KC Star Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year Taylor Cruse ‘lifts everyone up around her’

With all A’s, Taylor Cruse ranked first in her class at Basehor-Linwood High School.

For that matter, she’s typically been first about anywhere and everywhere with a drive and speed that is “just unreal,” as Bobcats softball coach Susan Mayberry said.

A “lot of hustle and grit,” as her mother Christy put it, helps explain why she could be a 5-foot-4 point guard and Velcro-like defender in basketball and set the school assists record in volleyball with more than 2,000.

Then there’s the arm strength she first flashed around age 4, when she’d pick up and sling footballs before University of Kansas football games.

“Not that it was a perfect spiral,” her father, Jarad, said. “But she was throwing hard.”

All of that has enabled Cruse to become one of the best and most decorated softball players in the region. Ranked No. 28 in the nation by Extra Innings Softball, she has earned a scholarship to play at Ohio State and is The Star’s Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2023.

Cruse is “a speedy outfielder with range, a strong arm and elite instincts,” Buckeyes coach Kelly Kovach Schoenly said in a statement when she signed last fall. “She has a unique combination of hitting for high average and power. She will also be a threat (on) the bases.”

But if you want to know what really distinguishes Cruse, it’s that she “lifts everyone up around her,” Mayberry said.

By being humble, preferring the spotlight go elsewhere and always making it about “us, not her,” as longtime youth coach Mike Byrn put it.

By giving her all every day in every way.

By relishing being a role model for and coaching younger girls, a dynamic Mayberry says casts Cruse “in her element.”

By being the first to celebrate with others, sure.

But also by being sensitive enough to be the first to console those who need it most — compassionate gestures that might well be forever remembered by teammates she helped.

So, star that Cruse might be, what shines most to Mayberry is how she’s always “doing the right thing without having to be asked.”

The leader people “flock to,” as Byrn said, is someone who is always the first to arrive and last to leave.

The one who welcomes new teammates and sets the example of staying after practices to help gather balls and buckets and put screens away.

She even offers to help clean up after the end-of-season banquet honoring the team.

“Taylor — no,” she had to be told.

“She’s just a beautiful person,” Mayberry said, “and everybody just loves being around her.”

Her parents and coaches will tell you this is in her nature.

But Cruse, whose younger brother, Jacson, is a runner, will tell you she’s a product of great coaches and parenting.

Asked how her parents approached that role, she smiled.

“The correct way,” she said. “Ever since I’ve been a little kid, I’ve always been taught to treat others how you want to be treated and have the best attitude and effort you can and just be respectful. I’ve been taught all my manners … and to be a kind human being and love everybody.”

It started at home, where a few years back she set her heart on softball most among other sports because she has always wanted to be just like her mother — who played softball at KU and has been among her coaches all along.

Many a time, she can remember being in the backyard, or makeshift cage in the garage, throwing with or hitting off her parents.

Literally, at times.

Once she smacked a ball so hard off her father’s arm that it left a nasty bruise. Another time, a sharp shot carried through netting and caromed off her mother’s forehead.

“I try to suppress those memories,” Christy Cruse joked in a text message.

Loving as the relationship might be, it’s not always simple.

“Sometimes we can butt heads,” Taylor said, “because we’re basically the same person.”

If that’s the case, maybe that’s part of why her mother recognizes that Taylor’s perfectionism can be a challenge.

“Failure is not something that she takes lightly,” said Christy Cruse, now a pharmacist.

Which is something Taylor has had to work to reconcile in softball, which like baseball inherently is a game of failure.

Toward that cause, she often invokes one of Byrn’s mottos: that all you can control is your attitude and your effort.

“Sometimes Taylor overcomplicates it and tries too hard,” Byrn said. “But as she’s evolved, she’s really taken hold of that and grasped it.”

If it’s sometimes easier said than done, well, that’s part of the point.

“You never know your limits until you actually try,” Taylor said. “It’s OK to fail. You’re going to fail. But how you react to failure and get back up from it is what makes you who you are. Because you grow from it. So I’ve just kind of been that way with everything.”

And by everything, she means just about everything.

Between her athletics schedule and school work and extracurricular activities, her father marvels at her energy and pace.

“I wouldn’t even have fathomed it at her age,” said Jarad Cruse, a medical sonographer.

As much as she might be a softball “workaholic,” as Byrn put it, she’s also been a dedicated student with a variety of interests.

She has an aptitude for math — enough so that she practically created a formula for working through the recruiting labyrinth and might consider studying anything from business to engineering.

Then again, she’s also into nutrition and could move in that direction.

But she’s got plenty of time to explore and get that figured out — and further distinguish herself.

“Taylor Cruse is going to make a ripple effect, a positive ripple effect, on the people that cross her path,” Mayberry said.

Through softball and beyond.

“She will approach life as she does sports,” Byrn said. “And that’s all-in.”