- April 16, 2024
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Angelina Del Rosso makes a diving catch in Mainland's win over Matanzas. Photos by Jeff Dawsey
Del Rosso is required to wear a mouth piece, when she plays in every game.
After their Matanzas win, the Lady Bucs celebrated Del Rosso's 17th birthday with cupcakes, and they smashed one in her face.
Pull quote: “As a parent, your kids cry and whatnot, but there are certain screams where you just know something really bad happened.”
SHERRY DEL ROSSO, on her daughter, Angelina’s, screaming from a shark bite
She has fallen 30 feet and shattered her lower back. She was been bitten by a shark. She’s broken her elbow and ankle and been hit in the face by a softball, twice. Nevertheless, Angelina Del Rosso has persevered through it all and hopes to play, and excel, on a college softball team next season.
Some of Del Rosso’s peers actually suggested that she kill herself, saying she had the worst luck. And, while those disrespectful remarks hurt, they have driven her to where she is now, diving for balls and ready to play at the next level, but her journey is anything short of numerous miracles.
At age 7, she and her family went on a ski trip in Colorado, and, when Del Rosso was ready to get on the ski chair, it hit her in the small of her back, with her mom’s friend’s daughter holding onto her, as the ski lift graduated higher in the air without her. Not able to hold any longer, she passed Del Rosso to her mother, Sherry, whose hand slipped, and she had to watch her daughter plummet to the ground.
“I almost jumped out of the chair after her, but my son put his hand on my leg,” an emotional Sherry Del Rosso said. “I knew I couldn’t jump, because my son and my neighbor’s daughter would’ve fallen out, so I got all the way back in the chair. And, when I turned around, she was laying in the snow, not moving.”
Due to a snow storm, the emergency responders couldn’t air lift Del Rosso; instead, they pulled her on a snow mobile to a small clinic until eventually getting her to a hospital.
“That’s where they talked about putting steel rods and plates in my back, the possibly of me never being able to walk again, or, if I did, never being able to live a normal life,” Del Rosso said. “I kept thinking, ‘What am I going to tell my friends, when I can’t go outside and play?’ The doctors compared her back to the likes of throwing a hard-boiled egg on the ground and deemed it a miracle that she was able to fully recover.
In a six-year span, Del Rosso fell off a zip line and broke her elbow and fell into hole on a baseball field, where she broke her ankle, but, neither was more surprising than the shark bit she suffered, while at the beach with family.
When she was about to pop up on her surf board, the shark knocked her off and grabbed onto her leg, attempting to pull her deeper, but, when she pulled the other way, he released and went back into the water.
“As we’re watching, a little bit of time went by but nothing that made you panic,” Sherry Del Rosso said. “But, when she came up, she was just screaming this blood-curdling scream, so we knew something was wrong. As a parent, your kids cry and whatnot, but there are certain screams where you just know something really bad happened.”
The bite eventually got infected, so early medical talks assumed amputation. But, the doctors waited to see if the infection would go away, which it quickly did. “It was like a miracle,” Del Rosso said.
After a horrific shark bite, Del Rosso still couldn’t escape misfortune. A softball ricocheted off of a sprinkler and almost took her eye.
“The doctor said, if she wouldn’t have been wearing her Oakleys, it would’ve shattered her eye socket,” Sherry said. “Thank God for Oakleys.”
Then, last year, a line drive claimed nearly all of her teeth. Dentists have, since, bonded those teeth with others and given her braces, but she can no longer eat any hard foods, and she has to wear a mouth piece at all games.
“This was a very rough period in my life,” she said. “But my friends Shayna Bowman and Scotty Greene were always there, and they made sure I'd eat and just kept me going. They came to the hospital and to my house and helped me through it.”
About her injury-plagued journey that began 10 years ago, Del Rosso said, “I don’t know a lot of people who have experienced the same things as me, but I know there are a lot tougher out there, because I haven’t experienced the worst.”
And, for those who thought it best that she kill herself, she also said, “It makes me feel better to know where I’m at now, because I’m doing well, and it’s proving them wrong. I like to prove people wrong.”
