Only twenty-three years of age but Kendall’s story is nothing short of compelling.
She was born with a unilateral cleft/lip & palate and went though twenty-three surgeries by the time she was seventeen. The sport of softball was shown to Kendall when she was just eight years old where she found strength, confidence, passion, and love. Softball was her shield from the daunting insecurities she faced as a young child and teenage years that stemmed from her birth defect. After battling back from many surgeries as a young child and young teen, which ultimately hindered her recruiting process, she received a softball scholarship at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
At the age of eighteen, during her first freshman semester at UTSA, she survived an acute ischemic stroke that left her physically capable but unable to speak, write, read for months. Following the stroke, she refused to go home to Houston in hopes of reverting back to normalcy in San Antonio. In the following months, Kendall remained determined to step back on the field that spring as she attended speech and cognitive therapy. Just months after her stroke, she started every game for the Roadrunner’s for the 2015 softball season and the following 2016 season. Receiving a second chance at life, she felt unfulfilled at UTSA so she decided to take her talents elsewhere. This led her to Oklahoma State University where she moved to an entire different state and city just to be told not once, but twice that they would not medically clear her to suit up and play as an Oklahoma State Cowgirl. After months of hopelessness, multiple doctors and coaches telling her ’no’, she persisted to find a ‘yes’.
Kendall found her forever home at the University of Georgia where she had the incredible opportunity to play for the university in the 2017 and 2018 softball season. But in Kendall’s final season as a collegiate softball player, she had the exceptional pleasure to experience playing at the Women’s College World Series in 2018 with the Georgia Bulldogs. Her dreams had become a reality.
Along side being a motivational speaker, Kendall received her undergraduate degree in Communications from the University of Georgia in May of 2019. Kendall currently is coaching part-time to give back to the softball community and working in the fitness industry as a group fitness instructor and studio manager of multiple locations in Houston, Tx.
