The CT Softball Blog

On a sun-splashed summer afternoon, Kelsey Blom digs her cleats into the batter’s box and settles into her stance.

Around her, the game she has played for most of her life unfolds the way it always has. Teammates chatter in the dugout. A coach flashes signs from the third-base box. Parents line the fences down each foul line.

For the next hour and a half, she’s exactly what she’s always been and where she has always enjoyed being.

A softball player. A 17-year-old playing a game she has always loved.

Out here, on softball fields from New Milford to Brewster, N.Y., and beyond, there are no doctor’s appointments. No radiation treatments. No conversations about scans or test results.

There is only the next pitch when she’s standing at the plate. The next fly ball when she’s patrolling things out in left field.

It wasn’t always that way. For a while, just a couple of months ago, the sport was taken away from her.

But Kelsey Blom is back. Fighting for her team just as fiercely as she has been fighting to get her life back on track.

The Headaches

For nearly two weeks in late May as the high school softball season was winding down, New Milford High School’s Kelsey Blom lived with a headache that simply refused to leave.

It followed her to school.

It followed her to softball practice.

It followed her home each afternoon, where the normally energetic junior would collapse onto the couch and sleep for hours before waking up just in time for dinner.

The pain was a constant; morning, noon and night. It lingered through classes. It lingered through practices. It lingered through nights when sleep offered little relief.

Nobody could explain why.

Not the pediatrician.

Not urgent care.

Not even three trips to the emergency room.

“I just had a headache. It never stopped for a week and a half,” Kelsey said. “And before every game I was just taking a bunch of Advil. I would literally go to school, go to practice, come home and sleep. I didn’t want to do anything.”

Softball had always been the constant in her life.

A multi-sport athlete growing up, Blom eventually found herself drawn almost exclusively to softball, spending countless hours with the Green Wave program in the spring, and the Brewster Rockets travel organization, as well.

By the spring of 2026, she had become a fixture in the New Milford outfield, helping her team through a strong regular season in which the Green Wave posted a 19-1 regular season and a No. 2 seed for the CIAC Class L state tournament.

In doing so, Kelsey also established herself as one of the program’s emerging leaders.

Then, almost overnight, the headaches arrived.

At first, nobody thought much of them. Everybody gets headaches from time to time. But these headaches never stopped.

“They just kept saying, ‘Take Advil. It’ll go away,’” her mother, Ana Sofia Blom, remembered.

Instead, they grew worse.

After nearly two weeks of watching her daughter struggle through everyday life, Ana Sofia knew something wasn’t right.

The family searched for answers wherever they could, but each time, they were told it was probably nothing serious. Because Kelsey was only 17, doctors were hesitant to expose her to the radiation of a CT scan.

During the family’s third trip to the emergency room, Ana Sofia refused to leave without another answer.

“I looked at the doctor and said, ‘Can we please do a CT scan?’” she recalled.

The physician tried to reassure her.

The scan wasn’t necessary, he said.

Thanks to the advice of a friend who was in the medical field, this time Ana Sofia didn’t back down.

Finally, the doctor agreed.

Less than an hour later, he returned.

This time, his expression had changed.

“We actually did find something,” he told them.

A mass had been discovered on Kelsey’s brain.

The family drove home that night so Kelsey could sleep in her own bed.

The next morning, the family made the trip to the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford for an MRI.

The news came so fast it barely had time to settle.

There would be surgery.

Immediately.

The next day Kelsey underwent brain surgery.

The News No Family Wants to Hear

What had first been described as a cyst quickly became something much more serious.

Doctors determined Kelsey had a Grade 4 astrocytoma, an aggressive brain tumor.

For a 17-year-old, they were enormous words.

Brain tumor.

Brain surgery.

Radiation.

Yet none of them truly registered at first.

“Honestly, it all kind of just went over my head,” Kelsey said. “It didn’t really sink in until they were like, ‘You’re not going to be able to play softball.’”

That was the moment she broke.

Not because of the diagnosis itself.

Not because of the surgery that awaited her.

Not because doctors were preparing to operate on her brain.

It was because the magical season she’d worked so hard for was suddenly over.

The diagnosis came just as the Class L state tournament was about to begin, but she would never take the field during the New Milford’s postseason run to the Class L state championship game.

Surgeons removed the tumor, and the operation went as well as anyone could have hoped.

“They got it all,” Kelsey said. “The radiation is just kind of to clean everything up.”

Her treatment plan included daily radiation along with chemotherapy delivered through a pill rather than intravenous infusions.

But before there was recovery… Before there was radiation… Before there was any thought of returning to the softball field… The news had to find its way to the people waiting back in New Milford.

One of the first calls went to one of Kelsey’s best friend, New Milford teammate Cienna McNamara.

The Phone Call

It was a day of celebration for McNamara, some of her Green Wave teammates and other players from opposing schools who were waiting to have their photos taken as members of the 2026 All-SWC team.

McNamara stood surrounded by players, parents and coaches from across the league. It was supposed to be a celebration.

Then her phone rang.

It was Kelsey.

“I already knew she was having headaches and stuff,” McNamara said. “But we didn’t think it was anything that serious as to what it is now.”

She slipped the phone from her back pocket and answered.

Kelsey wasted little time: “I just wanted to tell you I have a brain tumor.”

The words hit McNamara like a fastball to the ribcage.

“And then I literally broke down crying,” said McNamara, one of the toughest, hard-nosed players in the entire state of Connecticut.

In that moment, however, she simply couldn’t hold back the tears.

New Milford head coach Robert Farmer walked over and wrapped her in a hug.

“I was shocked,” McNamara said. “How would you know that something just as little as getting headaches would lead to something as big as what’s going on now?”

The news, however, not only brought together the New Milford team to support Kelsey (the squad wore special ribbons in their hair as a tribute to Kelsey, all the way up to the state title game), but the entire community has come together, as well.

In fact, at the end of August, the 17^th annual DPZ Charity Golf Tournament will give its proceeds to Kelsey and her family.

“It is heartbreaking, but I am determined to raise as much money as we can for her and to let her know she is loved and adored by many,” said Dawn Blom, who is also Kelsey’s aunt, and has organized multiple golf tournaments over the years, only to have this one hit far too close to home.

Others wishing to support Kelsey or make a donation can do so using the QR code below:

The Strongest Person in the Room

A brain tumor changes more than one life.

It changes an entire family, be it one’s intermediate family or a softball family.

For Ana Sofia and Kelsey’s dad, Justin, the fear arrived all at once.

There were doctors to meet.

Forms to sign.

Questions that didn’t have easy answers.

One moment she was a mother trying to convince an emergency room physician to order a CT scan. The next, she was preparing to hand her daughter over to a team of neurosurgeons.

It was overwhelming.

Then something unexpected happened.

The person everyone expected to comfort became the one doing the comforting.

“She was stronger than me and her father,” Ana Sofia said.

As her parents struggled to absorb the diagnosis, Kelsey remained remarkably calm.

She wasn’t pretending nothing was wrong. She understood the seriousness of what lay ahead. But she also understood something else.

Kelsey knew she had to be strong. While others broke down, she steadied them.

While they worried about every possibility, she focused on what came next.

There would be surgery. There would be recovery.

And, somehow, some day, there would be softball again.

Kelsey would make sure of that.

Looking back, Ana Sofia still marvels at the role reversal.

“We find this out and we immediately get upset. And she’s like, ‘I need you guys to not get upset,’” Ana Sofia recalled. “I know she’s my kid, but she’s been amazing. She keeps me focused and composed.”

Parents spend their lives believing they’ll be the ones carrying their children through life’s hardest moments.

Inside those hospital walls, it was Kelsey carrying them.

The surgery was successful.

Doctors were able to remove the tumor, giving the family its first genuine reason for hope.

Recovery would still require radiation and chemotherapy, but the first hurdle had been cleared.

The fight wasn’t over.

In many ways, it was only beginning.

But from that moment on, one thing became clear.

Kelsey wasn’t going to let a diagnosis define who she was. She was determined to be the same daughter. The same teammate. The same softball player.

She just had another opponent now; one she was determined to beat.

Finding Normal Again

The routine quickly became familiar.

Each weekday morning, Kelsey and her mother made the drive to Connecticut Children’s for radiation treatments.

The appointments themselves didn’t take long.

Life around them did.

After radiation came chemotherapy, delivered through a daily pill rather than an IV. The treatments left Kelsey tired.

Still, softball remained on her mind.

It was the first question she asked: When can I play again?

“I know the only question you’re going to ask me is when you can play softball,” one of her doctors told her.

The answer wasn’t immediate. She would have to heal. Her body would decide the timetable.

But her doctors also understood something important.

Softball wasn’t just a sport. It was part of who she was.

So, they built her recovery around getting back safely.

There would be no rushing. No shortcuts. One milestone at a time.

As summer arrived, those milestones slowly began to add up. The headaches were gone. Her strength gradually returned.

“She’s doing things that she wanted to get back to do,” Ana Sofia said. “She went to go see (New Jersey Devils star player) Jack Hughes. She went to a Yankees game … she’s just going about life and just getting up at 5:30 in the morning, getting radiation, coming home, sleeping it off. She’s just trying to find some normalcy in all of this.”

Then came the day she’d been waiting for.

Doctors cleared her to play.

Not because the journey was over.

It wasn’t.

Cancer had changed many things.

But it hadn’t changed who Kelsey was.

She grabbed her glove, picked up a bat and walked back onto a softball field.

Not as a patient, however.

As a player.

More Than A Softball Player

By the time Kelsey returned to the softball field, those closest to her weren’t measuring success in batting averages or wins and losses.

Just seeing her back in uniform was enough.

For New Milford head coach Robert Farmer, the priority had never changed.

“My primary focus is standing strong with Kelsey, making sure she and her family has the space, the love and the support she needs during this time,” he said.

Farmer has known Kelsey since she was a kid, long before she became a varsity starter, long before New Milford made its run to the Class L championship game.

What he’s seen over those years hasn’t surprised Farmer when it came to her recovery.

“I’ve known Kelsey since she was 8 years old,” he said. “She has demonstrated to me time and time again what it means to be a genuine young woman of integrity, tender-hearted, deep quiet strength, unwavering resilience and a competitive warrior on the diamond as well as off of it.”

Those qualities, he believes, are what carried her through the darkest days following her diagnosis.

“The courage she brings to the softball diamond is the same courage that she will compete to overcome this next process of her treatment toward completely healing and becoming healthy,” Farmer said.

To him, Kelsey’s story has never been defined by a diagnosis.

It’s defined by the person she’s always been.

“In Kelsey I trust, believe and love,” he said. “And I am exceedingly excited to see her back out on the diamond doing good work and providing inspiration for other young future softball athletes.”

Lance Morris, who has coached Kelsey’s Brewster Rockets travel team since she was 11, is thrilled to have the same old Kelsey back in his line-up every weekend, as well.

“The day she got cleared I met with her for some hitting and she was ready to go,” Morris recalled. “She’s absolutely the same kid. For somebody to get the news that she got, and her biggest concern was not being able to play and ‘When can I get back on the field and I just want to be with my teammates.’”

But that’s the kind of player Kelsey has been since she and McNamara started playing together as best friends.

“She’s just a very committed player,” Morris said. “She’s an all-in player and is all about her teammates 100 percent of the time. She’s really the heart and soul of the team in a lot of ways.”

Farmer understands that fully.

His final thoughts on his starting left fielder were this: “God bless Kelsey.”

Don’t Take Anything For Granted

Today, Kelsey still has three weeks of treatments ahead.

There will be more doctor’s appointments. More scans. More days that remind her the journey isn’t over.

But there will also be softball.

She was broken-hearted hearted when doctors first told her she couldn’t play, but softball now has become part of her healing.

Looking back, she doesn’t spend much time asking why.

Instead, she’s focused on what comes next.

She hopes her story serves as a reminder to every athlete who laces up a pair of cleats, pulls on a jersey or steps onto a field believing there will always be another game.

Because sometimes there isn’t.

“It sucks when it gets taken away from you in an instant,” Kelsey said. “Don’t take it for granted.”

That’s the lesson she carries now.

Not about winning championships. Not about statistics. Not even about fighting cancer.

Simply to appreciate the moments most athletes never think twice about.

A practice after school. A bus ride with teammates. Taking the field with friends.

Hearing your name called in the starting lineup.

For nearly two weeks, Kelsey Blom searched for an answer to a headache that wouldn’t go away.

What followed changed her life.

It never changed who she was.

She’s a softball player. A field hockey player. A friend. A teammate. A daughter.

She’s Kelsey Blom, a remarkable young lady who will never give up.

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