Sisterly love
The Greenwood sisters are establishing a pattern, one that involves getting walk-off hits to lead their respective teams to victory, then finding their cellphones as soon as possible.
It first happened Feb. 16 with Auburn playing SIU-Edwardsville. Carmyn Greenwood stepped to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning with runners on second and third base, and the freshman ripped the ball to the center field wall, lifting her team to a walk-off victory.
The hit was Carmyn Greenwood’s first of her college career, as she recently completed her freshmen season playing softball at Auburn University.
“Coach (Clint Myers) talked to me and said, since there was a runner in scoring position, he just needed me to hit a ground ball,” Carmyn Greenwood said. “He wanted me to see a ball down and hit a hard ground ball.”
She didn’t get it on the ground, but the line drive that one-hopped the fence more than got the job done and allowed the celebration to ensue after the team’s 4-3 win.
“It was a great feeling,” Carmyn Greenwood said.
Back home, Cassady Greenwood said she had quit watching the game, because her superstitious nature — which she said she inherited from her dad — forced her to turn the game off because Auburn was struggling. She quickly realized what had happened after her mom began shrieking with joy on the other side of the house.
“I was so proud,” said the younger sister. “I can’t even explain how proud I was.”
Once the postgame festivities died down, a flood of text messages and a FaceTime video chat followed.
“I didn’t get to talk to her till late because she was getting interviewed and everything,” Cassady Greenwood said.
Determined to not let her older sister have the entire spotlight, Cassady Greenwood decided to match the feat March 21, when she led her Oak Mountain High School teamto victory.
Cassady Greenwood led off a four-run seventh inning with a single, as Oak Mountain came back to tie the game against Hoover, but she made a bigger mark in the eighth. Leading off the inning once again, she was trying to do the same thing, but ended up with something much better to showfor it.
“I just told myself, ‘Line drive, do the same thing as you did last time,’” Cassady Greenwood said.
She did hit the line drive, but one so hard that it flew over the fence in right field for a walk-off home run, sending the Eagles’ bench into a frenzy.
“Now I know how Carmyn felt because Carmyn had so many big hits (at Oak Mountain),” Cassady Greenwood said. “I got the walk-off home run, and it felt amazing. I was so happy that I did that for my team. It was an amazing feeling going around the bases and seeing my whole team waiting on me at the plate.”
Naturally, as soon as the game ended, a FaceTime connection was made between the two sisters.
“I FaceTimed her right after the game, so everybody got to say hey to her, because everybody misses her,” said Cassady Greenwood. “She was in study hall, so she was whispering the whole time. But she was really proud of me, too.”
Even outside their softball heroics, the video chat technology has allowed the sisters to foster their relationship even after Carmyn Greenwood went to college. After growing up in the same house, their new distance between each otherhas created a need to wear out the FaceTime button ontheir iPhones.
“I thought it would affect us a lot,” Carmyn Greenwood said. “But we probably FaceTime every day. It’s honestly gotten us closer, because we understand how much we miss each other.”
Cassady Greenwood calls Carmyn Greenwood the “perfect big sister and best friend,” although she admitted the two fight more than best friends probably should.
The two played three years together on Oak Mountain’s varsity team, as Cassady Greenwood began playing with the team as an eighth-grader, while Carmyn Greenwood wasa sophomore.
Going to Auburn after her days at Oak Mountain was a no-brainer for Carmyn Greenwood, but Cassady Greenwood struggled for a period of time to find that school she felt at peace with. She was certainly a good enough catcher to attract plenty of interest from Division I colleges, but it took awhile to find the place that she could call home.
“I went to a lot of different places, went on a lot of different visits, and I could never really find the right medium between a small school and a big school,” Cassady Greenwood said.
She sought advice from Carmyn Greenwood, who encouraged her to be patient. And once she found that perfect balance at the University of Louisville, she knew it immediately.
Chances are, once Cassady Greenwood gets to Louisville, she will dial up her sister on FaceTime for advice on adjusting to college life.
But until then and potentially a few years after that, they will continue to celebrate their softball heroics from afar, via video chat, more proud of the other than either would admit.