Juston Lewis | The Valdosta Daily TimesValdosta State's Haley Garrett rounds second base during two-game series against Christian Brothers on April 13.

Growing up in Dasher, just 15 minutes away from Valdosta, Haley Garrett found two loves in softball and basketball.

Her mother got her engaged in sports at a young age. By the age of four, Garrett played tee-ball and about four years later she started playing basketball as well and continued to play both all the way through high school.

Garrett attended school at Georgia Christian and was a standout athlete. As just a fifth grader she was allowed to play up on the middle school team that consisted of 6th-8th graders.

“I was told that I should consider letting her play up,” Garrett’s former softball coach Donald Dawkins said. “I told her parents that she could practice with us to see if she would be capable of playing with the older kids. She was more than capable, she was actually one of our best players that season.”

Garrett became the main pitcher for her middle school team and played several other positions that year. She continued to excel as she got older and was the starting pitcher for the varsity team as an 8th grader. She earned All-State and All-Region honors in all her five seasons on varsity.

All while being a great pitcher, Garrett was also playing at an All-State level on the hardwood. She earned the starting point guard position as a freshman and was honored as an All-Region and All-State guard for four straight seasons. Garrett even helped lead Georgia Christian to their first ever state championship in 2015.

If being an All-State pitcher, point guard and state champion wasn’t already a huge high school accomplishment, Garrett topped it off by graduating Georgia Christian as valedictorian.

“Her pursuit of excellence was not only in athletics,” Dawkins said. “Haley also worked extremely hard to be the best student possible in the classroom.”

Before Garrett even walked across the stage and gave her valedictorian speech, she already knew what she wanted to do at the collegiate level, and that was playing softball at Valdosta State University.

“I knew whenever Coach Macera offered me, I was coming here,” Garrett said. “This is a good program, so I knew I wanted to play softball here.”

Garrett and VSU’s softball coach Thomas Macera became acquainted through Macera’s annual softball camps and clinics that he hosts at VSU. As a sophomore in high school, Garrett had her mind set on attending VSU and playing softball even though she was also receiving interest from VSU’s basketball coach at the time, Kiley Hill.

Garrett plays as an outfielder for the Blazers and even though she was a pitcher all through high school, she didn’t care what position she was assigned, she just wanted to play. 

She decided to continue playing softball instead basketball because the mental aspect of the game is more challenging.

“It’s so hard to stay focused and stay up because you fail so often in softball,” Garrett said. “If you’re up 10 at bats and you strikeout seven but get three hits, you’re hitting .300. So, you just have to be able to accept the failure and learn from it. I still like basketball, but you have more success. You can make a good pass, and even if you don’t score a lot you can play good defense.”

It’s not surprising that an individual like Garrett embraces a challenge. Her work ethic is unquestioned by her coaches, and that’s not all what stands out the to them, it’s her overall character.

“My daughter played on the same team with Haley, so I’ve known Haley since she was a little kid,” Garrett’s former basketball coach Burt Copeland said. “Although she was very good in sports, she was very good in school, very humble, and she was a good person. That’s what stood out to me, she was respectful, she wanted to do what was right, she wanted to be a good example.”

Dawkins added: “Haley is also the kind of person that will drop whatever she is doing to help others. Her unselfishness makes her a great teammate and a great young Christian woman.”

Garrett credits her character traits to attending a Christian school and her parents, especially her mother. “I was always raised to be caring,” Garrett said. “My mom’s a nurse at Pinevale Elementary, and those kids love her there. She brings them candy and she’ll bring them books, and a lot of them don’t get that at home sometimes. So, I got that from my mom for sure.”

Like her mother, Garrett wants to be in the medical field once her playing days are over at VSU. She’s striving to become a radiologist or an oncologist.

“My mom had breast cancer so that’s where I got interested in that,” Garrett said. “It’s super experimental, obviously they don’t have a cure for it yet and there’s different ways to treat people, so I’m super interested in that.”

Garrett is currently shadowing a local doctor to get some early experience all while playing her best season at VSU so far with a .368 batting average and 10 home runs.

Haley is an exceptional role model and is the example of what it’s like to have high character with an endless drive. 

Dawkins and Copeland shared the same exact words about Garrett that anybody will agree with, “She will be successful in anything she does in life.”