Wash the cows. Clean the pens. Refill the water and hay. Then, Jaydn and Kennedy Kimball head over to Windham High School for softball practice.
A few miles west of Maine’s largest city, the Kimball sisters’ daily chores look nothing like what their peers have to do. The Kimball family owns and operates a Holstein dairy heifer farm where, the sisters say, they learned the work ethic that sets them apart from the competition on the softball field.
“Being able to get up at 3 a.m. – that’s different,” Jaydn said. “The work ethic plays such a big role in sports because there’s a huge difference in the kids who work outside of practice, you can tell. You even learn teamwork on the farm, which is an obvious thing for sports.”
The Kimballs’ parents, Jamie and Chris, own and operate Beach Haven Ladies, where the family raises approximately a dozen heifers year-round and show them throughout the spring, summer and fall. The farm lies also on a sliver of the former 70-acre plot where their mother’s side of the family operated a horse farm. Jamie, the sisters’ mother, stays home on the farm full-time. Chris, the father, works on the farm but also in sales full-time.
The Kimballs complete their chores four times per day, plus rein the heifers twice daily and feed their two baby calves milk. It’s a labor of love for the sisters, who each plan on playing college softball with academic aspirations related to their farming experience. They miss three weeks of school each year for travel to fairs like the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin and Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. Proceeds from selling a heifer or winning a show goes directly to the sister’s college fund.
“Some of our teachers have frowned upon it, but honestly we learn a lot at the fairs and on the farm at home,” Jaydn said. “A lot of people laugh, but … life lessons you learn on a farm are so unique and not a lot of kids get that experience.”
Jaydn, a senior, and Kennedy, a junior, persevered through injuries to excel with the Windham softball team, playing key roles for an Eagles softball team that captured the Class A state championship last year.
A bevy of hip issues barred Jaydn, a catcher, from playing her position for most of her high school career. As a freshman, Jaydn started as Windham’s varsity catcher, but tore the labrum in her right hip due to overuse from catching during the club season in the January leading up to her sophomore year. She underwent surgery and returned to the Windham softball team late in the season as a designated hitter and was intentionally walked in her first at-bat, a sign of respect for her prowess.
Jaydn underwent a second hip surgery nearly a year after the first, only coming back as a designated hitter following the regular season and at the start of Windham’s eventual state championship playoff run, reaching base in 12 of 15 plate appearances. A third hip surgery came this February, but Jaydn hopes to make another comeback and play by the end of the regular season. She’s committed to playing collegiately at the University of New England and hopes to return to catching full-time.
No stranger to farm life herself, Windham coach Darcey Gardiner runs an active dairy farm and agrees that the blue-collar, hard-working lifestyle reflects on the field.
“You go to the barn every day with a purpose to feed your animals and that’s the same sort of purpose when the Kimball girls show up for practice,” Gardiner said.
Jaydn plans on studying animal behavior on a pre-veterinarian track with hopes of becoming a veterinarian, tech or dairy nutritionist.
“I definitely want to stay in the [family] business working with animals,” she said. “I love it.”
Kennedy, who missed her freshman year with a fractured ankle, established herself as a top-line pitching talent alongside Division I University of Rhode Island-bound Brooke Gerry last spring. Kennedy (6-1, 1.59 ERA, 71 strikeouts in 44 innings and .438 batting average last year) hopes to play Division I softball, too. She envisions a similar academic path to her older sister.
“I want to do something with the equine and then also cows,” she said. “Like MagnaWave therapy, but I want to do it with horses and cows.”
The Kimballs hope to end this season playing together, which they haven’t done much in recent years. Windham returns most of the core of last year’s championship team, and the Kimballs hope to help the Eagles soar again this spring. The Eagles open the season hosting Bonny Eagle on April 18 with hopes of raising a second straight state championship trophy on June 15 at Central Maine Community College’s Tribou Field in Auburn.
“It creates a little added pressure to perform every game, but I think it’s a good experience to see how we can come back after last year,” Kennedy said. “We have most of the same girls returning, so it’s just finding the spots where people are best at right now and reconstructing a little.”