Nanakuli High School catcher Kehaulani Silva was released from the hospital Saturday night, a few hours after she was knocked out for a tense moment near the end of the state championship softball game.
Silva said that doctors told her she had a concussion and that she should not do anything physical for a couple of weeks.
"Just been sleeping, trying to rest up," she said by phone Sunday. "Better than yesterday. Still a little sore, though," on her neck and back.
Silva was knocked out after running down a pop-up foul. She caught the ball before crashing into a wall and hitting the ground hard. She made the inning’s second out, but a runner on third base scored while she was unresponsive on the ground. The Golden Hawks lost to Waimea High School 12-4.
Her injuries hushed the wild crowd and brought the game to a halt for about 30 minutes in the top of the seventh and final inning as several coaches, trainers and her parents checked on her. Paramedics finally took her off the field and put her in an ambulance.
Nanakuli head coach Ricky Gusman said Silva had a blank stare for several minutes and eventually could speak only in a whisper.
"I don’t think she really wanted to go to the hospital," Gusman said. "I kind of gave her a kiss on the forehead and said, ‘We’re going to get this for you.’"
"She’s a tough cookie," he said. "She gave herself up for the ball."
He said he had a bad feeling in his gut about the injury, which quickly brought the game into perspective.
"It don’t matter what the score is" when a player gets hurt, he said. "We wanted to win our first state championship, but all that fell through the window when I saw Kehau on the ground."
Nanakuli pitcher Chyanne Koko, 15, had to grab the ball from Silva’s glove when she didn’t get up to stop the player coming to home plate.
"I was thinking, Why isn’t she getting up? So I ran to check and I seen her eyes closed," Koko said. "As a team we had to pull it together and just finish it for her. Basically it was for her. I didn’t want to give up because I knew she would have wanted this."
Silva remembers going up for the ball and then going into an ambulance.
She said she felt pressure to make the catch because the game was being telecast live statewide.
"We really needed to get out of that inning," Silva said. "We just needed every out we can get, and that looked kind of easy."
Silva, 18, will graduate this month and leave in August to attend Taft College in California and play basketball.
"I just wish I didn’t get hurt so I could be there to support my team, since it’s my last game with them," she said.
