Every athlete faces obstacles. But Laingsburg senior Skylar Stiff has faced more than most—and she’s come out swinging.
Stiff’s high school softball journey has been anything but smooth. It started with a broken ankle during spring break of her freshman year, just as she was gearing up for her first varsity games. Instead of stepping onto the diamond, she spent the entire season on the sidelines. The pain lingered, and by October of her sophomore year, she needed surgery.
She pushed through discomfort to play her sophomore season, but just as she was preparing for her junior year, another blow came—this time off the field. A car accident on the way to school left her with a broken piece of her right knee and a severe concussion.
“I didn’t really know what happened,” Stiff recalls. “I ended up breaking a piece of my right knee, and I had a really bad concussion. Like, a really bad concussion. I have a permanent brain injury from that trauma.”
The concussion was so serious that doctors kept her out of school for an extended period. Missing another full softball season was devastating.
“I just tried to recover, and it was a really tough time because I couldn’t be out here,” Stiff says from the first-base dugout at Laingsburg’s softball field. “I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do. It was kind of a fight between me and my mom—I wanted to be here, and she was like, ‘This isn’t something to mess with. You need to be home recovering, not at the softball field.’”
There were moments she considered walking away from the sport entirely. But with her parents’ encouragement, she stayed the course. In July of 2025, she was finally cleared to practice again.
Then, just as things were looking up, her ankle issues returned. Laingsburg coach Jeff Cheadle jokes, “Going into this year, everybody said, ‘Let’s wrap her in some bubble wrap, you know?’ We were being funny about it, but then she started having problems with her foot again.”
Through it all, Stiff’s love for the game never faded. Now, in her final season with the Wolfpack, she’s stepping onto the field with a new perspective—one shaped by gratitude, resilience, and the simple joy of playing the game she almost lost.