Alyssa Doty has been carrying the Mission-Arlee-Charlo softball team with a strong bat and solid catcher’s mitt for years.

Last Thursday, the Bulldogs’ catcher carried the opponent, but she did it for all the right reasons.

In the fifth inning of MAC’s first game in a doubleheader with Plains-Hot Springs, the Trotters’ Shaira Caldwell slid into third base and hurt her ankle. The ball overthrown out of play and runners awarded a free base, Caldwell tried to get up to go home, but she couldn’t put any weight on her leg.

Rules prevent any coach or teammate from helping an injured player round the bases, but nothing in the rulebook says anything about an opponent stepping in.

Before anyone knew it, Doty scooped the injured Caldwell up and carried her toward home plate.

“I just kind of instinctively went up there and picked her up and brought her home,” Doty said.

The Charlo senior leaned over to let Caldwell tap home plate before the Trotters’ coaches helped the injured baserunner to the dugout.

“I honestly don’t even really remember walking up there, but I remember grabbing her and picking her up,” Doty said.

MAC coach Susan Weaselhead said the show of sportsmanship is just what she’s come to expect from her captain.

“All of a sudden I looked up and there she is carrying her,” Weaselhead said. “…You can’t beat that kind of stuff.”

Unbeknownst to Doty, this kind of thing has happened before at the collegiate level, like in 2008 when Western Oregon University’s Sara Tucholsky hit a walk-off home run but injured her knee rounding the bases. In a show of unparalleled sportsmanship, opposing players helped her around the bases.

Doty said she had never heard of Sara Tucholsky’s story, though, until after she performed the similar good deed.

“I had people telling me they’d shared something on Facebook just like it,” she laughed. “I had never heard of it.”