Lilly Vallimont has her own student section.
Among the ringing of metal against cork and rubber, the umpire’s shouts behind the plate and the hollers from the rest of the fans on a bustling gameday at Carol Hutchins Stadium are the high-pitched chants of a cluster of young girls adamantly supporting their favorite player — who just so happens to also be their coach, mentor and friend.
Not only are they chanting, but chances are they are wearing matching apparel, just like any other student section across the nation. It’s not exactly Michigan merch, per se, but it does feature an image of an athlete donned in maize and blue, poised in the middle of a perfect swing bound for contact. Positioned between a broken fence in a stance powerful enough to assume she could have torn it down herself, she is surrounded by a simple motto:
“Lillian Vallimont: Against All Odds.”
The shirts are a reference to the back-to-back major injuries Vallimont suffered that kept her sidelined the last two seasons and how, against the odds, she fought her way back into the starting lineup. The phrase comes from the Bible verse Romans 4:18, and is so important to Vallimont that she even has it tattooed on her left arm. But Vallimont doesn’t simply defy the odds. She makes her own.
Vallimont’s personal cheering section consists of students at BK’s Softball Lounge, a training facility located in Brownstown, Michigan, that Vallimont and her older sister Michaleigh took ownership of this past June. Although Lilly and Michaleigh have owned the facility for just nine months, they’re quickly making an impact that will last years for the next generation of softball players.
“Ever since we’ve taken the facility over, Michigan has gained probably 200 fans,” Michaleigh told The Michigan Daily. “All these girls, that’s their dream school now, because when you’re hitting and there’s a Michigan player next to you talking about your at-bat on a random Friday in the fall, you start to love Michigan.”
Michaleigh herself was a Division I softball player at Central Michigan, where she graduated from last spring. When Lilly is busy in season, her sister spends almost every day at the facility with the kids, all while rocking her sister’s school’s merch. The pair have always been supportive of each other, pushing one another to new heights through constant competition and persistence that was instilled in them from a young age. Now, that is being passed on to the next generation of girls that come through their facility.
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Growing up on a farm in Brownsville, the Vallimont girls learned fast and early about hard work. Their mother Leighann would wake them up around five in the morning to go and muck the horses’ stalls before school. Never failing to seize an opportunity to try and best one another, the sisters would go all out to see who could clean their stall better, before waiting for their mom to pick a winner once they were done.
That passion to compete was only fueled by the work ethic embedded in her at such a young age on the farm, and soon enough, Lilly had swapped out the brooms and muck buckets for a leather glove and metal bat as her tools of competition. And just like the mornings in the barn, Lilly and Michaleigh would be at work with each other every evening, this time seeing who could hit the most pitches off each other in a row without striking out.
“(The Vallimonts) lived directly across the street from the elementary school,” Rick Tanguay, Lilly’s high school coach, told The Daily. “You could drive by that school seven days a week and you would see those girls outside with a bow net practicing and hitting.”
All that time invested in the front yard paid its dividends when Lilly began playing in organized youth leagues. A naturally strong kid with a stronger work ethic, she began to dominate against kids her own age almost immediately, so much so that there were complaints from the opposition swearing that the odds were fixed.
“People would actually ask me for Lilly’s birth certificate,” Leighann told The Daily. “The opposing team wasn’t nice, and they would swear that she was not her own age.”
But there was no foul play. The only thing skewing the odds was Lilly’s will to work.
Lilly only got better as the years went by, her skills continuing to progress. But when COVID-19 hit during her sophomore year of high school, the odds were stacked against everyone. Every indoor facility available was completely shut down, and playing outdoors was not a feasible option in the winter. But that didn’t stop Lilly. If nobody else was going to provide her with a place to train, she would just build her own.
With the help of her mom and stepdad, Lilly constructed her own batting cage within her mother’s trucking warehouse in Romulus. It came fully equipped with a hack-attack pitching machine, netting and at least a dozen bats. After school every day, Lilly would drive straight to the trucking site to get her reps in.
“I probably should have done it so much earlier,” Leighann laughed. “I could have saved so much money.”
When high school softball was back in full swing, Lilly hadn’t missed a single beat. Having earned a reputation as one of the best high school catchers in the country, Lilly was primed and ready for her first season with Trenton High School — as a shortstop.
After tryouts concluded, Tanguay accepted the fact that he had nobody on the roster who could play shortstop. What he did have, however, was a catcher who was willing to do what was best for the collective. While most athletes in a position like Lilly’s — a nationally-ranked catcher who already had one of her precious high school seasons stripped away from her — would have lamented the prospect of wasting a season at a completely foreign position, Lilly took it for what it was: an opportunity to take control of the odds.
Often staying on the field well after practice was over, Lilly would field ground balls and make throws until she satisfied the standards she set for herself as a shortstop, or until the lights turned off — whichever came first.
The fruit of her labor was a league title for Trenton, alongside all-state honors, an All-Downriver team nomination, a team MVP award and a National Gatorade Player of the Year nomination, meeting a lot more standards than simply her own.
Lilly had defied the odds once more and proved herself as a dominant performer in more than one position on the field. Now she was excited — as much as her coaches and teammates were — for her senior season. Which is why it was so devastating when senior year rolled around and, just days before tryouts, the odds were stacked against her once more.
Lilly tore her UCL tendon in practice and would be out for the season.
Despite not being able to play, Lilly spent all of her spare time with the team. At both practices and games, she worked in the field with her replacement at shortstop or with anyone who needed advice at the plate. When they doubted themselves, they still turned to Lilly.
She could’ve sat idly by through her injury, but she didn’t. Against the odds, she crafted a new role within her team, a role that allowed her to still make an impact.
The work Lilly and Micaleigh do with BK’s softball lounge creates opportunities for others that were not present for them growing up. Throughout high school, the Vallimonts struggled to find a softball facility within their area suited for players with collegiate aspirations, and as a result, the girls had to make more sacrifices than most to get the proper year-round coaching.
“There were people (in the community) that could coach the younger ones, but as far as where Lilly and I wanted to be, at the Division I level, there were very few coaches,” Michaleigh said. “The year I got my driver’s license … We would drive an hour away for hitting sessions. Then fielding was from 7:00-9:30, so we would get home by 11:00 unless we stopped for a snack.”
Not wanting other girls in her community to have to go to such lengths to receive high-level training, the Vallimont sisters went to similar lengths to bring it to them. With their top-notch input alongside various other full-time experienced coaches, the Vallimonts brought opportunities to give these girls an easier path than the one they had to once walk. Because against all odds, Lilly found a way to high-caliber softball, and she wanted to make a place where other girls could, too, but with the odds much more in their favor.
Switching to the kinesiology school at Michigan this year, Lilly plans on dedicating her time in college and beyond to establishing a physical therapy and strength coaching team at the BK facility, in order to provide more than technical training to these younger athletes.
“I had this one physical trainer down in Detroit and he changed my perspective on injuries and was just there for me, and it made me want to do it for a living because of the impact he had on me,” Lilly said. “If I can prevent someone else from going through my experience, I will.”
And even while these new prospects still fall under the planning phase, the impact of the work already done by the sisters is tangible in the community.
Not only do the young athletes of BK look up to Lilly and her sister for premier training advice, but they have now found role models within the entire Michigan softball team. And Lilly and her teammates could not love it more, giving away a signed ball whenever the girls show up and never being hesitant for a photo op.
It’s this passion for building others up that highlights Lilly’s impact in the softball community more than anything else. It’s a kind of support that can, and has, come right back to her.
During Lilly’s freshman season, Michigan scheduled a game against Central Michigan while Michaleigh was a senior there. The gravity of the moment was not lost on the pair of sisters, who had grown up constantly competing with one another and were now getting the chance to do so once more on the largest stage yet. But it was also a monumental moment for the community they had made such a large impact on.
“We had a big tailgate, and probably 150 people from the community drove out to watch them play,” Leighann said. “It was surprising how many people knew their story, and it was really a full-circle moment.”
As Lilly stepped up to the plate in Mount Pleasant last spring, she found herself surrounded by those that shaped her — those she shaped. With her sister she had worked with at every level out in right field, her mother who had taught her what it meant to work hard in the stands, surrounded by the next generation of athletes who put her on a pedestal, it was clear that the odds were, for once, stacked in her favor.
