Drahozal is ‘the life of the party’ at Xavier

CEDAR RAPIDS - Laughter is the soundtrack to Erin Drahozal's life.

She serves as the ace pitcher and the dangerous slugger for the Cedar Rapids Xavier softball team. She's also the resident goofball.

'She's the life of the party, all the time,” said Saints Coach Nikki Gahring. 'Sometimes you have to rein her in a little, but she usually keeps that controlled craziness under control.”

Drahozal is usually loud and exhuberant, sometimes a little crass.

During an interview last week at Bob Erusha Field, she proudly rattled off some of the senior awards bestowed upon her.

'I was voted most likely to be retweeted, class clown and most likely to be on Saturday Night Live,” she said.

'For the most part, I don't take anything too seriously. It's a blessing and a curse.”

The laughter stopped on a January night, after Drahozal came home from basketball practice. She showered, got dressed and entered a family room full of anguish.

'My brothers were crying and I didn't know what was going on,” she said.

Her mother, Kelly, was in the process of telling her children that she had been diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.

'It was the hardest night of my life,” Drahozal said.

Kelly, 47, is in the midst of a 12-week series of chemotherapy treatments. She's determined to be present for virtually all of Erin's senior softball season.

She is scheduled for surgery in August, the week that Erin moves in at Upper Iowa University, where she will continue her softball career.

Kelly's message last winter to her husband, Joe, and their four children (Erin is the second-oldest) was this: Keep living life.

'It was devastating for everybody,” Kelly said. 'But I told them, ‘You're going to go back to school tomorrow, because I'm going back to work.'

'Sure, they're scared. And when the house is quiet and I'm alone in my thoughts, I get scared too. But it doesn't do any good to sit at home and be scared. The thing I like about my doctors, they're not talking about managing the cancer. They're talking about curing it.”

So the Drahozals continue to live, to love and to laugh. A post in Erin's Twitter timeline from May 10 reads: 'Apparently putting your mom's wig on a cantaloupe is FROWNED UPON in this ESTABLISHMENT.”

Watching Erin's final softball season at Xavier will provide some welcome distraction. Behind the silliness and the noise is one of the state's best players.

As a junior, Drahozal batted .492 with 30 extra-base hits (including 11 home runs) and 53 RBIs. She was 19-4 as a pitcher with a 1.97 ERA.

'We rely on her a lot,” Gahring said. 'She can beat you at the plate, and she can beat you in the circle. One pitch, she can hit it over the fence. And one pitch, she can get a ground ball or fly ball to get you out of an inning.

'She's not going to get you 10 or 12 strikeouts a game, but she's going to get you some routine plays for her fielders.”

Drahozal wasn't a superstar from the start. She tried out for the Saints' youth team as a third-grader, and was cut. She tried out again as a fourth-grader, and stuck. She has been on the varsity since her eighth-grade year, collecting 25 home runs and 152 RBIs in her career while compiling a 65-23 pitching record.

A state-tournament trip, however, remains elusive. Last year, Xavier went 33-7, won a Mississippi Valley Conference divisional title and swept Cedar Rapids Jefferson for the first time. But the Saints were tripped up by Clear Creek Amana in the Class 4A regional semifinals.

'We're definitely hungry,” Drahozal said. 'We were so much better last year than how we ended up. We just haven't gotten that one game that we needed.”

Seven starters return. Drahozal (who will play right field when she's not pitching) and center fielder Morgan Breitbach are the catalysts.

'Everybody rallies behind them,” said Gahring, who is due with her first child in early July, when the postseason begins. 'They're upbeat and energetic.

'Erin can push your buttons a little bit, but if I could have five of her, I'd take them.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8857; jeff.linder@thegazette.com