Kenzie Kallio
Sports Editor
Going through life can be hard sometimes. Waking up early for work, staying up late to finish an assignment, making yourself go to the gym when you’re too tired. All of these things can be hard. Now imagine going through all of that, but also having two disabilities. That is every day for Baylor Miles.
Baylor is a sophomore at Crowder, and a catcher on the softball team. She is from Van Buren, Ark. and will graduate from Crowder in May with a General Studies degree. The Van Buren native has lived with two disabilities her whole life; a hearing impairment and a disease known as Hemihypertrophy, which makes the lower half of her right leg have no feeling.
“Basically my muscles and everything don’t work and don’t grow anymore, so from my knee down on my right side, it doesn’t work,” said Miles about her disease, “It is actually in my left leg, but it affects my right side.”
Baylor does not let her disabilities get her down. She has learned to live with them, having been born this way.
“When I was younger, I never really noticed it, because nobody really made it a big deal,” said Miles, “As I got older I just started asking questions, and honestly I just didn’t pay attention to it.”
Not only has she overcome these disabilities in her everyday life, she has overcome them on the field. For the 2017-18 season, Miles was named 2018 National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) All-American, 1st team All-Region XVI, and National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Acad
emic Student Athlete. Miles stands as a key player for the softball team’s success and also a leader on and off the field. Miles played in 59 games her freshman season at Crowder and ended the year with a .411 batting average.
“Quote” by coach
“In college, we do a lot of leg workouts. I didn’t realized how much you need your lower part. I had to be more mechanically correct and so I had to start focusing harder,” Miles exclaimed about playing softball, “It made me a lot better player instead of just going through the motions.”
Aside from being a successful softball player, Baylor’s crazy personality overshadows her disabilities. She shows up to practice every day with a great attitude, trying to make the best of her setbacks.
“She comes to practice with a smile on her face,” said teammate and roommate, Lexi McClellan, “She just never lets anything get in her way, anything that tries to stop her she just overcomes and finds a way around it and she’s a great teammate.”
Communication is an important word for Baylor when it comes to softball. Besides the fact that Miles lives with a hearing impairment, her teammates have a better understanding of what she goes through. The team does drills to work with Baylor on communication. For the 2017-18 season, Sisemore had the team put headphones in and play music as loud as they could and try and communicate with each other on fly balls in order to have a better understand of what Miles goes through.
“The day before [practice] is when everything hit me, I was like I don’t know if I can do this college ball thing,” she explained, “seeing him put in the effort to make everyone put headphones in and experience just a portion of what I do, everything in me switched.”
She has her pitchers and fielders do certain motions and signs to make up for her not being able to hear, such as pointing to the ball or touching their nose.
“It builds a lot more trust than people think, because if you can do the little extra things on the field, that means you are going out of your way to help somebody else,” said Miles, “to me that does a lot more than anything.”
Though being deaf and living with Hemihypertrophy, Baylor’s witty personality and joyous outlook on life helps her see the best of her situation. She joked that because she has two separate disabilities, God gave her half of everything.
“I just like to look at life on the happy side. There is so much to be negative about, but I just like to joke around and make the best of everything,” She said with a smile on her face, “I like to focus on how I am the same, not how I am different.”
Miles has left a legacy at Crowder and in the softball program. She never lets her disabilities set her apart from anyone or anything. Not only has she overcome, but she has excelled in whatever she does, whether it is on the field or in everyday life.
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