During softball practice in May of 2009, 16-year-old Rebecca Sacerio took a hard line drive to the index finger on her throwing hand. Coach Sari Schoenfeld had been hitting dingers to the girls, and Sacerio, who was playing third, told Coach "it looked swollen and had a funny color." "She told me her hand always looked like that when she played," Rebecca tells the Post. She also says Coach Schoenfeld told her "to take it like a man," and kept swatting line drives to her, hitting the same finger again!
"She's a tough coach, and I just followed her orders," says Rebecca. She had to undergo three hand operations, with vertical and horizontal rods implanted in the finger and kept there for five weeks. Then she contracted a postsurgery infection, developed arthritis in that finger, and is learning how to write using her middle finger because the index finger is "useless."
Rebecca is suing for $5 million, and the Sacerios' lawyer says, "You don't force a girl to continue practicing if she's injured. This is not the New York Yankees here." The Department of Education had no comment on the lawsuit, but Schoenfeld is still coaching JV softball. "I'd play for her again," says Rebecca. "I just wouldn't listen to her if she told me to practice through an injury." Rebecca, with that attitude you'll never be a man.
