and on hopefully getting her own apartment in Florida soon — “I’m almost independent,” she said.

She also recently revisited the past. It was a powerful, emotional and enduring moment, and another part of the healing process as she moves forward.

In the first inning of the first game of St. Joseph’s doubleheader against Fordham on April 18, 2015, Picard reached on a one-out single. On a hit-and-run play, she took off for second base. As she went to slide head first and Fordham shortstop Allie Bradian came across to cover, both at full speed, Picard’s head and Bradian’s knee collided. Picard was knocked out and taken to the hospital. “This is what you see in a football game, not on a softball field,” Bradian recalled of that chilling instant.

After the games, Bradian walked over to the nearby Walgreens to get Picard a card. They didn’t know each other, so Bradian wasn’t sure what to write, but she gave the card to the St. Joe’s coach the next day. No details of Picard’s condition had been made public yet.

“I don’t remember when I officially realized, ‘This is bad,’ “Bradian said. “It was just sitting in my heart really heavy.”

Time went on, their lives went on.

Bradian, a pre-med student at Fordham, sent Picard a couple more notes and a Christmas card in 2017.

“Something sparked in me like, ‘Wait, this might be something God is pointing at,’ “Picard said.

They soon connected on Facebook, talked on the phone and set up a time to meet, on April 18, the three-year anniversary of the accident, at Fordham’s field.

“It was like a movie,” Picard said. “It was pouring rain. It was just us and we were like, ‘We’re really doing this.’ “The field was covered in tarp.

“The first thing I said to Allie is that’s so symbolic,” Picard said. “(What happened) is dead and buried. We both started crying.

“She said, ‘I just have to say that I’m sorry,’” Picard said, “and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Stop.’ But for her, for me to forgive her, she needed that. That was healing for her.”

“I did need that forgiveness from her,” Bradian said. “Once I got it from her, I needed to forgive myself. I know it wasn’t my fault, but at times life happens, you get busy and I think I just needed to forgive myself for forgetting at times. I couldn’t forgive myself because I just felt like I wasn’t living my life good enough for what had happened and what didn’t happen to me.”

Honestly, Picard said, there was nothing to forgive. “All those cards and with everything she was doing,” Picard said, “if I could go back and tell her, ‘Hey, I’m probably not going to talk to you much because life is pretty crazy, but I’m making this full recovery for you. We’re going to do this.’ If I could go back and say that, I think that would have helped her with her feelings over the years.”