June 20, 2016 | By LYNDA STRINGER

 

Contributed Photo/BECKY CARPENTER

 

Skylar Carpenter wasn’t that big on acing tests, so a co-ed softball tournament held in her memory raises money for scholarships that aren’t tied to grades, but to heart.

The 5th Annual Skylarship Foundation Benefit Softball Tournament is named for the Quitman High School student who was killed in a car accident in 2011 at age 15. The tournament will make its Mount Pleasant debut this Saturday at Heritage Park. It has been held in Quitman the past four years, but the family decided to move it to Mount Pleasant because they will be relocating to the area soon.

Skylar’s mom, Becky Carpenter, who founded One Day Closer Ministries following her daughter’s tragic death, said the co-ed slow pitch tournament has raised more than $28,000 in scholarships since it began.

“Of that amount, $25,000 has been East Texas scholarships and this year, we’ve given three international scholarships, two in Haiti and one in Honduras” Carpenter said. “In those countries, $1,200 funds a full year of university education.”

She said next year, the foundation plans to expand its scholarships to Guatemala and El Salvador.

That all depends on how much money is raised at the tournament, which has in the past drawn 15-18 co-ed slow pitch teams from highly competitive teams to church league teams.

The tournament will be held Saturday at Heritage Park in Mount Pleasant. The cost to enter is $200 per team. To register a team for the softball tournament, go to skylarshipfoundation.org or call Tournament Director Tammy Daniel, Skylar’s aunt, at 903-517-2725.

Carpenter said while her daughter wasn’t interested in getting a 4.0 grade point average like her sister Shelbi, who is now a teacher at Chapel Hill Elementary School, she did have aspirations of going to college.

“I was an educator and the one thing I got frustrated about as a high school teacher and principal was that just about every scholarship was tied to grades or athletics. Our scholarships are awarded based on the heart. I make them do an essay and tell me how they are going to make a positive impact on the world,” Carpenter said.

Because Skylar was so good with the elderly, Carpenter said she always thought her daughter would go into the medical field. After Skylar died, her daughter’s friends told her Skylar always said, “God has a plan for you and he’s gonna use you. I hope God can use me, too. I wanna change the world.”

“That was her thing and so many things like that came up that led us to starting this ministry,” Carpenter said. “The Skylarship Foundation was the first arm that we started immediately.”

Skylar played softball growing up and her cousins are big in the sport, so a benefit tournament was a natural first step for the ministry that now includes a communications arm led by Carpenter, who left her 25-year education career to launch the ministry. She is a Christian motivational speaker who takes her message to speaking events all over the country. There is a field missions arm that meets physical needs locally and around the world. There are also plans to build a Christian-focused retreat and conference center in the future.

Carpenter said she named the ministry after a prayer that got her through the dark days that followed Skylar’s death.

“After the wreck, it was really hard to function physically, so I leaned in on the Lord,” she said. “Every morning before my feet hit the floor I would say, ‘Lord, thank you for bringing me one day closer to that reunion with Skylar.’ The best advice I got was from a lady who also lost a child. She said, ‘Grieve. Grieve hard, but grieve forward.”

Since starting One Day Closer Ministries in 2014, Carpenter said she and her husband, David and daughter, Shelbi, have all learned surprising lessons from Skylar, whose Christian faith was unwavering and whose mission was to befriend and defend the outsiders.

One of the students who attended a candlelight vigil for her said, ‘Why Skylar? She’s the only one that was ever nice to me,’ Carpenter said.

Stories shared in a memory book her classmates made for their devastated principal included one of when Skylar was in elementary school.

“It told how she had punched a kid in the face, but that kid was a bully who had been making fun of a special needs kid,” Carpenter said.

Another student shared that his favorite memory of Skylar was when she hid in his locker and jumped out and threatened to continue every day until he agreed to come with her to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings at school.

“He said he went and it was because of FCA that he came to know the Lord,” Carpenter said. “Those are the things that are embedded in me. It’s all about relationships. It has nothing to do with being behind stained glass windows inside a church building. She changed all of us.”

Lynda Stringer is a Mount Pleasant-based freelance writer and the owner of Stringer Media. Contact her at Lynda.Stringer@outlook.com.