A suburban community is rallying around the parents of a 14-year-old girl who died suddenly this week after suffering a brain aneurism.<\/p>\n
Madlin “Cookie” Cerny was already a trailblazer in her freshman year Schaumburg High School, leaving her mark on history as the first girl to make the school’s baseball team.<\/p>\n
She died Monday after suffering a brain aneurism on Friday and falling into a coma. <\/p>\n
“She made me to be a better person,” Bo Cerny, Cookie’s mom, said.<\/p>\n
Cookie’s family, teammates and coach remember her for her work ethic and commitment to the typically all-boys sport. <\/p>\n
“She led by example, she pushed the boys to be better,” Cookie’s dad, James Cerny, said. <\/p>\n
Cookie’s former coach Joseph Pascente said she was “driven” and “molded differently.”<\/p>\n
Pascente said Cookie was the team’s “go-to” if the team needed somebody to go out and throw strikes during a game.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t have to ask her if she was ready,” he said, adding that Cookie was always on the field at least an hour before the game getting ready. <\/p>\n
Pascente was among a group of community members who gathered Thursday to remember Cookie. <\/p>\n
“She was always a fighter during practice. She would always go 100% during every rep,” teammate and fellow freshman Gavin Rowley. “It’s tough coming in as a girl on an all-boys baseball team.”<\/p>\n
Cookie didn’t only play baseball in Schaumburg; she played on many other boys’ teams from California to Costa Rica. <\/p>\n
Katie Rowley, a mother of one of Cookie’s teammates, said her work ethic and demeanor stood out. <\/p>\n
“She loved baseball. She lived and breathed it and it showed on the field,” Rowley said. <\/p>\n
Her team honored her during their game against Bartlett on Thursday by wearing the number 2, her number, on their hats and shirts. <\/p>\n
A banner that said “Forever a Saxon” was hung up on the baseball field’s fence during the game. <\/p>\n
“We want to give her honor and show it to her in the game,” freshman pitcher Brewer Bartosik said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A suburban community is rallying around the parents of a 14-year-old girl who died suddenly this week after…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":797848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,14713],"class_list":{"0":"post-797847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-schaumburg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116577852980268954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}