Softball Sisters: Addie And Tenley Hardin Share The Field For One Season
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by Janice Penix
Sisters Addie and Tenley Hardin have played softball since they were five years old. Both were standout athletes in the Johnson County Girls Club league, the Lamar Youth Association and on multiple travel teams.
Their parents, Adam and Casey Hardin, have logged thousands of miles driving to ball fields around the state and spent countless hours coaching and cheering for their two daughters.
But the two sisters have never played together, on the same team, until this year.
Freshman Tenley joined Addie, a senior, as a starting member of the Lamar Lady Warriors for the 2026 season. It’s a dynamic their coach said has made both their sibling bond and their team dynamic stronger, despite the challenges.
“They’re really hard on each other, but at the end of the day, they’re going to go to bat for each other and support each other,” Lady Warrior Coach Haley Lyle said. “It’s very much one of those things where, ‘I can talk about my sister, but you can’t talk about or mess with my sister.’”
Sibling Rivalry
The girls say they are “very competitive” with each other.
Both have played the catcher position, so in her first year of high school softball, Tenley had to defer to her older sister, the veteran, and move to first base.
“Honestly, they’re the hardest on each other,” Lyle said. “They’re both very fierce competitors, and they both love whatever they do. And they put so much effort into it. Sometimes, if they feel like one is not doing to their standard that they feel they should, it sometimes will come out a little bit. But at the end of the day, I think that if anybody brought it up to them, they’d have the other one’s back.”
Addie and Tenley said playing together has come with both highs and lows, mostly from spending extended periods of time together.
“It’s definitely interesting,” Tenley said, laughing.
Addie agreed.
“It has its ups and downs, for sure,” Addie said. “With us being, I would say, so close in age, my friends want to hang out with Tenley, and I’m like, ‘Well, I want to hang out with you by myself. I don’t want my younger sister with me 24/7.’ And with us living at home together, I take her to school with me, we go to practice together, she comes home with me after practice … we’re with each other 24/7. So it’s like, you can say one little thing, and we just get aggravated at each other. We sit there and bicker back and forth.”
Do they describe their relationship as close?
“At times,” Addie said. “Obviously, we’re always going to be there for each other, but then at the same time, Tenley can get on my last nerves sometimes, and so I’m like, ‘Just get away from me.’ We bicker, and we yell, but then it’s fine because we just get it over it like that. We just have to get it out.”
Tenley agreed.
“Just because we spend so much time together, like a lot more than we used to, we fight a little bit more,” she said. “But if we’re apart for a little bit, then we’re good.
“But it’s fun, though, because we’ve never played together before, so it’s a new experience. And I think it’s good that we got to play together before she went to college.”
Addie was an All-Conference selection in her junior season and signed a letter of intent earlier this year to play collegiate softball at UA-Rich Mountain beginning this fall.
“It’s been especially good for my mom and dad, because they have always had to choose which games they’re going to go to,” Addie said. “With us playing travel ball, we didn’t always play at the same complexes on the weekends. So my mom would be like, ‘Dad’s coaching Tenley, so I need to go with Addie.’ Now they get to watch us play at the same time, same places, everything.”
Individual Strengths
Lyle has been part of Addie’s coaching staff for four years, the first three as an assistant coach and this year as head coach. She described the senior as a key part of the Lady Warriors’ success.
“She has probably one of the best softball IQs that you don’t see a lot in players,” Lyle said. “I am really going to miss her. She’s an overall great athlete. She’s a hard worker, a competitor, and someone I trust back there. We’ve had to battle this year, and I really love the way she stepped up in her senior year and has been a big, positive communicator. More so than she’s ever been.”
After her junior season, Lyle said she challenged Addie, who is one of just two seniors on the team, to embrace her role as a leader.
“That’s something that was a conversation we had last year, as a challenge,” Lyle said. “I told her, ‘You’re going to have to learn to lead differently than you ever have before. And I know that we communicate really well because I’ll look at her, and she’ll give me a sign like, ‘This is where the pitch needs to go,’ and we’re usually on the same wavelength. She sees things differently back there than I do.”
As her senior year has progressed, Lyle said Addie has continued to develop into a strong leader.
“She has stepped up to be a leader,” Lyle said. “I mean, everybody around here knows that she loves softball so much, and when she feels like someone’s not giving their 110%, it really bothers her. She has had to overcome that this year, by staying more positive in communicating in those situations. I’ve seen really big growth in her with that this year.”
Although as a freshman, Tenley isn’t one of the leaders on the team, Lyle said she has many of the same characteristics as her older sister.
“This is my first year coaching her in softball, but I’ve coached her in basketball, and they’re very similar, even if they don’t want to admit it,” Lyle said. “They are both very fierce competitors. Tenley’s the same as Addie. She’s going to give it the best of her ability, and if she feels like somebody’s not giving 100%, it eats at her.”
Although Tenley is the only freshman in the starting lineup, Lyle said she has proven her value to the team.
“She’s been really good, even as a freshman, stepping into some big roles this year,” Lyle said. “She’s been in some situations hitting-wise where we’ve got runners on, it’s a close ball game, there are two outs, and she had to figure out how to put the ball in play and get the job done.”
Lyle said Tenley has carried herself with humility throughout the season.
“I can think back to a game where she was so upset with herself because she said, ‘I’m a freshman in this spot, and I’m not doing what I need to do. And there are other people sitting over here that are older than me that might need to be out there,’” Lyle said. “She was in a similar situation recently where she had a huge at-bat. We had the bases loaded, and one or two outs, and she had been in that situation weeks before and it didn’t go well. But this time, she drove in two huge runs that were the difference in us winning that ballgame. So, she’s grown a lot as well.”
Shared Experiences
When Addie first started playing softball, Tenley was too young to play. Instead, she spent her weekends playing in the dugout, quickly accepting the sport as part of her life. As she grew up, her older sister’s friends felt much like sisters to her as well, considering the amount of time the girls spent together at the field.
“I was around it all the time when I was young,” Tenley said. “And since Addie played with almost all of the (Lamar) team, I’ve grown up around them. They’re pretty much like my big sisters.”
Lyle said she has had to learn the dynamics of coaching two sisters.
“It’s a lot the same as coaching any other girl,” she said. “You have to know their strengths, you have to know their weaknesses, and you have to know how to handle them and how to talk to them.
“Sometimes, if they are catting at each other, I don’t feel like I have to interject, because I know it’s just sisters getting it out. And a lot of times, they both kind of blow it off their own way. Both of them can come vent it at me, and give me all their frustration, and then they go on. I try to be that buffer between them, so that it’s not hurting the team.
“You’ve just got to know your girls. You’ve got to know the players and the best way to talk with them, and coach them up, and to do the right thing by them.”
Addie said she initially dreaded having to share her senior softball season with her sister, but the experience has turned out to be a good one.
“Once I figured out that I was going to be a senior and she was going to be a freshman, so we’d be playing together, I was like, ‘You have got to be kidding me,’” Addie said. “I did not want to play softball with my sister. But once it came down to it, it’s been fun. Because I’m about to leave to go to college, it’s given us more opportunities to do stuff with each other than what other siblings normally have.
“Not a lot of siblings get to play sports together and be on the same team, to play every single sport that they possibly can at the same time. It’s just been fun.”
Both sisters play volleyball and basketball for the Lady Warriors, in addition to softball, although Tenley competed with the junior high and Addie with the high school team.
Making Memories
Despite their initial reservations, the sisters said they are glad they had one final opportunity to play the sport they both love, together.
“I have to say I’m proud of her, and I’m happy that we got to play together,” Tenley said. “In the beginning, or two years ago, when we found out we were going to play together, I don’t think either of us liked the idea of it. But I think we grew around it. We realized that she was going to go to college far away, and we weren’t going to be able to see each other a lot. So, yeah, I’m glad I got to do it.”
Addie said she is proud of how her little sister has not shied away from the challenge of playing with older teammates.
“I feel like Tenley has definitely stepped up, being a freshman on varsity,” Addie said. “She’s batting six-hole right now, and she has just come in clutch a ton this year with some of her hits. It’s just the right timing. She’s been doing amazing this season playing first, digging up all those balls that have been thrown in the dirt, my somewhat wild throws from catcher to first.”
Coaching the two Hardin sisters has been “highly entertaining,” according to Lyle.
“It’s really been an adventure,” she said. “I am going to miss it.”
Read this story and others in the May 13 issue of The Graphic, available online and at businesses throughout Franklin and Johnson counties. Subscribe or donate here to support more hometown journalism.
Addie and Tenley Hardin
The Hardin Family
