For years, the majority of the international student-athletes at Taft College have been baseball players from Canada. When the pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, Athletic Director Kanoe Bandy said, the school was able to get them swiftly back across the border.

Left behind in Taft, 10,000 miles from home, was a South African softball pitcher who as a teenager dreamed of playing in the States, and prior to the shutdown had been experiencing what she would later call the best months of her life.

Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.