March Column Winner

When baseball becomes more than a game

By Justin Scrimshire, Okemah News Leader

Last Saturday, the Okemah Panther High School baseball team had the opportunity to play inside the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City against the Chandler Lions on a beautiful, summer-like, sunny day. In pre-game warmups, the boys laughed and played catch, a quintessential teenage experience on the biggest baseball stage in Oklahoma. But lingering over the moment was a quiet reality the past few days had been anything but quintessential.

The last time Panther cleats walked onto a baseball diamond was in Kellyville on March 13. Between that day and the March 22 game in Oklahoma City against Chandler, so much had happened, too much had changed.
 
On March 13, early in the game against Kellyville, Aaden Dunson stepped into the batter’s box and squared up to hit a bunt.  Unfortunately, the pitch missed Dunson’s leveled bat and hit Aaden in the chest. Dunson began a routine trip to first base for being hit by a pitch but collapsed to the ground after taking only a few steps. 

Brandi Tillery, a registered nurse and a Panther mom happened to be in the stands for the game and rushed to Aaden’s side, offering her assistance as a nurse. Tillery was unable to locate a pulse and immediately began CPR, instructing the coaching staff to call an ambulance and bring her an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED). For twenty minutes Brandi continued CPR on Aaden until the AED finally arrived. Once it was attached to Dunson’s chest, it evaluated his heart rhythm and signaled a shock was necessary, which Tillery administered. 

After the shock was applied, Brandi continued with chest compressions until the ambulance arrived. The game was called off and Okemah players boarded a bus for home, concerned for their friend who was headed to St. Francis Children’s Hospital in an ambulance.
 
In an interview with the Okemah News Leader, Tillery stated Dunson experienced Commotio cordis, a rare cardiac response to being struck in the chest during a critical moment of the heartbeat. The same event was witnessed during a nationwide NFL broadcast in 2023 between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills, when Bills defender Damar Hamlin collapsed onto the field after being hit in the chest by a player’s helmet. 

Tillery said while the event is an extremely rare occurrence, “it has a 97% fatality rate if CPR is not started within the first three minutes.” Tillery commended Kellyville public schools for having an AED on hand and cited the importance of this type of medical equipment being readily available during school sporting events. 

The next day, miraculously, Aaden Dun-son was released from St. Francis Children’s Hospital and sent home. It seemed that everything was going to be ok. Then two days later, the worst kind of news was delivered about another teammate. 

What should have been a fun and relaxing spring break turned into days of un-fathomable grief as Okemah High School students and the Okemah High School baseball team joined the Berryhill family in mourning for the loss of Charley Berry-hill. Teammates and best friends became pallbearers, spending a whole day digging Charley’s grave. Last Friday, teammates, friends and family helped bury Charley’s casket, seeing their buddy all the way through to the end of his earthly journey. 

During the funeral, Pastor Clarence Yahola challenged Charley’s teammates to continue playing in honor of their broth-er, to carry on Berryhill’s legacy of always playing hard and tough. On Saturday, the Okemah Panthers did that. In front of friends and family at Chickasaw Brick-town Ballpark in Oklahoma City, Panther cleats walked onto a baseball diamond again. 

Landen Lee, who served as a pallbearer and buried his friend one day prior, started Saturday’s game pitching from the mound. Lee delivered three strikeouts in a row to end the top of the first inning, then stepped into the batter’s box in the bottom of the same inning to hit a line drive that put runners on first and second base. A few moments later, Owen Dunmire, who played both baseball and basketball with Berryhill hit a bases-loaded fly ball. The sacrifice fly should have been caught for an out, but was dropped, allowing Rhett Rogers to score the game’s first run.
 
Later in the game, with the score not favoring the Panthers, Rhett Rogers faced an uncomfortable test during his time pitching on the mound. Where others probably would have preferred to call it quits, Rogers dug deep and struck out his final two batters to end the inning, exhibiting the kind of resilient toughness that Pastor Yahola encouraged Berryhill’s teammates to carry on. 

That toughness continued to be on dis-play in the bottom of the fourth inning. After being hit by a pitch, Gavyn Danker responded by trotting out to first base and delivering a humorous “feed me more” gesture to his teammates, imitating the motion of eating ravenously from an imaginary bowl. Laughter and cheering could be heard coming from the Panther dugout.

When the game ended, it wasn’t the storybook ending that makes for a feel-good movie. However, for a brief moment, after nine of the worst days imaginable, the Okemah Panther baseball team was given an opportunity to move forward in this new and uncertain world. On that perfect spring day, a game of baseball was good for the soul.