'I showed myself that I could do that': Brayden Nichols’ triumphant return to Hallsville baseball

It’s March 21, and Hallsville senior pitcher Brayden Nichols is making his first start of the 2024 season.

Almost immediately, Nichols’ ability is tested.

With a man on first base, a North Callaway player smashed a line drive right back at Nichols. Quickly, he reacted just in time to catch the ball before throwing to first for a double play.

“He was fired up,” Hallsville head coach Jordan Carmack said. “You could really see the adrenaline and everything.”

“It was a screamer right back (at me),” Nichols said. “It definitely loosened the nerves a little bit.”

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In the bigger picture, it was a victorious moment for Nichols.

Just weeks before, he didn’t know if he didn’t know if he would be able to participate in his senior year of high school baseball. Before that, a near-death accident left him unsure if he was even going to be active for the rest of his life.

A lifestyle altered

Sports have been Nichols’ life. He’s participated in basketball and football, but baseball is the sport he wanted to play in college.

In the winter of 2023, those plans changed.

Driving at approximately 60 mph, Nichols was in a significant car accident, hitting a stop-light pole. Had emergency personnel gotten him to the hospital two minutes later than they did, medical professionals likely would have pronounced him dead on arrival.

Nichols fractured his femur, and a shattered ball in his hip required partial replacement surgery. He fractured his pelvis while also having his spleen removed.

Miraculously, Nichols survived. Due to the severity of his injuries, however, it should have meant the end of sports. Even baseball.

“The doctors actually told me that I would never be able to play again,” Nichols said. “They said that, depending on what type of surgery … I probably wouldn’t be able to do any sort of active lifestyle ever again.”

Nichols credited his father, Adam Nichols, his mother, Beth Wright, his girlfriend, Sophie, and current Hickman head coach Justin Conyers for support and words of encouragement in the hospital.

They, as well as friends and teammates that he grew up with, visited him in the hospital. He remained involved with activities as much as he could within the Hallsville community, which helped ease the mental process.

“We would try to make him laugh,” senior Colton Nichols said. “Make him feel like he was not even missing, really just tried our best to make him feel like he was still out there.”

While he appreciated the moral support, that only went so far. Something was still missing.

“It just sucked seeing everybody else, seeing all my friends being able to play,” Nichols said. “Obviously, I love being there for them but not being able to actually be on the field and compete … to not have that competitive edge anymore, it really took a lot out of me.”

“Devastation” is the word that Wright used.

“We just kept telling him, and you can only tell them so much, hey, at least you’re alive. A kid can only hear that so much. People are like, ‘Yeah, I’m alive but I can’t do anything,’” Wright said. “We just kept encouraging him to keep pushing and trying to find someone else that he could wrap his mind around doing. But that’s hard.”

Resiliency and the good news

This wasn’t the first time Nichols had physical setbacks. And his return to the field in 2024 wasn’t the first time he’d defied a timetable to return, either.

According to his father, Nichols tore his labrum the year before his wreck. The doctors told him that he would be out a whole calendar year, but was back in five months. Prior to that, a knee injury left doctors thinking he’d be out for 10 months. He returned in less than six.

Conyers has known Brayden Nichols since he was little; he and Adam have been longtime friends. Carmack met Nichols when he was in the third grade. Each describes him having great tenacity.

“Anything he’s been doing athletic-wise, it just seems like the ball just never seems to bounce the right way for this young man but he’s been resilient throughout the whole deal,” Conyers said.

While the odds were not in his favor, Nichols was determined.

“You can ask anybody, man, the day that he had surgery, he woke up and the first thing he was thinking about is when can I get up and when can I start walking,” Adam Nichols said.

His body once again began healing quicker than expected. The doctors, though, still told him there was no shot that he was going to be able to do anything active.

Gradually, however, a window opened for Nichols to do what was thought impossible: Compete in his senior baseball season.

“I went in for a followup appointment about a week or two before the season and they actually told me I have to have another surgery because I have bone spurs,” Nichols said. “And that’s actually when they told me that they cleared me to pitch so kind of it was good and bad.”

He thought the news would surprise a lot of people, but it was the exact opposite.

“As crazy as it sounds, man, I wasn’t shocked at all,” Adam Nichols said. “Even though he gets hurt a lot, he’s always healed pretty quickly. So even though it was a surprise, it really wasn’t a surprise to me. He told me all along that he was going to be back, and I believed that.”

A Whole New Outlook

Physically, Nichols still isn’t 100%. He’s still doing physical therapy, and his body still aches and hurts when he wakes up. On the mound, Nichols can’t throw nearly as hard as he used to due to his cadaver hip causing limited drive in his leg.

“I just had to change the whole approach, the whole mindset of how much I’m trying to throw myself…It’s something that your mind and your body kind of work together when you’re out there, and it just flows,” Nichols said.

Nevertheless, he and his family haven't had more fun playing baseball.

“It's beautiful. We spent his entire life from the age of five up until the accident playing sports and competing, and that's what he always loved to do,” Adam Nichols said. “Now he's getting to do it again, it's a little different, it looks different than it used to, but man, it's everything to me to see him to get to compete again.”

In that first game vs. North Callaway, he pitched almost three full innings before being pulled as his body was still adjusting to the workload. It was emotional to those who believed deep down there was a chance that he would be back.

“I won’t lie, his first pitch that he threw this year, I cried,” Wright said. “I can’t even really put into words what it was to see him back out there and the pure joy and a smile on his face, to know that he did it, that he was able to do it.”

The screamer right back at him in the first inning against North Callaway proved that his body could react to anything.

“I showed myself that I could do that, that was probably the thing that I was most scared about was screaming right back at me and not being able to react fast enough but being able to react showed me that I could be out there and I could still do it,” Nichols said.

When Nichols made another appearance and didn’t give any runs, he made another decision.

“He got off the field and said, ‘Dad, maybe we should talk to the doctor about pushing (the second surgery) back because I feel pretty good and I’d like to finish the season,” Adam Nichols said.

While Nichols had to adjust his game, he also successfully adjusted off the field as the accident changed his entire outlook on life.

“I mean you just appreciate everything, just the little stuff, being able to just get up in the morning and just walk around being able to be out there and practice,” Nichols said. “Every athlete had days where they were like, I don’t want to go to practice, I don’t want to go to the game. I don’t want to do all that. Just being able to be out there changed the whole outlook of everything.”

After graduation, Nichols plans to attend State Tech, where he wants to pursue energy management.

While he won’t be able to play collegiately, he might have a future in coaching. His 14-year-old brother looks up to him, according to Wright, and he is always mentoring and coaching up the younger players on an inexperienced Hallsville team.

“Every time something happens that I feel like could be a good teaching moment I look at that and I ask them what they could have done better,” Nichols said. “I'm really just trying to get them engaged in the game.”

There’s still a lot of baseball to be played. Hallsville has four regular season games and the Southern Boone Classic before beginning district play. Nichols for now is cherishing the time in the Hallsville community that he’s grown up in.

“Everybody knows each other, all the boys. So excited to be back out there whenever I’m pitching out there, just the words of encouragement from everybody else, it just makes me feel real good,” Nichols said.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Hallsville’s Brayden Nichols returns to baseball after near-death accident