Soccer, Softball
Favorite athlete: LeSean McCoy
Favorite team: Philaelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: The soccer game vs. Norristown sophomore year in the pouring rain on the turf and we won the league title. Also in playoffs that same season when we beat Wissahickon, making it the first playoff win ever for PW girls’ soccer.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Dribbled down the court and scored in my own net in middle school basketball.
Music on iPod: Country, Rap and throwbacks
Future plans: Go to college, medical school and eventually become a pediatric neurologist
Words to live by: “With every experience comes good and bad. Either it makes you happy or you learn from it.”
One goal before turning 30: To make an impact on someone.
One thing people don’t know about me: I played soccer with the Taiwanese Women’s National Team in Taiwan this summer and survived the super typhoon while I was there.
By Mary Jane Souder
Ragan Ebersole is blessed with talent, plenty of talent, but it’s the grit, determination and mental toughness that set the Plymouth Whitemarsh senior apart.
Roll back the calendar five years.
Ebersole, then just 13, is on the pitching mound during a baseball game at Deep Run with her Plymouth travel team. Ebersole heard the familiar laughter of players in the opposing dugout, undoubtedly eager to get a swing at a girl that most surely would be overmatched.
“All the boys would heckle me,” Ebersole said matter-of-factly. “I kind of smirked.
“It was funny – they came up to bat, and I struck the first three out. They did not say anything after that.”
The two-sport standout lets her actions do the talking, and her toughness on the field – both then and now - speaks for itself. After PW’s mid-season overtime loss to Quakertown, Panther coach Mike Koch paid Ebersole an unsolicited compliment, singling her out for her strong, aggressive play.
PW coach Ryan Zehren is not surprised.
“She’s tough as nails,” he said of his senior captain. “It doesn’t matter who she’s going up against – she’s going into every tackle, every head ball, every 50-50 ball, and it’s going to be as hard as she can tackle, and she’s going to try to come out with the ball.
“The girls feed off the energy that she brings. I never met a player that is willing to just sacrifice so much for those around her and try to do whatever it takes to win. She does not like losing, but at the same time, she puts things in perspective. She’s not hot-headed, and to have those qualities in someone who is that driven is a good thing. She’s definitely a unique, unique player.”
Ebersole’s toughness might not be all that unusual. Until, that is, you hear her story.
It began with a lingering headache shortly after Ebersole earned a spot on the varsity soccer team the fall of her freshman year. The well-spoken senior tells the story.
“I really didn’t think anything of it,” Ebersole said. “It was the third day of school, and I was taking an English test, and the headache got to the point where I actually started crying.
“The day was over in five minutes, but I went up to the teacher and said, ‘I have to go to the nurse.’ She said, ‘You can’t just wait five minutes?’ I said, ‘No.’”
The nurse, according to Ebersole, suggested it might be nothing more than a ‘hormonal issue.’
“I came home, and it continued to get worse and worse,” Ebersole recalled. “I had ice on my head, and my neck was really stiff. I was just crying because the headache hurt so bad. I went to bed that night, and I woke up the next morning and I felt a little bit better.
“I could feel my eye twitching, and I went upstairs to my parents’ room. I was like, ‘Is something wrong with my eye?’ They said, ‘No, it looks fine,’ so I went back downstairs and went to bed. I woke up two hours later to my eye being the size of a baseball. It was huge, it was swollen shut. That’s when my parents said, ‘We have to take her to the hospital.’
“They did a spinal tap, they did a CAT scan, they ran all these tests. Bryn Mawr couldn’t treat me so they transported me in an ambulance immediately to CHOP. The stars really did align for me that day.”
The eventual diagnosis was Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis (CST).
“I was in a room at CHOP and there had to be at least 25 people in my room just looking at me – all these masks, gowns and gloves,” Ebersole said. “At first they thought it was meningitis because of the stiff neck. Since what I had was so rare, doctors don’t see it that often, so they were all coming in to look at me.
“They sent me down for an MRI of my sinuses, and I remember blacking out going into the MRI. I woke up to them completely stopping the MRI and pulling me out and putting me on the bed and rolling me away. They called my mom and said they were taking me to immediate surgery. I saw my parents and then I went into surgery.”
The surgery to clean Ebersole’s sinuses was successful.
“They put me on antibiotics and blood thinners because I actually had a blood clot in the vein that connects your heart to your brain,” she said. “That could have killed me in a matter of hours.”
After a week-and-a-half stay in the hospital, Ebersole was sent home, a stay that lasted only 10 days.
“I felt a little better, but I remember I was laying on the couch and I was texting with my left hand and there was like a tremor in my hand and I couldn’t text,” she said. “We called because we thought maybe it was the meds.
“My mom would call with questions all the time, and they would literally say, ‘We don’t know. This has never happened before.’ There were only eight cases (of CST) recorded at CHOP in the past 65 years and none of them in a 14-year-old girl. It’s usually someone older.”
Ebersole’s symptoms escalated.
“My gait was unsteady, and I was throwing up everything I ate,” she said. “I had this headache – I couldn’t move. I’m not exaggerating – whenever I would move, it felt like someone had just whacked me in the back of my head with a metal baseball bat. That’s exactly what it felt like, but, of course, I didn’t know so I didn’t think anything of it.”
Ebersole’s parents took her to the emergency room at CHOP.
“I remember it was three o’clock in the morning, and they came into my room,” she recalled. “The doctor said, ‘We’re going to have to do emergency brain surgery.’
“As soon as he said that, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is bad,’ and, of course, I had a little breakdown and started crying, which I hadn’t done the whole time.”
The problem was diagnosed as a massive abscess of the cerebellum.
“I was on IV antibiotics and what happened was when they were draining out of my head - instead of actually draining, it made a pocket of it and became infected,” Ebersole said. “They removed it, and I walked around for three months with a big chunk taken out of my skull while my brain had time to un-swell.
“They tried to get me to wear a helmet to school. I was a freshman in high school, and that’s like social suicide. Thank god I didn’t have to do that.”
Ebersole’s sense of humor is underscored when she explains what happened next.
“They screwed (the piece of skull) back in with titanium plates and screws. I went home and I was okay for six months and then - go ahead and laugh – I had a screw loose,” she said. “I went back about a year later with another screw loose.
“I actually got the green light to start doing things the middle of basketball season. I remember as soon as I was cleared I ran to my basketball coach and said, ‘Can I play?’ I ended up getting on the jayvee.”
Ebersole has not allowed that setback to slow her down or keep her away from sports, and the senior captain realizes she is one of the fortunate ones.
“It was a completely freak thing,” she said. “Cavernous sinus thrombosis has a 40 percent mortality rate, and the other 60 percent rarely recover without eye or brain damage.”
Ebersole has neither but acknowledges the experience has been life changing.
“I just look at everything differently,” she said. “I take everything in a positive way because of what happened to me.
“The fact that I survived it – I’m so lucky. I don’t take anything for granted anymore. It set me on my path to being a neurologist.”
There is not a trace of ‘why me’ when Ebersole shares her experience. There’s only the clear-eyed sense of purpose that comes after surviving a journey few ever take.
*****
Ragan Ebersole has been playing soccer since she was five years old, and she played organized baseball with the boys until she was 15, relying on a nasty fastball and occasional curve ball to mow down opposing batters.
So comfortable was she in the baseball world that she is seriously considering joining the baseball team for one final go-round next summer.
“My teammates became my really good friends,” said Ebersole, who also played basketball through ninth grade. “They treated me like one of the guys, and I’m still friends with a lot of them.”
Zehren caught his first glimpse of Ebersole at soccer camp when she was seven years old and knew she was one tough customer.
“She was the toughest girl in camp,” the PW coach said. “When she was eight or nine, one day she said she had stomach pains.
“I asked if she wanted to call her mom, and she said, ‘No, no, no.’ An hour later she came to me and now I knew something was wrong. She had to get her appendix out, but you didn’t know she was in that much pain. It was her 2 to another person’s 10 (on a pain scale). That’s how tough she was.”
Softball entered the picture when Ebersole was in middle school.
“I always thought baseball was easier,” she said. “I guess since I’ve played it since I was a lot younger.”
Ebersole – already a member of Whitpain United - joined the travel circuit for softball, initially playing for the Valley Forge Patriots while continuing with her baseball career. She is now a captain of her Odyssey travel softball team and also her Whitpain United soccer squad.
“What’s interesting about Ragan is she does not lead by being vocal,” Zehren said. “She is not someone that’s a cheerleader, she’s is not going to rah, rah the girls.
“She leads by example on the field through her actions. She does not get caught up in drama, she’s all business. Everything is strictly business with her.”
Ebersole also made an immediate impact in softball when she stepped into the varsity lineup as a sophomore. This past spring, Ebersole, the team’s leadoff batter and catcher, was a tri-captain.
“She was chosen by the team, and she did a fantastic job,” PW softball coach Dana Moyer said. “She’s smart, talented, coachable and hard working – traits that are extremely hard to find in one athlete.
“Ragan is also a true leader, helping her teammates strive to be better both on and off the field. She is extremely conscientious about her school work and understands the importance of being a student-athlete.”
For the past two years, Ebersole has been enrolled in a program called Allied Health through the tech school.
“My class is actually in Mercy Suburban Hospital,” she said. “We go on clinicals and we learn about the body.”
Ebersole’s sights are set high with a goal of attending the University of Pennsylvania and becoming a neurologist. She certainly has made believers out of her high school coaches.
“There’s something special about her,” Zehren said. “She doesn’t care what other people think. She’s her own person. She’s not catty, and she’s not going to put another girl down. What you see is what you get, and I think she enjoys that. She’s not going to try to win you over either, which I like about her.
“She has a 4.06 GPA, and she’s a very well-rounded student. She’s just special.”
Moyer added, “It’s easy to overlook what Ragan has had to go through – medically speaking – simply because Ragan does. She could have surgery on Monday, and on Tuesday ask what time she should be at practice. She’s super dedicated and always concerned about the team before herself.
“Ragan is one of the greatest human beings I have ever had the pleasure of coaching. She’s a phenomenal student-athlete, and I am truly proud of the young lady she’s become.”
