By Katie MacBride, Editor-in-Chief
It’s the last day of practice before the first game, and anticipation and excitement fills the air. It’s business as usual for 120 minutes and once again you’re matched up with the same teammate for the final scrimmage. You find yourself getting bodied for every ground ball, getting pushed to improve, getting the same stick buried into your arm by the same girl everyday, and yet you enjoy it.
But you don’t realize just how much you enjoy it until that teammate is no longer there.
Business as usual for the women’s lacrosse team came to a sudden and jarring halt less than 90 minutes after that practice on Jan. 26. That’s when the Jeep Wrangler that Tatum Love was driving in on the bypass was involved in an accident and rolled six times. The junior was ejected from the backseat and spent days at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, fighting for her life in critical condition.
The Nighthawks’ scheduled season-opener for Wednesday was postponed, but amid the shock of the horrible accident, Love’s friends and teammates rallied and have been doing everything possible to help and show support for Tatum and the Love family, including junior Fiona McKenna.
With some encouragement from Love, McKenna joined the lacrosse team after never playing before only days before the accident, but was persistent on continuing to play in honor of Love.
“I had Tatum’s lacrosse bag with her cleats in them,” McKenna said. “And although I had to double up on socks to wear them, it has brought me comfort to know that part of her is on the field with me.”
McKenna has been a driving force in helping the Love family. She started a GoFundMe page the day after the accident and designed T-shirts and butterfly car decal stickers to create awareness and raise money for Love’s medical bills. All proceeds from the merchandise go directly to the “Help Support the Love Family” GoFundMe page.
“We contacted Joe Ausband of ‘Identify Yourself’ in Kitty Hawk, and they offered to donate all set-up fees involved,” McKenna explained. “They created the website tatumlove.orderpromos.com and helped design the products.”
To make the products more meaningful, they decided to incorporate aspects that were personal to Love.
“We know Tatum loves the color blue and almost everything she owns has a butterfly on it. She is well known for rocking the butterfly hair clips, so we put a blue butterfly in the corner with ‘TLOVESTRONG’ written below,” McKenna explained. “The T-shirts are also ‘comfort colors,’ which Tatum used to rave about being the ‘best tee brand company.’ ”
The T-shirts also incorporated Love’s passion for music as well as her enjoyment for making playlists for Nighthawk News.
“Joey Krieg created a collaborative playlist on Spotify called ‘Tatums Toons’ where we could all put her favorite songs that reminded us of her,” McKenna said. “We included the code to the playlist on the back of the T-shirt that people could scan and it would direct them to the playlist.”
Not only has McKenna designed products to raise awareness for Love as her recovery progresses – Love was in ICU for nearly a full week and is currently at a rehabilitation center in Atlanta – but so has the women’s lacrosse team.
“The team expressed interest in wanting sweatshirts to show support for Tatum,” assistant coach Sandy Eanes said. “So, I worked with the representative from the school store (BSN), and I gave him (Bobby Pennington) a concept of the hashtag for the back and he kind of came up with the design.”
The #TLoveStrong sweatshirts can be purchased by contacting the coaches of the women’s lacrosse team, Steve Morris and Sandy Eanes, by messaging Ellie Gardill at (814) 915-0941, or by adding and direct messaging the FFHS Girls Lacrosse Instagram, ffhsglax.
In addition to showing support for Love through sweatshirts, the team has dedicated its season, chants, goals and wins to Love while also wearing her favorite color, blue, through their cleat laces. Freshman Carly Gardill individually ordered and cut blue shoelaces for everyone on the team.
“I wanted to remind everybody that this season is not just for us or for winning, but that we’re doing it for Tatum,” Gardill said. “We are just here to play for her.”
Yet, the support for Love runs even further. Gardill’s older brother, men’s lacrosse player Nick Gardill, designed “TL6” stickers – Love wears No. 6 on the lacrosse field – for both the men’s and women’s teams to put on their helmets and sticks to further dedicate the season to Love.
“My brother made them and came up with the design the day after the accident,” Gardill said. “He wanted to find a way to do something for her.”
So far, the women’s lacrosse team has fought hard and dominated the field, being the only undefeated team in their conference so far this season, with a 4-0 record. And they plan to continue this streak with only five games left, two being home, dedicating it all to Love.
“We want to remind everyone to keep her in mind every time we step on the field because she has such a big impact on the community and has always been one of the happiest and most joyful people,” Gardill said. “When people see the stickers and colors, I hope they remember the happy Tatum and how much joy she brought.”
Senior Katie MacBride can be reached at 21macbrideka62@daretolearn.org.
