During the summer of 2008, Boston University softball coach Shawn Rychcik found the future talent he was looking for in nearby Grafton and in Florence, N.J. The two players, talented but different in ability, were rising high school seniors Jayme Mask and Chelsea Kehr.
What Rychcik, Mask and Kehr didn’t expect, though, was that in 2010 when the players would finally start their careers with the Terriers, both Mask and Kehr would wind up sidelined by season-ending injuries.
As the two began their senior years of high school, both were heavily recruited by schools in the Northeast.
“Both were my number-one players, they both were. We got both of them,” Rychcik said. “That whole freshman class has been my number-one pick so the last couple of years I have been pretty fortunate to get the kids that I wanted. Jayme and Chelsea were number one on the radar right off the bat, so I’m really happy about that.”
Mask, who was ranked in the top 10 for batting in the Southern Worcester County League since her freshman year of high school, would chose BU over Hofstra University and University of Massachusetts as well as America East competitor University of Maine. When she made the decision to come to Boston, she became the first player from Massachusetts that Rychcik had ever recruited.
“I had seen Jayme over the summer and really, really liked her versatility,” Rychcik said. “She’s just a real threat on the bases and from an offensive standpoint, gave me exactly what I wanted.”
Whereas Mask’s strength was her speed, Kehr’s strength was her bat. The First-Team All-South Jersey honoree passed up chances to play at University of Connecticut, Pennsylvania State University and University of Pennsylvania to play in Boston.
“I loved the team when I met them on my visit and I loved the coach,” Kehr said of her decision. “I constantly compared every other school I visited to BU, so it was an easy choice for me.”
Next came the spring of 2010, when both players were set to begin their rookie seasons. Mask, who played in 10 games, started off the season hitting .343 with two doubles and two triples. However, while playing a game in Florida against University of Alabama- Birmingham, Mask’s season was immediately cut short when she attempted to score from second on a hit up the middle.
As Mask dove headfirst into home plate, she dislocated her shoulder. After her shoulder was put back into place on the field, Mask sat out the rest of the weekend. The extent of her injury, however, was not known until she came back to Boston and had an MRI which showed that she had torn her labrum and had a humerus fracture. Mask’s injury required surgery and forced the speedy leadoff hitter to sit out for the rest of the year.
Kehr never even got a chance to have an at-bat. The first baseman tore her left ACL while doing a drill in the weight room.
“It was pretty ridiculous, actually,” Kehr said. “We had just finished doing a drill… and I went to stop and give a high-five to my teammate and my knee locked out. I felt it pop, I bent it, felt it snap and I still had no idea that I tore it because it didn’t hurt.”
Although Kehr continued to practice on her injured knee for two more hours, the next morning she found that she could not put weight on it.
From a roster standpoint, Rychcik faced a serious issue. He would now be missing two players from an already small team.
“It’s really hard to lose somebody,” Rychcik said. “I have a quality over quantity approach to recruiting where I’m not trying to get 16, 17, 18 players on the roster. I’m trying to get as many good ones and great ones as I can.”
At one point last season, Rychcik was missing as many as four players due to injury.
“It’s frustrating from my standpoint to know how good they are and know they’ve lost that opportunity,” Rychcik said.
Knowing that their seasons were over, both players had to begin what would be a long and arduous recovery process both mentally and physically.
“The hardest part about the entire injury was having to watch people do what I love so much,” Mask said. “Not being able to help them when we were struggling, that feeling of helplessness… the injury hurt, don’t get me wrong, but I would take the physical pain any day over the mental stuff.”
Kehr also felt the mental struggle as she watched her teammates recover from injury after injury in route to their AE championship win.
“I was going to rehab for an hour to an hour and a half everyday on top of going to the team lifts and practices, which I could only sit on the sidelines and cheer at,” Kehr said. “The most challenging part was not letting myself get down… It definitely gets frustrating.”
While the recovery was hard, both players pushed through it and reached the potential that Rychcik had hoped to see from them the year before.
“They wanted to play, they wanted to be the ones out on the field,” Rychcik said. “To sit and watch all the time and stuff, I think it made them work that much harder to get healthier and I think that’s what’s one thing they’ve done a great job with is that both worked very hard in their rehab and they were both right on time. They didn’t have any setbacks.”
This season, both players returned to the field with the designation of redshirt freshman and a presence that was almost immediately noted. In the first game of the Terriers’ season, a 4-0 win over Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Mask went 3-for-4 with two runs scored as the leadoff hitter, a spot that she has maintained for every game she has played this season.
Mask’s speed has wreaked havoc on other teams who have looked to control her at the plate and on the bases. The slap-hitter has gotten on base 56 times this season and, in most cases, if she gets on first by walk, hit or error, she is almost guaranteed to wind up on second.
So far this season, Mask has swiped 23 bases, a number that puts her in the top 10 for stolen bases in a season at BU. That figure also puts her second on the team behind senior center fielder April Setterlund and third in the AE.
“It’s not something I learned. It was something I was given and to be able to use it to help the team out makes it that much more beneficial,” Mask said about her speed. “It feels like when I get on it’s an automatic double because I’m just going to steal second. You’ve got to go in with the mentality that you’re going to do what you do and no one is going to stop you. That is how you become successful.”
While Mask’s success on the base paths has been her signature, Kehr’s strength at the plate has made her a key element in the middle of BU’s lineup. Like Mask, her place on the team was noted early on as Kehr was named the AE Rookie of the Week in the beginning of March.
So far this season, Kehr is hitting .311 in 40 games. She leads the team in RBIs with 39 and is tied with Setterlund for the most home runs with eight. Both her home runs and her RBIs put her in the BU softball record book as one of the top 10 for each in a season.
“It feels great to know I have contributed so much, especially after a year of sitting on the bench dying for the chance to help out the team,” Kehr said. “Everyone on our team really pulls for one another. To know I was a contributor to all of our hard efforts really feels amazing.”
For Rychcik, seeing his number-one recruits have such an impact on the team is a relief.
“They’re very comfortable in their roles, one being the leadoff hitter, scoring runs, and the other driving them in,” Rychcik said. “It’s really great for us to see.”
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