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Members of all four teams participating in this year’s Suicide Awareness and Prevention Tournament gathered with Candace’s mother Sonya England. Proceeds from the tournament will be donated to the Rae of Sunshine Foundation to help in their effort to promote mental health awareness and suicide prevention. (Photos by Jay Compton)

Candace’s mother Sonya England speaks about suicide awareness to the participants in this year’s Softball Tournament.

The Ballers were the winning team at the Candace Lynn England Memorial Softball Tournament, which was held at Lincoln Park in Middlesboro. The team included Major Edwards, Gerald Branham, Nathan Hatmaker, Josh Smith, Gibbs Cochran, Chris Short, Kyle Lee, Tyler Allen, Logan Napier, Sabryna Stanley and Tiffany Saylor. They are pictured with umpire Birdel Ballinger and Candace’s parents Robert and Sonya England.

Robert England, umpire Birdel Ballinger and Sonya England.

Major Edwards smacks a home run for the Ballers during Saturday's tournament.

Tournament host Angie Allen with Sonya England.

The third annual Suicide Awareness and Prevention Co-Ed Softball Tournament was held on Saturday at Lincoln Park in Middlesboro.
The tournament was started in memory of Candace Lynn England, who was was an active adult softball player in Middlesboro up until she committed suicide on September 12, 2021. The tournament was started the following year to remember Candace and to  raise awareness about suicide and mental health locally. Each year Candace’s parents Sonya and Robert England have attended the tournament.

Sonya gathered all of the participants together between the first and second games and spoke to them about looking for warning signs in their loved ones.

“My daughter never mentioned the word suicide. I know because I asked every friend of hers I could find. My daughter hung herself on September 12, 2021 in the woods at Cannon Creek in a moment of hot passion. She was passionate about everything she did, everybody who knew her knew that she was all-in. On that day, unfortunately, she was all-in on not living and there was no intervention for her,” Sonya England said. “I did learn that if you can get that person that is in that crisis minute, past that minute there is a 99-percent chance they will never, ever attempt suicide again. They just need help in that moment. Let’s all bring awareness, listen, look, know your people, know when something is off.”

Sonya told the players that being a part of this event “gets me through this time every year.” She also announced that proceeds from the tournament will go to the Rae of Sunshine Foundation.

The Rae of Sunshine Foundation, Inc. works to bring awareness, give back, and partner with schools, churches, institutions and any other groups wanting to provide support and training that stresses the importance of mental health issues. The foundation was established by the mother of Taylor Rae Nolan, who passed away from suicide on January 8, 2019. She was just about to start the second semester her sophomore year at the University of Kentucky.

“Her mother goes to all of our local schools. She goes all across the state of Kentucky and speaks to the middle school age groups and high school age groups and talks about this,” England said.

This year’s tournament was organized by Angie Allen, who also coaches Xplosion, one of the teams that has participated each year. This year there were two other teams from Middlesboro, the Ballers and the Warriors and MooseKnuckles, made up of players from the Washburn, Tennessee area.

It was a high-scoring and exciting double-elimination tournament with the Ballers advancing through the winners’ bracket and MooseKnuckles coming out of the losers’ side. MooseKnuckles built a big lead and held on to give the Ballers their first loss. Then the Ballers flipped that script and held off a late MooseKnuckles rally to win the championship by a final score of 32-28.

“My women’s team plays just about every weekend. My team, Xplosion, has played with all of these people for years,” Allen said. “The reason we do this is to bring awareness to our local area about suicide. The reason I like continuing this is that we always played women’s softball with Candace — we always played against each other but we played together. We just continue to bring awareness and to honor the memory of Candace.”

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