Highland senior Olivia Thomas took her younger sister Hailey, who’s a freshman, to the prom over the weekend.
That experience reflects what Highland coach Harry Humyak calls the Thomases’ “unique dynamic.”
“She’s definitely a mini version of me in everything,” Olivia Thomas said. “She is my twin. I play the outfield, she plays the outfield. She’s my hitting partner. She’s my catching partner. I also go home with her. We do everything together — drills, outfield, hitting. It’s always me and her.
“We definitely do butt heads sometimes only because we’re so much alike. But I would never change it for anything. I love my sister.”
Humyak said the Thomases’ bond is “a celebration of the values that our team stands for — unity, perseverance and family.”
“They get along very well,” Humyak said. “I have two daughters of my own, and I know being in the same house, they have fights about silly things. But I don’t see that out here. I don’t see it in the dugout. I don’t see it on the field. I see camaraderie.”
Olivia and Hailey Thomas actually are teammates for the first time. They typically even play for different travel organizations.
They’ve been savoring the opportunity.
“It’s fun,” Hailey Thomas said. “I get to see her a lot more now. Since she’s a senior, she’s leaving, so I’m glad I get to spend a lot of time with her. When she was on the high school team and I was in middle school, I barely saw her around this time.
“We’re really close. Of course, we’re together a lot because of softball. She has to take me and drop me off at home. But we also like to hang out by ourselves, sit down to eat at a restaurant or go shopping.”
Olivia Thomas appreciates being able to play at all. In late April 2023, she suffered a torn tendon in her left wrist while working with her hitting coach. The injury ended her season, her first as a full-time varsity player, after just 10 games. The rehabilitation process was arduous, and she wasn’t cleared until January.
Only now starting to feel like herself, Olivia Thomas still wears a glove to help support her wrist, and she’s somewhat limited in how she practices. She said her doctor told her it was “out of the question” to hit every day, and she doesn’t take “full swings” when working off a tee, which is how she initially suffered the injury.
She was hitting .289, not quite the average she envisioned for her final season, after the Trojans (7-8, 1-7) lost to Hobart on Tuesday in a Northwest Crossroads Conference game.
“I worked so hard to get back,” Olivia Thomas said. “I put in a lot of work and effort to get where I am right now. I try my hardest to be patient with myself. I understand it’s not the outcome that I want. But I’m just happy to be able to play in general. I’m happy to be able to be back from the injury because I did not think I was going to. It took so long to heal, really up to a year.
“I had my doubts, I had my worries and it made me panic. It made me think I would never see the field again. So even though I am in this slump, I’m just glad I have the opportunity to keep trying and trying and trying and trying.”
Humyak said Olivia Thomas has come a long way.
“I’ve known Liv for eight years,” he said. “My wife used to coach her in cheer way back when she was small and I used to run Highland Pop Warner. So I have a little familiarity with her, and I’ve seen her grow up a lot.
“From a softball standpoint, she’s been through a lot of failure, and that has really helped her step outside and have some self-reflections to see what she needs to improve. She’s put a lot of thought into that, and taking the failure as feedback and not being so upset about it and learning from it. It’s helped guide her to this good spot in her life — I don’t mean just softball-wise, but personally.”
Olivia Thomas has tried to share what she has learned with Hailey, who was hitting .512 with three homers and 21 RBIs, leading the Trojans in each category.
“She’s helped me how not to be so nervous — because in the beginning I was really nervous about the whole tryouts and everything,” Hailey Thomas said. “She helped me calm down. She helped me with things I was struggling with, fielding or hitting. She’ll encourage me through it and tell me what I need to fix.
“She knows how to uplift teammates, especially me. When you’re a little down, she knows how to bring you up and put you in a happy mood. She knows how to make everyone laugh.”
Hailey Thomas also had to rebound from an injury. She suffered a fractured right knee in July 2022 and was sidelined until January 2023.
“I worked hard to get back to my normal and what I’m usually hitting and doing,” she said. “I’m happy about that. At least I’m good now to be able to play in high school. Thank goodness it happened before high school.”
Hailey Thomas’ success this season has actually surprised her.
“I didn’t think I’d be doing this good,” she said.
But Humyak pretty much did. Before the season, he praised Hailey Thomas as “an incoming freshman with a big bat whose size may have you not prepared for her swing ability.” She has delivered in her debut season.
“Knowing Liv, I knew a little bit about Hailey too,” Humyak said. “To be honest, she really didn’t start to play softball at a competitive level until around three years ago, and the first time I saw her throw a ball, she was rough around the edges. She couldn’t really swing a bat that great. She has been seeing a lot of private instructors, and whoever’s been working with her has really helped her find something inside of her.
“When I saw her last year playing on a club ball team, knowing she was coming to Highland, I was shocked at the transformation she’s gone through. It tells me she put in a lot of work. It shows if you have any kind of athletic ability and it’s something you really want to do, you can do it. She has proven everything that I said that she would.”
Humyak noted Hailey Thomas maintains a team-first attitude.
“She’s a very poised kid, very humble and very accepting of her role,” Humyak said. “Sometimes with younger kids, you get kids who don’t understand the bigger picture. But there actually was a time when she came up to me and asked me to be benched so somebody else could have an opportunity in a moment of the game. You don’t get that a lot. She’s that much of a caring individual.
“She sets the energy and the tone for our team even when things don’t seem to be going well. She can be that spark that ignites us.”
Hailey Thomas has impressed her older sister.
“She’s an amazing athlete, and she will surpass me,” Olivia Thomas said. “I 100 percent believe it. I have that much faith in her.”
Olivia Thomas is planning to attend Western Michigan to study in its highly regarded aviation program — “it’s to die for, I’m so obsessed with it,” she said — and participate in ROTC. After graduation, she intends to join the Air Force to become a pilot.
“She’s very mature,” Humyak said. “It’s tremendous to have such deep thoughts at such a young age and know what you want to do. That’s powerful.
“The maturity that Liv is showing, she’s giving that to Hailey and really guiding her. All of the trials, tribulations and bad moments Liv has had, she’s shared that with Hailey, and it’s helped her become a better softball player.”
