'Playing for Marley'; Harrisburg softball honors lost teammate

Everywhere Harrisburg’s softball players go, Marley is with them. 

She is written on their arms with streaks of eye-black, attached to their batting helmets with vibrant stickers bearing her name, and always kept close in the form of a steel crucifix with her initials engraved. 

Her favorite walk-up song — The Beastie Boys’ bouncing anthem ‘Brass Monkey’ — blares through the Eagles’ ballpark on game days. It is the last song that plays during warmups at their home field, and the first to play when they arrive at away games. 

Her double-zero jersey hangs in the dugout every game as a constant, gentle reminder. 

“It’s just little Easter eggs from her all over,” Harrisburg senior Tess Cudmore said. “It’s nice because in the middle of the game you just go, ‘Oh, this is what we’re playing for this year. This is what Harrisburg will play for for a long time to come.’”

In early March, Marley Moser, a 14-year-old freshman at Harrisburg, took her own life. A standout softball player, she was so much more to her friends and loved ones. The notes written by her teammates for her memorial service tell the story of a passionate daughter, sister and classmate who always sought to put others before herself: ‘She was the first person to check up on me’; ‘If I was having a bad day, she always had something positive to say’; ‘She was so nice to me.’

“She was just a force. Being around her, it just felt like she had fire in her soul,” Marley’s mother, Maliah Moser said. “Everything she did, she was passionate about.”

As her family and community mourn her loss, Marley’s Harrisburg teammates are doing everything in their power to keep her legacy alive and find meaning in an unspeakable tragedy. 

'I watched her walk through life with such grace'

Maliah Moser doesn’t hesitate for a split second when describing her daughter. 

“Tenacious,” she said. “She had such a work ethic, on and off the softball field. She found something that she loved and she was all about it.”

From a young age, it was clear to Marley’s parents that their daughter was a force to be reckoned with. 

A bike wreck in the driveway would immediately be followed by reassuring shouts of, ‘I’m OK! I’m OK!’ as Marley sprang up to try again. 

“And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re bleeding and there are rocks sticking out of your knee. So maybe I should check it out,’” Maliah recalled with a laugh. 

When her older brother, Mason, began playing tackle football as a child, Marley wondered aloud when it would be her turn to play. The way she saw it, if he got to play, why couldn’t she?

So, there she was on the first day of practice with a bob haircut crammed under her helmet. She took to football so well that after a week her coach admitted to Maliah, ‘I didn’t know she was a girl until today because she didn’t correct me all week.’

When it came time to play ‘king of the ring’ — a game that pits two players 1-on-1 with the goal of pushing your opponent out of the circle — Marley went through the entire team twice without losing. 

When she made the difficult decision to give up football and focus on club softball in the eighth grade, the boys on her team begged her to play one more year. 

“She wasn’t just the girl on the team you had to be careful with,” Maliah said. “They knew she would take them out if they weren’t careful. I think it meant a lot to her that the boys respected her in that way and wanted her on the field.”

Marley carried that tenacity and toughness everywhere she went. In a household where giving each other a hard time is "kind of our love language," according to Maliah, Marley was always ready to spar at a moment's notice.

"Mason is 18, but she was so quick-witted that she would roast him left and right," Maliah recalled. "He’d just be like, ‘Well, yup, you got me.’ They would fight like cats and dogs and act like they hate each other. Then, five minutes later, they’re headed to Dari Mart to get snacks together. They had this love-hate relationship, which I think is pretty typical between brothers and sisters."

As she grew older, two of Marley’s main loves, softball and music, became interwoven. Oftentimes after practice, she would head straight to the family's driveway with a tee, a bucket of balls and her headphones and smash line drives into the net for hours on end while listening to everything from Prince to Billie Eilish.

When it came time to pick a walk-up song for her club team, the Harrisburg Cyclones, many of her teammates chose modern pop hits or catchy rap choruses. 

At the time, Marley was going through her “90’s and grunge” phase and knew immediately what song would serve as the soundtrack to her plate appearances. 

The Beastie Boys’ 1987 hit “Brass Monkey” — released more than two decades before Marley was born — was impossible to miss each time she came up to bat. 

Her teammates rolled their eyes at the choice, and her family begged and pleaded for her to stop when she insisted on listening to the song multiple times during drives to club tournaments. 

Marley didn’t care. That was her style. 

“She was unapologetically herself. I was so in awe of her,” Maliah said. “She was everything at her age that I wanted to be at that age. I was insecure and not confident and maybe put on this persona that I was, when I really wasn’t. 

“I watched her walk through life with such grace.”

A life filled with tenacity, passion and grit

Marley’s tenacity and passion shone through to her Harrisburg softball teammates, even those who only got to know her this season. 

“She would go home after practices or tryouts and she would just work more,” junior Dylan Hayworth said. “She was just that person who was always wanting to do more for herself and for her team. I think her impact was so big, but she did it in such a quiet way that made it more powerful and meaningful for everybody.”

“She is one of the toughest kids I have ever met,” added Harrisburg junior Brooklynn Huddleston. “She had that grit. I want to have that grit just like her; I think just remembering her however we can helps a lot.”

Cudmore, Harrisburg’s senior captain, knew the school’s incoming group of freshmen would be hit the hardest by the loss of Marley. Some of them were unsure if they could cope with playing this season, and Cudmore assured them the team would support whatever decision they made. 

If they opted to play, she and the rest of the Eagles’ players would have their backs. 

After Marley’s memorial service, Cudmore asked Harrisburg coach Dave Hughes if she could keep her jerseys and carry them with her throughout the season. 

Although she admittedly was not as close with Marley as some of the Eagles’ other players, she did not want that weight to fall on her younger teammates as they mourned the loss of a close friend. 

“She was going to be my teammate. I’m team captain, and that was going to be my freshman. I remember when I was a freshman; I looked up to our captain so much. I wanted to be that way for them,” Cudmore said. “I wanted Marley to still be able to be at the games with us. … Everyone is keeping her close in some way. I just wanted what was truly going to be hers to be here with us.”

So, Marley’s three jerseys — purple, black and white — hang on Cudmore’s bedroom wall. 

On game days, she packs whichever color Harrisburg will wear. 

As the Eagles go, so goes Marley, with her jersey draped over the bus railing on road trips and hanging prominently at the front of the dugout during games.

So, too, goes a boom box that blares ‘Brass Monkey’ every time her teammates step off the bus. 

“It’s kind of bittersweet, I suppose,” Maliah said. “I love that they’ve honored her and gone out of their way to make her be a part of the season. I think that’s incredible. She would have loved that. I’m sure she’s watching and I’m sure she’s getting a kick out of it.”

In a year that has been about so much more than simply wins and losses on the diamond, Harrisburg’s players and coaches aren’t ready for the journey to stop. The Eagles recently locked up the Mountain Valley Conference title and earned the No. 8 seed in the Class 3A state playoffs. They will host No. 9 Burns/Crane on May 27 in the opening round of the tournament. 

“It’s definitely on everyone’s minds that we want to keep this going for as long as possible,” Cudmore said. “Win or lose, just play your hardest. That’s the best way to honor someone, just play with your heart.”

Jarrid Denney is a sports reporter for The Register-Guard. He can be reached at [email protected] or on X @jarrid_denney

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Harrisburg Eagles softball honors lost teammate who gave her all