Aimee Kelly was in her comfortable, familiar spot behind home plate at Savannah Christian's Coach Carter Field immersed in one of her favorite pastimes as she was taking photos of the action while her son — Raider senior Harding Dennis — pitched against Price Avenue Christian on Feb. 21.
Then, in the blink of an eye, she was in a state of panic.
She heard the resounding ping of a ball smoked off the aluminum bat of a Prince Avenue batter but never saw the line drive back up the middle as Harding hit the ground after being hit directly in the face.
She watched as coaches, including her husband, SCPS assistant David Kelly, along with teammates, umpires and trainers surrounded her son on the mound as she made her way to the third base home dugout of the Raiders.
"My first thought was that he could have had a TBI (traumatic brain injury), but then I saw he was kicking his feet a bit on the ground," Kelly said. "And then I got to the dugout, but I didn't want to run on the field right away and be 'that' mom. When I got out there, there was blood all over the mound. It was very disheartening to see, and I just went into shock and started to think about what we had to do next."
Remarkably, Dennis was conscious and brought a moment of levity to the dire situation as he said, "I really ate that one didn't I?" before asking if the batter had been thrown out. Dennis had a no-hitter going through three innings of work and had fanned seven batters before he went down in a game SCPS went on to win 3-0.
"When he said that joke, I knew he still had his sense of humor and was coherent," Kelly said. "So that made me feel a little better."
A trip to the emergency room followed, and Kelly said she had trouble finding a parking space — so she dropped Harding at the entrance, and he was able to walk in by himself. They soon found out he had fractured seven bones in his face. The road to recovery started in the hospital that Friday night as Dennis began to process what had happened.
"He hit that ball pretty hard, and I definitely didn't see it off the bat," said Dennis, who signed as a pitcher with Georgia College & State University in November. "I didn't know what happened until I was on the ground and saw the blood. My vision got blurry and my hearing went out for a minute and I felt numb. The best way to describe it is, if you play 'Call of Duty' was that I got hit with a flash bang. I broke seven bones in my face, but only two were displaced, with the others shattered in place. I definitely got lucky with how it turned out; everybody thought it would be a lot worse."
Doctors thought that Dennis would probably miss the rest of his senior season, but the stubborn lefty had other plans. An 'A' student who plans to major in sports medicine at Georgia College & State, Dennis didn't miss a day of school as he was back in the classroom on Monday morning.
"At no point did I think I would be out for the season," Dennis said. "I thought there was no way I was not coming back, even though some of the people around me doubted that."
Savannah Christian coach Matt Oglesby is a baseball lifer who played his high school ball at Jenkins and earned a scholarship to play at Savannah State. He's ...
