But the biggest victory came earlier in the day.

Mia Curtin won the battle of her life with a rare brain condition and returned to school Monday morning. She celebrated the accomplishment by throwing out the first pitch at Dunkirk’s playoff game later that day.

“We’re so excited you’re here,” Dunkirk head coach Frank Jagoda said to Mia before taking the field.

Mia is an 8-year-old student at Dunkirk Intermediate School. She was diagnosed with Rasmussen’s Encephalitis, a rare neurological condition that affects only one side of the brain. The rare chronic disease most often occurs in children under the age of 10.

Mia Curtin delivers the first pitch before Dunkirk’s opening playoff game, flanked by her parents Kim, left, and Jim, right.

Players on both teams lined up along the base lines as Jagoda shared Mia’s story with everyone in attendance. After Jagoda finished speaking, Mia and her parents, Jim and Kim, walked near the halfway point between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, wearing purple shirts that read “Motivation for Mia” across the front with a picture of her smiling face.

As Mia stepped toward home plate and fired the pitch, the Marauders set off purple smoke through the air to match the color she and her family and many supporters donned Monday and throughout her journey.

Mia’s first pitch was thrown to Dunkirk catcher Donny Jackson, who later caught four shutout innings behind the plate in the playoff game. Jackson hugged Mia after receiving the pitch and handed her the ball.

“I was so nervous I was going to drop it,” Jackson said. “It was amazing, probably one of the best things I’ve done.”

Coach Jagoda was the one who asked the Curtin family if Mia would throw out the first pitch. Jagoda, a Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame coach at Dunkirk for nearly 30 years, coached Mia’s father, Jim, and her uncle, Mike, as high school baseball players at Dunkirk.

Mia Curtin receives the ball from Dunkirk catcher Donny Jackson (14) after throwing the first pitch at Dunkirk’s playoff game Monday.

“The Curtin family has been around Dunkirk baseball for over 20 years now. They have always been a huge supporter of us,” Jagoda said. “… We just thought that this would be the right thing to do.”

Like her family, Mia Curtin has always loved sports, from hockey, softball, swimming and gymnastics, Mia Curtin was as active as any young kid could be.

Just over a year ago, Mia was competing in hockey and swimming when her parents began to notice a foot drop. “We thought she just injured herself,” Mia’s father, Jim Curtin, said.

But it turned out to be much more than a common sports injury. Last June, Mia woke up unable to move her left arm. Jim Curtin described how the family spent many days in the hospital, as Mia underwent many tests, with no answers.

The family followed up with a neurologist in Rochester and scheduled an MRI, but before she made it to the appointment, Mia began suffering seizures on the left side of her body. She was hospitalized again for “many more days” and took various medications to stop the seizures. After a few months, however, the seizures returned.

“It got to a point where they were so constant, it just became way too detrimental. She could barely do normal everyday tasks,” Jim Curtin said.

Jim Curtin later described how an extreme surgery called a right hemispherectomy was “the only thing that they have found” to treat the seizures.

Mia underwent the surgery April 21, approximately one year after the symptoms first arose. “So far, she’s seizure-free,” Jim Curtin said. “She’s slowly regaining strength and recovering basic movements. … She’s working on skills to adapt.”

Moving forward, Mia will endure physical therapy and speech therapy to help regain strength on the left side of her body. She has already regained enough strength to walk without much assistance, climb stairs, dribble a basketball, and as Monday showed a large crowd in attendance, even throw a baseball. She enjoys pitching, but hopes one day to take the ice again for her favorite sport to play, hockey.

“We just wish her the best. We just hope that everything works out for her and she will continue to work hard to get back to the things she loves,” Jagoda said.

Of his daughter, Jim Curtin said proudly, “She’s still rocking and rolling and persevering. She’s not stopping.”