The Portland Cascade’s game will be logged in the record books as a 4-2 win over the Carolina Blaze, but the bigger victory came in the fifth inning.
Paige Sinicki, just eight months after receiving a diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer, entered the game at second base for Sis Bates. The home crowd at Hillsboro Ballpark roared for Sinicki when, later that inning, she had her first career at-bat for the Cascade. She grounded out, but it didn’t matter. Sinicki had already won.
On November 11 of last year, while working as a graduate assistant with the Utah Softball team, Sinicki received a diagnosis hard to wrap her brain around. She was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer despite being only 22 years old with no family history.
Sinicki embraced the mantra “one-for-one,” not a perfect day at the plate, but an outlook to remain focused on the positive.
“What a blessing it is to take each day, each hour, each second, and each moment one at a time,” Sinicki said in an Instagram post.
“I choose to attack each moment with gratitude, heart, growth, and grit, because I know that’s what it takes for me to beat this,” Sinicki said. “I get to write my story, and I choose to write it this way, because no struggle is big enough to take you away from what you want most. Cancer has not and will not take away from the things I love.”
She underwent surgery and eight rounds of chemotherapy, all the while continuing to work out and train for the upcoming Ahtletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) season. She joined team Zoom meetings through the fall and was in the dugout when the team played in Salt Lake City.
Sinicki began radiation in June and received care at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah. By July, she was cleared to practice, and on July 7th, she was reinstated from the league’s temporary inactive list and available to play in the game against the Carolina Blaze. The coaching staff intended to use Sinicki as a pinch runner in the game, but after starting second baseman Sis Bates took a fastball off the forearm, the team needed their Gold Glove winner to take the field.
She fielded a grounder hit her way for the second out of the fifth. Later in that inning, she battled an eight-pitch at-bat against Blaze pitcher Karlyn Pickens.
In her return, Sinicki wore a chest guard under her jersey to pad and protect her incisions from surgery. The 2024 Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year is known for diving after balls or barreling in the base path to steal. She played at the University of Oregon from 2022 to 2024, where she was named to the conference’s All-Defensive team every season and became the first player in program history to win an NFCA Rawlings Gold Glove award when she earned that at shortstop.
And despite what the box score says, Sinicki was “one-for-one” in her first day back on the softball field.