SELAH — A freak injury suffered during a basketball game against Olympic may have torn the ACL in Jordan Bentz’s right knee, but it couldn’t break the bond between two softball-loving Sequim sisters.
Jordan Bentz, a junior shortstop, and senior pitcher McKenzie Bentz are crucial cogs on a Wolves softball team making its sixth consecutive trip to the Class 2A state softball tournament starting Friday.
But on that January night in the Olympic High School gym, Jordan was concerned she had played her last game with her soon-to-graduate sister.
After the swelling subsided a little, Jordan was examined by a sports medicine doctor at the Swedish Orthopedic Institute in Seattle.
“The first thing she asked the doctor was if she could play softball,” McKenzie Bentz said.
Rehabilitative surgery was recommended, but was postponed when the doctor cleared her to return for softball season.
“We went and got this big old brace and I strap it on and play,” Jordan Bentz said.
“I mostly did it for her. I love softball, but she’s my sis and she’s graduating, so I was like, I want to play for her.”
McKenzie appreciates her sister’s sacrifice.
“The reason she did it is to play with me during my last year,” she said.
“She loves softball, we both do. I think we bond the most through softball, our whole family does.”
Indeed, the Bentz family has been vital to Sequim’s state streak.
Oldest sister Makayla Bentz was a freshman on the Wolves’ state championship team in 2011, and she won the Olympic League MVP in 2014 while playing alongside her sisters.
“Softball has always run through our family,” McKenzie Bentz said.
“My mom and dad [Dave and Melanie] have both coached us, and my sophomore year, Makayla, Jordan and I all got to play with each other and it was super fun.”
Sequim head coach Mike McFarlen also has a long relationship with the sisters Bentz.
“McKenzie and Jordan, I’ve been coaching them since they were nine,” McFarlen said.
“We’ve been together for quite awhile and their work ethic has always been high. They play hard, they love the game and they are really good athletes.”
And McFarlen knows he’s going to miss them when they are finished playing for the Wolves and the TNT traveling team he helps coach.
“I have one more year with one of them at least,” McFarlen said with a laugh.
Jordan takes a brave stance on how much pain she plays with and how the injury has impacted her abilities.
“It makes me a little slower, which sucks, and sliding is kind of sketchy, but the rest of it feels pretty normal,” she said.
Jordan said she’s only had one real scare this season, and it came where else, at Olympic.
“I was on first and the batter hit a line drive, so I had to stop and my knee buckled again and that really hurt, but other than that I’ve been all right,” she said.
McKenzie said last week that the injury has more of an impact than her younger sister lets on.
“It hurts her every now and then, like today [at the district tournament] it was really sore, but the doctor told her that if you can wear the brace and tolerate the pain you can play and you won’t hurt it any worse,” McKenzie Bentz said.
McFarlen said he does what he can to limit needless impacts.
“Games like that you try to get her out of there quickly,” he said after Sequim’s 18-0 district win over Evergreen.
“You can only pinch-run for her once a game. If she was a pitcher or a catcher it wouldn’t be an issue [due to unlimited substitution rules], but playing those positions wouldn’t be good for her. Too much strain.”
McKenzie is Sequim’s primary pitcher and she’s also dealing with her own maladies.
“I have tendinitis in my hand and nerve damage in my elbow. It hurts, but I’m going to take the ball [and pitch],” McKenzie Bentz said.
She doesn’t give creedence to the long-held belief that the windmill motion used by softball pitchers lessens the impact on arms.
“Oh, it does, it hurts to pitch that much,” McKenzie Benz said.
“It’s crazy and a little bizarre that nobody has really stood up and said ‘I think throwing that many pitches is bad for an arm.’
“Eventually, I think there will be a pitch count limit.”
McKenzie will be catching pitches next year when she moves back behind the plate for the Bellevue College team.
She’s used to the position, having caught for Makayla in 2014.
Jordan Bentz’s knee surgery is scheduled for June 3
“It’s gonna hurt, and I’m worried about the aching, I don’t like that kind of pain, but I’ll get through it,” she said.
“I can’t play basketball or cheer next year, but I’m OK with that,” she said.
“I’ll be back for softball, and softball is really my passion.”
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 57050 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
