Resolve puts Prince back on the mound

No one doubted Brianne Prince would pitch again for St. Bonaventure University.

And in typical Prince fashion, she’s not happy with where her pitches are landing these days. Nor is she pleased with her endurance.

Of course, no one expected her to return to the level that won her Western New York Pitcher of the Year honors in 1988 after her senior season at Frewsburg Central School.

Instead, people are just happy to see her standing on the mound.

It was last March when Prince, then a freshman at Bona, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

And when the chemotherapy was finished and the radiation nearly completed, she was promptly back on the mound, pitching in St. Bonaventure’s fall exhibition season.

“She told everyone the first day she found out she was sick. ‘I will be back,’” said Bona head coach Mike Threehouse. “She wanted to pitch last, year, but there was no way I was about to let her do that.

“(Seeing her back) is hard to describe,” Threehouse continued. “She’s a young lady who means a lot to us, not just as a softball player but as a person. It makes all of us understand that this is still a game, but it’s important to all of us. She’s given us a lot of perspective.”

This spring, Prince, now in remission, is the No. 2 starter for the Bonnies. Though she never played in a regular–season game last year, she’s listed as a sophomore, but Prince can still petition NCAA at any point during her collegiate career to regain that lost year of eligibility.

For now, she’s gone 5-9 as Bona has struggled at times to an 11-18 record. Her ERA has steadily decreased through her first full collegiate season, now at 5.52 through 76 innings pitched.

But it’s her attitude more than her statistics that makes her indispensable to those around her.

From the time she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, Prince was the strong one.

It was Prince who offered her shoulder to teammates, friends and family members throughout her diagnosis and treatment. Everyone marveled at her ability to cope with the cancer that mysteriously strikes adolescents and young adults. They drew strength from her positive attitude.

“She didn’t need a dang thing from me,” laughed Chris Gray, her boyfriend since he was a ninth grader and she an eighth grader at Frewsburg. “As a matter of fact she was the one carrying me. I was the one crying. One day I was there for her chemotherapy and she couldn’t even walk from the car to the house. And before she laid her head down, she just looked at me and said, ‘I’ll be all right.’ I’ll never forget it. She’s a tough girl.”

But no matter how tough she was, Prince always needed Gray’s support.

The two have been encouraging each other since that fateful high school dance when they started dating.

Gray was an all-star football linebacker at Frewsburg (he broke Shane Conlan’s tackle record) who got his grades back on track while becoming a Junior College All-American at Alfred State. He earned several offers from Division I schools, but chose the University at Buffalo partly to stay close to Prince. She, meanwhile, was an overachieving softball pitcher who earned a D-I scholarship to Bona.

A pair of super competitive athletes, they constantly push each other with their own running joke: “There’s somebody out there getting better than you.”

“We always say that to each other. It’s so funny, it just cracks me up,” Prince said. So I’m like. ‘Shut up,’ because I don’t want to hear that. So then it gets me (mad) and I do it any way.

“I don’t think I would have worked out as much or thrown as much if Chris wasn’t around. My dad would make me throw, but Chris would be like, ‘I’m not taking you to the movies until you throw.’”

Each will tell you the other is the motivator. They’ll tell you it was the other one who pushes for trips to the weight room on a summer Saturday afternoon. They’ll tell you it was the other who wanted Prince to throw ever day over Christmas break to get her ready for the spring season.

But no matter how tough the other one is, part of their survival off the field and success on it is a direct result of the other’s support.

“We kinda know that we’re going to be together for a long time and (the Hodgkin’s) was just an obstacle that we had to overcome,” Prince said. “He helped me with the appearance part of it. He shaved his head and stuff. That helped especially toward the end of the chemotherapy. I lost my eyebrows and eyelashes. All my hair everywhere and I didn’t feel very pretty. I used to have long, dark hair and now, (people) were just stating at me and they wouldn’t pay me any attention and I felt really ugly.

“So he would always tell me every day, ‘Oh your hair’s gonna come back and be prettier. And don’t worry about what other people think.’ He would always take his hat off so people would stare at him, not me.”

For Gray, just seeing her survive the cancer, let alone return to the mound, was inspiration enough. He sat as a backup for the first half of the Bull’s season. He got his first D-1 start against Marshall - and in front of nearly healthy Prince.

“Having her there was just really fulfilling – to know she was on the edge of being OK and that everything was good,” Gray said. “The road she went down gave me more confidence on the field. It was just like having an angel in the corner. Words can’t even describe how it felt.

It made me the football player I always wanted to be.”

Right now, Prince isn’t quite the softball pitcher she wants to be. Of course, her coach, boyfriend and just about everyone else is happy with Prince’s performance. After all, she’s been away from the game for nearly a year. No one expects her to return to her all-star form immediately.

No one except her.

“She’s like, ‘No, I need to be good right now,’” Gray said. “Obviously she won’t be in the full swing of things, but she won’t hear of it. She’ll accept nothing less than the best. She wants to instantly come back and be where she left off, but she’s gotta realize that she’s getting better every time out.”

“She definitely gets tired,” Threehouse said. “About the fifth inning she hits the wall and we try to push her through that. I knew that was going to happen and I watch her closely. She talks to me when she gets tired and we go from there. She wants to be right where she was last year. I think she’s coming to know that’s not possible.”

Coming to know, but she’s still a bit of a stubborn perfectionist.

“I’m not happy yet,” Prince said. “Before we went to Florida (to start the spring season) I was getting really nervous because my pitches weren’t working. So I was panicking. I could tell I wasn’t ready when I went down there and I tried to throw hard and when you try to throw hard is when you actually throw slower. So now the past couple of weeks, I’ve tried to be more relaxed. I already see a difference.”