Valerie Cagle healthy, dominating for Clemson after painful 2022 season

When you are one of the top players in your sport – as is the case with Clemson star Valerie Cagle – you can start to be viewed by the outside world as superhuman or invincible.

For those not inside the Clemson softball program, the 2022 season appeared to be another pleasant chapter in Cagle’s incredible rise to stardom.

Cagle was named an All-American and All-ACC selection for the second consecutive year, following up her standout freshman season in which she was named the ACC Player of the Year.

Sure, her numbers dipped a little bit, but Cagle was still the best player on a Clemson team that won 42 games.

Ireality, the 2022 chapter of the story was more like living through a nightmare at times for Cagle.

She dealt with chronic proximal biceps tendinitis throughout the season. In short, a tendon in her pitching arm was inflamed, leading to constant pain. She didn’t just feel discomfort when pitching or hitting but when going through everyday life.

Cagle walked around campus with her bookbag over only her left shoulder. Simple tasks like trying to cook, which Cagle loves to do, became difficult and had to be performed with one hand. Cagle spent countless nights tossing and turning for hours, searching for a way to get comfortable and fall asleep through the pain.

“You never know how pain will change you until you’re dealing with it all the time,” Cagle says now. “I think that’s what makes it tougher. If it was just a softball thing of I only felt it when I’m playing, well then at least I know when I leave I can have relief. But it’s just a constant thing. And when you feel it all the time, you think about it all the time. So that’s what makes it even more difficult.”

Through it all, Cagle never made excuses, never missed a game and led Clemson to a super regional in only the Tigers’ second full season as a program.

Now, in Year 3, she’s a big reason Clemson is ranked in the top five at the halfway point of the 2023 season. Cagle is healthy, putting up the best numbers of her remarkable career and having a lot of fun while doing it.

“If you watch a game, we just look like we’re enjoying ourselves. The way we look is exactly how we feel. It’s not just me, but I definitely feel that as well,” she said. “What we’re doing is something special, and we’re just really enjoying the process that we’re on.”

‘Feeling a little different’

While the pain really started to bother Valerie Cagle in 2022, it was at the end of the 2021 season when she knew something wasn’t quite right.

“In 2021 at the ACC Tournament, I kind of just started feeling a little different,” Cagle recently told ClemsonSports. “I didn’t have pain that weekend. I just started getting tired easier, and things just didn’t quite feel the same.”

Cagle pitched all three games for Clemson in the 2021 tournament, tossing two shutouts, before allowing one run in the ACC championship game – a loss to Duke.

Less than a week later, she was back on the mound in the Tuscaloosa Regional as Clemson faced No. 3 seed Troy.

Cagle pitched four innings against the Trojans before removing herself from the game. She continued to pitch throughout that weekend but wasn’t 100 percent.

“It was the regional at Alabama where I started feeling pain for the first time,” Cagle said. “I remember Day 1, I started and threw four innings. We were winning by eight runs and I just said, ‘I’m not throwing the rest of the game.’ I had a pain going from my ear down to my elbow.”

Ideally, Cagle would have been shut down after the Tigers lost to Alabama in the championship game of the regional, but she had tryouts for the Team USA Junior National Team a few weeks later.

After that, she was able to rest for a couple of months before she started to prepare for Team USA events in November and December.

Thankfully, she felt good during those, but when she returned for preseason workouts ahead of the 2022 season, the pain really started to kick in.

Constant pain

From the time the pain started in January 2022 until Valerie Cagle had surgery in July, she was regularly in pain.

Clemson’s medical staff tried to find ways to limit it but nothing really worked. Cagle couldn’t injure herself further by playing, and she was determined to play through the discomfort.

“Definitely a difficult situation to manage as a coach,” Clemson coach John Rittman said. “It took a true cohesiveness and communication on a daily basis to modify, adjust and work with getting her through the season.”

Cagle’s ERA jumped from 1.16 as a freshman to 1.92 as a sophomore. Her average at the plate dipped from .404 to .308. She had fewer home runs and RBIs.

It was still an incredible season, but not as good as her freshman year, when she was pain-free.

Cagle’s velocity dipped slightly, and she couldn’t throw arguably her top off-speed pitch because of the injury.

“People are questioning maybe her velocity or her effectiveness in the circle. The thing about Valerie is it affected everything,” Rittman said. “Not just her pitching but her hitting, and managing the injury was difficult on a day-to-day basis. Maybe she didn’t get the same amount of practice or prep time that she normally would because of the injury.”

There were weeks when Cagle wouldn’t practice at all and would only play in games, which impacted her timing and kept her from working on pitches in the bullpen.

Certain movements or pitches made the pain worse, but it never went away.

“The biggest thing is it was just constant. It was just there all the time,” Cagle said. “It didn’t matter if I was not moving, it didn’t matter if I was trying to sleep, if I was out there in a game. It was just there all the time.

“I would walk to class with my backpack over my left shoulder because I couldn’t put it on my right. It would take me hours to fall asleep, because I couldn’t ever get comfortable, because I couldn’t fall asleep on my shoulder. Normal daily activities, I would have to switch and do it with my left hand to avoid adding that extra pain.”

No excuses

It would have been easy for Valerie Cagle to come out at some point last season and explain why her numbers were dipping, to describe the type of pain she was experiencing on a daily basis. But Cagle never did.

She asked her teammates and the coaching staff to not say anything, either. The public never knew about the injury until she revealed it on a video through Clemson Plus earlier this month.

“It’s been my decision the whole way to not say anything until now about it,” Cagle said. “I didn’t want that to be used as an excuse.”

There were times when Rittman wanted to say something, to explain what his star was going through, but he respected Cagle’s request to remain quiet throughout.

“We always respect the wishes of the student-athlete in that situation. It was difficult because you were asked questions like that, and you just had to take the higher road and say she continues to work hard and she’s doing the best she can,” Rittman said. “The nice thing about it was she was still having success. It wasn’t like we were going on long losing streaks or her numbers dipped so bad that it was a situation where everybody knew exactly what was happening. But I think it’s just a testament to Valerie and her mental toughness, her ability to mature and grow through this whole thing.”

No, great players aren’t superhuman or invincible, but they also don’t like to make excuses.

“I think it says a lot about her character, her mindset and what kind of person and competitor she is,” Rittman said. “That’s what makes her so special. The greats are built a little different, and Valerie certainly is that.”

The road back

Clemson’s 2022 season ended May 27 with a super regional loss to Oklahoma State. While it was a disappointing way for the season to end, it also marked an opportunity for Valerie Cagle to get healthy.

The plan was for her to take six weeks off and see how she felt. But three to four weeks in, Cagle knew she wanted surgery. Her life still was being impacted daily by the pain.

The surgery didn’t come without risks, though. Cagle was told she should be able to hit and throw overhand without pain once the rehab process was completed, but there was almost no information available on how it would impact an underhand pitcher.

“There’s nothing out there for someone who plays at as high of a level as I do. It’s definitely a risk of I may come back and I may not be able to throw more than 60 miles an hour. Or I may not be able to throw at all. Or I may come back and be completely fine,” Cagle said. “But once you get to the point of your quality of life is affected more than just sport, it wasn’t worth it [to not have surgery].”

Cagle had biceps tenodesis surgery on July 19 as doctors were able to repair and reattach damaged biceps tendons.

Everything went as planned. It was a slow process back to full-go, but by January, she was cleared and pitching and hitting with no pain.

“I had prepared myself to be a little bit more on the realistic side of not expecting immediate relief,” Cagle said. “But the second I had surgery, I could sleep through the night and was not in pain and I did get that immediate relief.”

Six weeks after surgery, Cagle was able to start running. Three months in, she was cleared to hit and throw overhanded. Four and a half months in, she was throwing underhanded and knew that she would get back to being her normal self.

“The biggest thing was when she started to pitch and she was able to start mixing her pitches and really working on her mechanics and she remained pain-free. That was a huge hurdle,” Rittman said. “By the end of January, when we started the season, it was like, ‘OK, everything’s gone to plan. Now we’ve got to get into real games against other teams and let’s see how it goes.’ “

It’s safe to say things have gone well.

Cagle ranks in the top 15 nationally in batting average, doubles, hits, slugging percentage and total bases. She is also No. 6 nationally in ERA and No. 5 nationally in wins. She currently leads the ACC in batting average, doubles, slugging percentage, ERA and shutouts.

“I like to use the phrase generational talent,” Rittman said of Cagle. “I mean you just don’t see the Valerie Cagles come along every year. This is a special player, and as a coach, you really enjoy coaching her and getting to watch her do her thing up close, up front.”

Clemson made a regional in its first full season as a program and a super regional last year. The goal for this team is to make it to the Women’s College World Series.

With Cagle healthy and playing the way she is, as well as a talented group of players around her, reaching Oklahoma City certainly is a possibility. That would be an incredible accomplishment for Cagle and the Tigers.

“That’s always a goal for every team. Obviously, we’ve set those goals and that would mean everything to us,” Cagle said. “But I think the big thing that we’re focusing on this year as a team is there’s a lot of little steps in the process to get there.”

There were also a lot of steps in the process for Cagle to get back to the point of being pain-free. She’s enjoying every minute of it.

“Softball is now fun for me and I can enjoy that more, but honestly just life in general – all the little things,” Cagle said. “I’m so much more grateful for all the little things I can do and I’m not in pain.”