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Santa Fe baseball team makes subtle uniform change to honor shooting victims

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On the night of the horrific shooting at Sante Fe High School in Texas that took the lives of eight students and two teachers, the Sante Fe varsity baseball team was supposed to compete in a playoff game.

The Friday night game was postponed, for obvious reasons, and the team was given the option of whether or not they wanted to play it all.

The players all met on Friday, behind closed doors, without coaches or parents in attendance, to make the decision whether to play on.

Had they decided not to, given the circumstances, no one would have any problem with it, especially since their star pitcher, sophomore Rome Shubert, was among those who were shot.

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Miraculously, the bullet came through the back of his head and exited out just below his left ear, missing anything vital. Somehow, Shubert, a University of Houston commit, not only survived but was OK and was soon released from the hospital.

The team decided to play the make-up game, which was scheduled for Saturday.

“To show the community that we’re a lot stronger than what happened,” Shubert said, reported ESPN. “This kinda shows that we’re … gonna pick each other up and come out here, play, give the community some hope, some life, everything.”

As Santa Fe coach Ronnie Wulf told ESPN, the game allowed him, as well as a grieving community, to think about something else other than the horrific shooting, even for a few hours.

“Just got away from it,” Wulf said. “Didn’t think about it, like I am now.”

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The game was played before an overflowing, standing room only crowd at Deer Park High School against Kingswood, which had beaten Sante Fe 4-0 in the first game of the two-game series Thursday.

Kingswood won again on Saturday, 7-0, to end Sante Fe’s season, but the outcome didn’t matter. It was about the community coming together.

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Before the game, the players and coaches from both teams all stood, arm-in-arm, praying together. The Kingswood players all wore “Sante Fe Strong” T-shirts over their uniforms in a show of unity.

The Santa Fe players wore black sleeves under their uniforms that said “Santa Fe Strong” and “10” on their right arms.

Shubert was there in attendance, sitting in the dugout with his teammates with his head in a bandage.

“After everything that happened, it was definitely hard to come out here and be as strong as they were,” Shubert said, according to ESPN. The bullet missed his vertebrae by a fraction of an inch, which would have left him paralyzed, doctors said.

Several Santa Fe players wore eye black in the shape of a cross on their cheeks. Others put the numbers “14” and “33” on their cheeks for their injured teammates, Shubert, No. 33, and Trenton Beazley, No. 14. Beazley was hit in the back by a bullet that ricocheted off something else and injured his arm, reported ESPN.

To honor the victims of this senseless tragedy, two pieces of tape in the shape of the cross were stuck to the Sante Fe dugout with initials of the eight students and two teachers who were killed in the shooting. The tape also included the words, “Missed but never forgotten.”

After the game, the two teams met on the infield to hug one another, with the Kingswood players again wearing “Sante Fe Strong” T-shirts.

“That meant a lot,” Sante Fe’s Beazley said, according to ESPN. “They told us, ‘We’re playing for y’all now.'”

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Dave is a lifelong sports fan who has been writing for The Wildcard since 2017. He has been a writer for more than 20 years for a variety of publications.
Dave has been writing about sports for The Wildcard since 2017. He's been a reporter and editor for over 20 years, covering everything from sports to financial news. In addition to writing for The Wildcard, Dave has covered mutual funds for Pensions and Investments, meetings and conventions, money market funds, personal finance, associations, and he currently covers financial regulations and the energy sector for Macallan Communications. He has won awards for both news and sports reporting.
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