By Brandon HENSLEY

Oh, the places she’ll go – but, oh! The places she’s already been. Three months ago, Crescenta Valley High junior Hanna Wright was in Europe, experiencing the fun of nights in Paris and the sobering days of Amsterdam visiting the Anne Frank House.

This wasn’t the reason for her vacation, though, and, in fact, this wasn’t really a vacation. When Wright wasn’t touring the continent, she was indoors, slamming softballs and taking it to girls several years her senior, and several levels above her skill.

But inexperience be damned; Wright helped her U.S. team, the Destroyers, advance to the semifinal round in the NL Cup, an annual softball tournament held in the Netherlands, where they lost a heartbreaker, 4-3, coming up one game short of the championship.

Wright was selected to help represent the U.S. based off videos she sent coaches. Both Kirk Whiteside and Bill Grannis saw something in her and emailed her asking if she wanted to take the next step.

“I was in disbelief. This is legit,” Wright remembers thinking.

Grannis, who is based in Florida and was Wright’s coach on the trip, said she appeared to be a natural.

“You can tell as far as her hitting, her swing was pure. She had good footspeed,” he said. “Same thing as far as fielding the ball.”

Wright ended the tournament with superb stats: she batted .466, had an on-base percentage of .500, and a slugging percentage of .667. In the elimination bracket play, her batting average was .800.

“She’s a pure hitter,” Grannis said.

While hitting indoors – remember, this is January in Europe, so no clean-cut grass on a fine spring day – may not have been such a challenge, Wright and her teammates did have to learn how to slide properly. The field, if it can be called that, had a surface similar to those old gymnasiums with rubber and concrete. That meant a slippery surface and the team had to practice getting down earlier and learning how to grab the bases.

“It feels like you’re sliding on cardboard, and you don’t stop,” Wright said.

The Destroyers held their own against European players in their 20s, some of them members of national teams. What caught Wright off guard wasn’t so much the competition, but her newfound fame. Little Dutch girls, ranging from 6 to 8 years old, wanted her autograph. They look up to Americans, Wright said. (She was also asked by someone, just because she’s from California, if she goes to school with any celebrities. Go figure.)

When the last out was recorded and the Destroyers were done, Wright’s teammates, all of whom are spread throughout the states, realized they wouldn’t be seeing each other again, at least not for a while. One girl started crying, and that set off a chain reaction of emotion.

Wright is no stranger to playing on teams designed to highlight individual play, such as her Easton Elite travel ball team, but this experience was different.

“With our travel teams, we’re playing in front of our coaches, but here … we were playing together as a team. We’re working together to get the trophy. Losing was real gut wrenching for us,” she said.

Wright wore her CV batting helmet overseas, representing her school. In reality, she’s no longer in the Falcon softball program, having left after last season while on the junior varsity. There was a game last year in which, playing centerfield, a ball came toward her, jumped up from the ground, and hit her smack dab on her forehead. She suffered a nasty concussion, one that sidelined her for three weeks.

Wright said the most difficult thing about recuperating was having to turn off her daily life. She couldn’t watch TV and said that even thinking was painful. When she was cleared to play, she had to take baby steps to get back on the field, which severely tested her patience.

“It was pretty hard to watch my teammates go out on the field without me and it really made me realize how important playing ball was to me,” she said. “You’re focusing on teamwork. It’s not about you. You’re lifting up other people.”

Wright’s come a long way – not just since her concussion, but since she was a kid. She hated running when she was little, but now enjoys the work it’s taken to make her better, faster, stronger. Whatever she’s endured has helped her become a revered teammate, and clutch player.

“She was one of our team leaders,” Grannis said. “She got along with everyone on the team. And, when we needed a big hit, she was right there.”

When she isn’t on the field, Wright is taking photos for the school yearbook staff as an outside hobby, although the way she talks about it, it might be more of a passion. If she can’t play softball in college, she might put all of her focus into photojournalism. Or maybe something in science, she said. Even though junior year is spent on impressing colleges, there’s still plenty of time for Wright to find her way, whatever that is.

She won’t be going back to play in the NL Cup next year, though. At least, that’s what she said. After all, that’s where she’s been, and who knows about the places she’ll go?

  Brandon Hensley