Tameron Sealey Rushing was a successful three-sport athlete when, in ninth grade, someone suggested a major change to the way she played the game she excelled at most.

Changing her game plan – in sports, in her education, in her life and career – have led Rushing to where she is now and earned her a spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I played short stop or second base, and I actually started off right-handed, and as I got older, with my speed, they wanted me to be left-handed,” she says. “It helped me be one step closer to first base. So I began hitting left-handed in ninth grade.”

Rushing, who writes right-handed, played softball and basketball at East Gaston High School from 2004 through 2008 and ran cross-country.

Softball would be her ride to college, her ticket to stacks of awards.

“I was always the small one on the field, so my speed helped,” she says. “I was always one of the smaller ones.”

Rushing played varsity basketball all four years of high school and won East Gaston’s Warrior Award as a senior.

She was all-conference all four years in cross-country. Her identical twin, Hall of Fame inductee Cameron Sealey Flachofsky, ran cross country as well. Cameron played softball to support her sister, and Tameron played basketball to be with Cameron. “My sister and I had a trick play,” Rushing says. “She played third base and I played short stop, and if there was a runner on third, if I got the ground ball I would fake-throw to first and the runner would take off, and I’d just toss the ball to my sister on third. It’s like we read each other’s minds.

“We said we’d run cross-country to stay in shape, but we ran for Coach (Dale) Starnes, and he quickly figured out we were there to compete and we were going to win. We’d start each race close to the front, and he knew we needed to finish in the top three, and he would get so mad at us.”

“I remember running around the track at Ashbrook,” Cameron says, “and he’d get so mad, because I’d just walk up the last hill, then sprint on the track.”

“He’d get angry,” Tameron says, “but we always finished in front. We told him, ‘We got this. We’re not going to let you down.’”

Tameron’s future husband Mathew also ran cross-country. Coach Starnes would let each athlete paint a cinder block to display in his classroom and theirs are side-by-side. But, softball.

Rushing was all-Big South 3A/4A Conference in softball every year in high school and was Player of the Year as a senior, when she led the team with a near-.500 batting average in conference games.

She led EGHS in stolen bases her senior year and was co-winner of the team’s Offense Award. She was offered a scholarship to the University of Central Florida, but picked Montreat College’s offer instead. “I didn’t want to leave North Carolina,” she says. “I wanted to be close to home.”

As a Montreat freshman, she was second in the Appalachian Athletic Conference in batting average (.564) and hits and was second in steals. She was AAC all-conference first team and its player of the week twice. She was a Scholar Athlete and Montreat’s Offensive Player of the Year.

That changed.