It’s been a good year for Kendall Rumans.
Between leading Panther softball to a Mountain Seven Conference title and breaking career team records in home runs and RBIs, the junior turned in one of the great seasons in program history. Recently The Press caught up with Rumans to discuss the secrets to her success. Below is Part I of the two-part interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
So how’s your summer been so far? Do anything fun?
Not really; I went to the beach, but other than that I’ve just been kind of hanging out at the house trying to get my back better.
Oh really? What’s wrong with your back?
I have a stress fracture, I guess just from [playing] too much – that’s the only thing I can think that it’s from. It’s nothing major; I just need to rest this summer to make sure that I’m OK next year.
Was that what was hurting you at the end of last year?
Yeah, and it took forever for us to figure it out, but we finally got it figured out and realized I just need to take the summer off and not play at all, so I’m doing good now.
Well at least it’s nice to get a little break and relax a bit though, right?
Yeah, a little bit, but it’s definitely weird not doing anything.
So when did you first start to notice that?
I would say toward the end of the season, when we had probably four or five games left in the regular season, is when it started bothering me. I remember not playing in the North Henderson game and from then on it was kind of iffy, but it was the playoffs so I was kind of just sucking it up. I just picked it up and tried to make it through, but obviously I was in a lot of pain toward the end in the last few games … when I would swing, when I would run, pretty much just anything at all.
So what was the process like for figuring out what that was?
I went and got an MRI when the season was over, and they just saw like stress-related swelling basically, and they didn’t really say anything else other than that. They were basically just like, “Do whatever you feel like.” It wasn’t a doctor that did it, it was just one of the MRI offices, and so they didn’t really give us a super-detailed report about it. I did physical therapy for probably like a month and wasn’t really noticing any change, and I went and played in a weekend tournament with my team. That was when I was like, “This is not going to work – something’s wrong,” and so I went to a chiropractor, and she did some treatment on me. We gave her the MRI pictures and the report, and she was like, “It’s a stress fracture.” They always use like the fancy doctor words, and me and my parents were like, “We don’t know what that means; can you just tell us straight-up what it means?” She’s like, “You shouldn’t play at all, because it’s just going to keep getting worse the more you do. You just need to take off for as long as you can,” and so that’s what I’m doing now, but it took like a month to even figure out exactly what the main issue was.
So do you know when you’ll get back to training and everything again, or will you just kind of play it by ear with how it feels?
I’m just easing back into it, I started throwing and I’m going to throw some this week – obviously that’s a lot less stress than hitting or running – and I’ve kind of just been walking to get some exercise. I haven’t really been working out or anything because like lifting a lot still hurts, so I’m just trying to lay off anything that bothers me at all, because that’s just slowing down the healing. So, I really haven’t done much until this week – I’m just throwing, and I probably won’t hit for another month or so. I’ll try to play this fall obviously, but if anything bothers me then I’ll know that I should just stop.”
So, tell me about playing through the pain toward the end of last season? What made you want to come back and help your team like that?
It was obviously hard because I was in pain, but it was harder just sitting there not playing at all, so I was like, “I’d rather just deal with a game being in pain so I can help my team.” It was obviously more important to me to just play through it, instead of just sitting there knowing that I wasn’t helping. So that did help a little bit, but it was still obviously hard.
So, taking it all the way back to the beginning here, how did you first get started playing softball when you were a kid?
One day I guess my dad was just like, “You want to go throw in the yard?” And so we went and threw in the yard, and ever since then I was just like, “I want to do this forever – I love it so much.” So that’s how it started, and he’s always helped me.
And about how old were you, would you say, when that happened?
Probably five or six. I don’t know exactly – five, I think.
So I know we talked about this a few months ago, but obviously it was a pretty good season for you to say the least, and I was just wondering how you’re feeling being Franklin’s all-time home run and RBI leader.
It’s pretty cool. I honestly haven’t thought about it a lot since the end of the season, but that moment was really cool just knowing our work was worth it.
Yeah, those are some pretty good players you passed on that list. So, how’d you do it? I mean, what’s your secret?
Just a lot of hard work, a lot of time in the cages, a lot of hitting outside of practice, and just doing a lot of extra stuff is honestly all I can say. And just really having a plan when I’m in a game – that helps a lot.
Obviously you’re not doing so much right now, but could you kind of take me through a typical day of training during the season?
During a high school season it’ll be a lot different, but during the summer and fall I’ll usually just go to the cages, I’ll do some mechanical stuff off the tee just to make sure I’m good, and then I’ll do front toss. After I do a little bit of that I’ll hit off the machine, and then after I do that I’ll go outside and throw, and I’ll do some of my fielding stuff – like an outfield routine, just different angles and stuff, different balls. And then I usually go to the gym too when I’m not during high school season. Mostly during the fall is when I do that because last summer I had a really tough schedule with my travel ball team, and that didn’t leave a lot of time at home, so it’s mostly during the fall when I get most of the work done. When I go to the gym I just try to do a lot of moves that translate to softball, so I do a lot of legs and a lot of arms because that’s the main thing that you use – especially hitting. And then also some core muscles too – those help a lot, hitting and running.