The Lipscomb softball team was robbed in San Francisco Sunday night while doing some site seeing at the conclusion of its spring break tournament trip.
After traveling back to San Francisco from one of their games in San Luis Obispo, the team went on a night tour of Alcatraz and then out for dinner. When the team returned to the vehicles around 10 p.m., the girls said they saw glass on the ground and then realized that two of the four team vehicles had been broken into.
“I freaked out and I immediately looked to see if my computer had been taken,” said Vanessa Medina, a senior public relations major.
Medina was one of the lucky team members whose stuff was not stolen, but five others were not so fortunate.
Brianne Welch, a freshman communications major, had her backpack stolen, including a Mac laptop, which she had just purchased in August, and a Kindle Touch, which her mother had purchased as Welch’s birthday gift only two weeks ago.
“I felt like I was kind of in shock a little bit,” Welch said. “I called my mom. I cried; I don’t think I’ve ever been so mad before.”
“As a collective group of girls, we were just so angry,” she continued. “It’s a terrifying feeling. You feel violated.”
After realizing they had been robbed, Assistant Coach Lexi Myers called the police, and then the team waited in the parking lot nearly two hours before they arrived.
“[Myers] was great when this happened,” said Bridgette Begle, a sophomore, whose stuff was not stolen. “I felt secure while I was there. She did all the phone calls, all the dirty work. We felt ten times more comfortable after that. I had a lot of respect for that.”
Sophomore Shelby Cunningham, an exercise science major, said the police told the team that a similar robbery had taken place in that very parking lot the night before.
When the team returned to its hotel after filing a police report, Welch received a phone call from a woman who said four backpacks had mysteriously appeared on her porch. The woman told Welch that she had found Welch’s name and phone number inside one of the bags.
A few of the team members and sponsors called the police and met them at the woman’s house. Though much of the team’s things were still in the backpacks, most of the valuable items like laptops were gone.
“It just literally felt like I was in a nightmare,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham’s laptop and some items from her wallet were taken, but that wasn’t her biggest concern. Cunningham was primarily upset about a Bible that she had received from her grandmother as a graduation gift.
“That was what I was most upset about,” she said. “I had a lot of my family members sign it. I had a lot of stuff in there that was very personal to me.”
Kelsey Cartwright, a junior psychology major, had her backpack stolen, but she said it just had school books and supplies in it and was returned with all of the items still inside.
“I couldn’t be that mad,” she said, “because everyone else that had stuff taken had laptops and things like that in their bags.”
The team members who had stuff stolen might be reimbursed through Lipscomb’s insurance, although nothing official has been determined yet.
For now, team members who lost laptops are borrowing friends’ computers or using on-campus computer labs.
“I’m still angry,” Welch said. “I go in my room and my computer’s not there; it just reminds me. It adds to stress because I don’t have my computer, and I need it for classes.”
Though the teammates said their trip would have been better without this incident, they said they were glad to be together when it happened.
“I think it brought our team closer together,” Medina said. “It made us feel good about who we surround ourselves with and who we call friends.”
Welch agreed.
“I was glad I was with my team,” she said. “Our coaches responded really quickly, got us quick answers that we needed to hear. As a team, we’re so close already… I feel like when they stole from one of us, they stole from all of us. Everyone was affected with us. It was good to have them there to be angry with you and sad with you.”
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