Kary Hales (Carson), Brian Wilhite photo.

 

Cole and Kary Hales

 

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

SALISBURY — In the early days of 2021, Kary Hales, a senior and a star in two sports and a contributor in two more at Jesse Carson High School, wasn’t sure if anyone outside of her family and coaches believed she could play at the next level.

All-State and Conference Player of the Year accolades for softball and a long string of all-county and all-conference honors, plus a staggering 2,000-plus digs in volleyball, didn’t impress college coaches. COVID explains some of the reason why Hales flew under the radar, but the pandemic was only part of it. The other part was she was 5-foot-4. She didn’t pass the eye test.

“I knew girls who had a dozen college offers when I still had none,” Hales said. “That can be hard on your self-confidence. But then I did get an offer to play two sports, softball and volleyball, which is what I really wanted to do in college. My offers may have been small and they have been few, but when I got one I was grateful and I was determined to make the most of it. I’d never minded being the underdog, and I was determined that no one was going to outwork me.”

The college that offered was Catawba. The Indians are lucky they did.

Not long ago, Hales was handed the prestigious Lomax Award that goes to Catawba’s top senior female athlete. She more than held her own on the back row in volleyball and was astounding as a softball slugger. It’s tough to do two sports in college. Workouts in one can overlap with games and practices in the other. It’s a grind. Hales handled it admirably.

Hales’ career numbers for softball will make her a Catawba Sports Hall of Fame candidate down the road. She never missed a game, playing in 179 in a row. She made steady, hard contact, striking out just 24 times in four seasons. Her 234 hits are second all-time for the Indians. She’s fifth all-time with 126 runs scored and third with 159 RBIs. She socked 25 homers, fifth in program history, and batted .391 for her career.

Her 55 doubles are a program record. She smashed 20 tw0-baggers as a senior — a Catawba single-season record.

Hales credits her father, Rob, with the advice that led to that avalanche of doubles.

“He stressed to never look to hit home runs, but to always try to hit a line drive,” Kary said. “I hit some homers by mistake, but I was just trying to hit line drives up the middle. Most of my doubles were line drives that got in the gaps.”

Academic and softball honors continue to roll in for Hales. She has been named a first team All-America.  She and teammate Bri Gallagher, the South Atlantic Conference Player of the Year, dented softballs and fences all season. Catawba’s record was a modest 23-23, but the insane numbers the slugging duo put up were hard to ignore.

This spring, Hales also has received the Whitley Award that goes to the female upperclassman who has been most outstanding in academics and in service to the Department of Sport and Health Sciences.

“The honor that means the most is the Whitley Award because the Whitley family means a lot to me,” Hales said. “College academics are challenging, but I managed my time, always showed up for classes and study sessions and kept my grades up. The big shock I had was making first team All-America for softball. I never expected that, but it was wonderful because I was able to follow my mother (Nicole). She was an All-America for Catawba in field hockey.”

Rob Hales played tennis for Catawba. Kary’s older brother, Cole, was one of the standouts for Catawba’s baseball team for several seasons and just received a masters degree. A younger Hales, Corbin, recently graduated from Carson and is headed to Methodist University as a baseball recruit.

Kary first entered the local sporting spotlight as a pre-teen in 2015 when she played on the Rowan Little League 12U team that headed to Oregon when that whole thing still seemed very surreal and won the World Series. Those girls got Rowan Little League softball rolling. That success has been a factor in a lot of Rowan girls choosing softball as their main sport over the last 10 years.

“The Little League World Series was a meaningful part of my life, first of all, because those girls — and their families — are still friends 10 years later,” Hales said. “We’ve always supported each other. As far as athletics, it was big for all of us. We got to play on a very big stage at a very young age. We got to play in front of thousands of people we didn’t know, and not many 12-year-olds get a chance to do something like that. I’m sure that experience always has helped me in sports when it came to handling pressure situations.”

Hales played for five different Catawba head coaches, three softball and two volleyball, and learned from all of them.

“They all did things I liked and I learned from that, but I also tried to learn from the things that upset me or frustrated me,” Hales said. “I think coaching will be a part of my life one day.”

Hales grew up as a sure-handed, but not ideally tall, first baseman. A travel ball coach moved her to the middle infield, telling her she would have a bat good enough for college ball, but she would never get recruited as a first baseman. In high school, Hales was mostly a middle infielder.

During her freshman and junior years at Catawba, the Indians were short on pitching, so Hales did her best in the circle. She won three games her junior year.

She settled in as a third baseman for a while. That’s kind of the Hales family position.

“But Riley Tucker, who was a great third baseman, had transferred away from Catawba for a year, but then she came back, so I moved over to first base,” Hales said.

That was Hales’ home her last two seasons. She worked hard at it and became proficient at it. She was charged with only two errors as a senior.

“I did work hard at playing first base because I’ve played all the other infield positions and I always appreciated it when a first baseman dug out a throw and saved me an error,” Hales said.

She made a lot of great memories in the SAC. She’ll remember the day she hit three home runs. She’ll remember sweeping Lenoir-Rhyne when the Bears were one of the best teams in Division II. She’ll remember her walk-off doubles into the gap.

There also will be memories from the volleyball gym. Well-schooled by Carson coach Kelan Rogers, she led Catawba in digs as a sophomore. As a junior and senior defensive specialist, she was second on the team in digs. She even led Catawba in service aces one season.

“My best volleyball memory was a comeback win we had against Tusculum,” Hales said. “We were getting killed for a while, but we came back by playing together as a team, and I remember that win gave me a different feeling than anything I ever felt in high school. That’s the day I realized Catawba athletics were going to be very different from high school. I believe college athletics brought out the best in me and I was able to keep that same underdog mentality that I started with for four years. All the doubters, I wanted to prove them wrong right down to the end.”

The “end” as a Catawba student officially came for Kary when she received her diploma at graduation from Dr. Karl Hales, her grandfather, legendary voice and a Catawba institution.

“That’s who I’m named after,” Kary said. “He was always there, not just at my athletic events, but also for the academic things. He was always putting in a good word for me, always encouraging me. Having him hand me my diploma, that was the perfect ending.”

Next for Hales is graduate school at James Madison University for a master’s degree in the field of nutrition and dietetics.