Medford High's Brenna Forbes A Smash Hit For Mustangs

MEDFORD, MA — Brenna Forbes said her mother, Rayanne, taught her everything she knew about ice hockey from the first time she ever put on skates. As a member of the Medford High School girls hockey team for five years, she said it was also her mother — also the MHS varsity coach — who taught her even more about fairness, respect and not playing favorites even when it comes to your own family.

"She was always this guiding figure in hockey and my life," Forbes said. "Then in high school it was the first time she was my coach so it was different. But she treated me just like everyone else. I have to say that I really enjoyed having her as a coach. Some kids I know would hate to have a parent coach them because they would think they’d be harder on them. But she never treated me any differently than anyone else and that allowed me to do great things."

Forbes did great things on the ice for the Mustangs and some even greater things on the softball diamond where she was a star player on a squad that went 17-3 and made it all the way to the Division 1 North quarterfinals. Forbes entered the tournament as one of the best hitters in the state with a .738 batting average.

"A lot of people say that hockey is my passion and softball is my skill," said Forbes, who plans to play softball at Colby College in Waterville, Maine next year. "But I don’t know. I love both games."

Her talent in both earned the school’s Helen V. Ellard Award as Medford High's top senior female athlete. While she said she was proud of the improvement of the hockey team, doubling its win total to eight victories this past winter, things really came together for the Mustangs on the softball field as they dominated the Northeastern Conference on their way to a 16-2 regular season record.

Forbes, a center fielder who played shortstop her senior season, was relentless this spring with 24 stolen bases, 40 runs scored, 27 RBI, seven triples, seven doubles and two home runs entering the tournament as the NEC Most Valuable Player.

"She’s incredible," Medford softball coach Jack Dempsey said. "She’s almost indefensible and she’s lightning fast."

The left-handed batter said she learned to become a slap hitter in middle school as an effective way to reach base and spark the attack. Yet, while many high school softball players who slap bunt do so exclusively when at the plate, Forbes developed the ability to switch back and forth between drag bunting and swinging for the fences.

"If they are playing me to bunt, I can hit it over their heads with power they don’t expect," she said. "Then if they are playing back, I can lay down a bunt and reach that way. It's all strategy. It's kind of a chess match of seeing what the defense is going to do. Whether I should hard slap it, soft slap it, or hit away, Dempsey was always good at knowing what to do. But he would also trust me to make decisions on it. He wanted me to use my head as a tool as well."

Forbes said the confidence that her coaches and teammates instilled in her allowed her to have the career she did.

"The stats are all pretty flattering but I am not in position to have those without the support of my family, my friends on the team and my coaches," she said. "Because of them, I was able to get better every year. I was able to learn how to place the ball and improve my hand-eye coordination. It’s gotten to the point where I could probably slap in my sleep and still make contact."

While Forbes tried to defer credit for her success in both sports, Dempsey said it was all a tribute to her athleticism, intelligence and work ethic.

"She's amazing," he said. "You don’t get to coach many of these kinds of kids."