PEMBROKE – It was just your standard wintertime cough. Until it wasn't.
What troubled Haleigh Borden over school vacation in December later turned into a trip to her pediatrician, then to Mass General for a litany of more serious tests, including a biopsy of the tissue in her neck.
In January, the Pembroke High senior was told the words no one ever wants to hear. Cancer ... Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Borden was diagnosed just two months before the start of her final season of high school softball.
“Just from a cough, I was not expecting that whatsoever," Borden said. "It was very, very shocking. Definitely not the news I was expecting. ... I was very worried about the season. The first week, maybe two weeks, was very emotional."
Between undergoing chemotherapy and lab check-ins to inspect her blood cell count, Borden, the Titans' starting catcher and lone senior, is still in uniform for the Pembroke High softball team. (Recently, she received good news from doctors that the treatment is going well).
Borden DH'd in the Titans' season-opener vs. Abington on March 28, then restarted her streak of starts behind the plate after tallying 22 in a row during the team's 14-8 season last spring, which featured a playoff win and a trip to the Division 3 Sweet Sixteen.
That first game without Borden in her normal position was... unusual.
“As a shortstop, I’m always listening for the catcher on every play," junior Amanda Graham said. "When I’m not hearing Haleigh’s voice, it’s just different. Every year I’ve been on varsity, she’s always been behind the plate.”
Breaking the news
Borden called head coach Brittany Noons and assistant coach Jordan McDermott after receiving word of her diagnosis on Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
McDermott, the former head coach at Whitman-Hanson, had given Borden one-on-one catching and hitting lessons since early in the senior's childhood. Borden and her father then met McDermott for coffee at Starbucks in Brockton. That's when McDermott first saw the bandage on Borden's neck.
"I gave her a hug," McDermott said. "There were some tears. I gave her dad a hug."
“I was in shock, and feeling for her in that moment," Noons said of receiving the news. "I knew it was going to be hard and I couldn’t imagine how overwhelming it was for her to be going through it."
Borden, a four-year varsity player, was a mainstay at her position ever since Noons took over the program before last season. Around the time of her diagnosis, Borden had recently gotten a phone call from the coaching staff at ...
