New Boston youth athlete proves to be....unstoppable
By Allyson Pebsworth
There’s no crying in baseball, a quote most people are familiar with. However for some people it’s more than just a quote the way playing ball is more than just a game, regardless of age.
Harper Hankins, daughter of Jacey and Michael, has been playing ball since she was 5 years old, starting with t-ball and quickly jumping up to play on teams with kids much older than herself. Watching the Women's College World Series with her mom, Harper expressed her desire to play saying “she wanted to be like that.”
At only 6 years old, Justin Arsenault with the New Boston Youth Sports Association, was putting a team together for district 44 to play in the State Tournament. Several members from the t-ball team and some of Harper's best friends played together and won the championship. Although she had started out playing in the outfield, she was transitioned to third base during the tournament and from there her in-field play began.
She started taking pitching lessons and played throughout the summer while she was six and seven years old. Even getting the opportunity to get some field and batting help from the softball team at Texas A&M University - Texarkana as her pitching coach was an assistant for the team at the time. “They really slowed down and helped her. It was really inspiring.”
They met Coach Mike Simpson, who has now become more of a family member than a coach, and he saw her potential. Playing a huge hand in Harper’s softball journey so far, Coach Mike would even be there for the family off the field when they needed it.
The next spring, Harper competed in travel ball and built really great relationships with all the girls and their families, many of which were from New Boston and DeKalb. When she turned eight, she was looking forward to playing with the 8u team, however the team didn’t have enough players, so she was then placed with the 10u girls team.
During her time playing, was was at one point on multiple teams during one season. Playing with the 8u teams, the Wildcats of Texarkana and the Ballers of New Boston, one team went undefeated in district while the other got second. “She showed up to play ball that day, she didn’t strike out all day…the girls were like a well oiled machine,” Jacey said with pride when speaking of Harper’s time on the field.
However, when she was nine, a slam in the car door took Harper out of the game for a few weeks due to a broken thumb. She was out of lessons and had to go to a specialist in Tyler, but after her release was excited to return to the field.
Kevin Grady, who is Harper’s pitching coach now, told Jacey that with the holidays approaching and cold weather incoming, drills would resume after the first of the year (January 2026). Then the flu hit in November and caused a bit more of a wait. Close to Christmas, Harper contracted conjunctivitis in her eye.
One night while having dinner at Harper’s Sassy’s (Paula Cole) house, the family was looking at Harper and noticed her eye was a bit swollen and protruding from the socket. Jacey made an appointment with the eye doctor, who Jacey says later was one of the main reasons Harper can see today, and the doctor informed her that more testing was needed and to seek care at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.
At 4:30 a.m., the world changed for the Hankins family, as the emergency room doctor told them that Harper had a silver dollar mass behind her eye. “It was just a mass at that point, but all sense of rationality goes away when you hear something like that.”
Harper could tell something was wrong, but her parents tried to shield her as much as possible. The anxiety set in. Harper, diagnosed with ADHD as a young child struggles with anxiety and has found a saving grace in her service dog Maggie. Maggie is a black german sheppard who is trained to notice Harper’s anxiety set in before even Harper does. Maggie was able to stay with Harper during the majority of her hospital stays, testing and appointments.
Once admitted, Harper saw the mass doctor at Children’s and they conducted a “rabbit hole” of testing. On Christmas eve morning, the family got the news that it was not cancer, however it was a large hemangioma sitting behind her eye. The family got home at 6:15 Christmas eve night with a whole new journey on the horizon.
Her first appointment with the Ophthalmologist, Dr. John Pemberton at UAMS was in January 2026 and the testing showed that the mass was not cancerous, but still growing and for unknown reasons. Harper was immediately put on a high dose of steroids for treatment and was told the worst news for a nine year old softball player, no strenuous activity. No running. No playing. No pitching. No anything other than sitting and being careful with everyday life. For any child, this would be near impossible, but for Harper who was used to being active 24/7, this was devastating.
When speaking of her time at home, Jacey said it was “Very hard to watch the downhill and not just the physical but the emotional and mental.” She continued getting worse and steroids weren’t making things better, instead she was overrun with a multitude of new symptoms from the medications. “When you are so used to being at practice or games, or keeping up with siblings and animals at home, then you have to literally do nothing. It’s heartbreaking.”
Then in April, something was even more wrong. The optic nerve went from the size of a needle to the size of a No. 2 pencil in the span of four weeks. Pressure levels were high and color vision was dropping. When she could normally see a 10 out of 10, Harper could now only see 4 out of 10. She couldn’t read anything out of her eye and the mass was close to the nasal cavity causing her to not be able to turn her eye. “It hurt so bad.” Her eyelid wouldn’t even close all the way.
The doctor said she needed to come back, it’s getting bigger and she has the possibility of going blind. It was a Thursday and they quickly scheduled her to come to the hospital the next Monday.
Going back for appointments every four weeks then such a quick turn around for admittance, the family leaned on each other and other family members like Mike and Holly Foster, to help take care of the other children and animals. There were always many people helping behind the scenes and one quote Jacey hung onto through the experience was said by her supervisor “Although we are in the dark, there is one person that will never be in the dark about anything that is going on in your life.”
Being on the Oncology floor during her time in the hospital made the experience much more humbling.
While there, the teams were perplexed because Harper could still see and there was functionality in her eye but the mass was growing. The infectious disease team came in and ran an abundance of tests to no avail. The amount of tests, pokes, information, and uncertainty were almost too much to bear at times, but Maggie was there to help ease the tension.
Maggie is a true valued member of the family who although is trained to pick up Harper’s anxiety, had started tuning in to other family members during the hospital stays. Maggie cues in before overstimulation becomes a problem.
The medical team ordered more testing that finally showed something they could do. The doctor called and said there was no blood flow to the mass, but then scheduled for surgery the next day. Only 42 minutes passed from walking into the room until the doctor came in to tell Jacey and Michael the surgery was a success.
When they extracted the mass, they found it was bigger than her eye and her eye socket was overloaded, thus pushing the eye out. The doctors told them during recovery they had to wait and see if Harper would have blood flow to the eye and how her vision was.
Harper was nervous, but glad to finally have answers and get the treatment she needed. They found out that the best medical opinion was that the mass was caused by a blood vessel behind her eye that got clogged and filled due to the conjunctivitis she had the previous year. Dr. Pemberton told the family, “Never in my entire career seen anything like this.” There were 43 people on her medical team and just two other people in the world have ever had something like this. Harper is the youngest patient on that list, and after some time will receive a book full of all her records.
“The weight that was lifted, I can’t even describe the feelings. The whole week was so intense, then it was just relief.” Jacey was emotional when speaking about the experience and how she has witnessed her daughter go through very trying times and still come out with a positive outlook and determination to play ball.
While the weight was lifted to a degree for the adults and all those around her, Harper said about it set in about a day later, she “cried I was so happy.”
After the surgery, Harper experienced swelling and bruising, but had no vision issues or lasting effects. In May she was released from the doctor for light activity and just a month later she was allowed to pick her passion back up. July 7th, Dr. Pemberton fully released her to live life to the fullest as she was back within her pre-mass parameters.
Jacey spoke of how the experience opened her eyes to how blessed the family is to have the support system they have, “I’ll forever be grateful to every single person who donated, prayed and thought of Harper throughout her journey.”
Although there were some confidence issues after being off for seven months, Harper has now shown everyone that her resilience and determination are unmatched. She is already back to competing and taking pitching lessons only three months after a life-changing surgical event. The frustration and downheartedness most adults would be dealing with, Harper has dealt with at such a young age. Going through this experience, she has also proved God is watching over her and paired with her fortitude, she will be unstoppable.
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