Kendall Kotzmacher returned from college to her home state on Sunday to attend a Sophie Cunningham rally in Minneapolis.
She made the trip home to Minnesota just more than year after her final high school softball game in the state ended in a championship defeat to a transgender pitcher, who also hit a double to help win the game.
Kotzmacher, who is set to play for Colorado Christian this upcoming year, stood alongside Riley Gaines, Michelle Tafoya and Jennifer Sey, as they led the the third rally in support of Cunningham in the span of one week. Counterprotesters had appeared the previous two rallies for Cunningham. But Sunday saw a different degree of agitation compared to the first two.
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Kotzmacher was caught right in the middle of it.
A pro-transgender protester at the rally allegedly approached with a megaphone and unleashed insults at the group. One remark was directed at Kotzmacher in front of her mother and sister.
“He had a megaphone and was just yelling everything about how awful people we are,” Kotzmacher told Fox News Digital. “At one point, I got told that I shouldve been aborted when I was younger.”
Kotzmacher said she had previously received hostile messages online after speaking publicly about competing against a transgender athlete. Sunday marked the first time she encountered that level of hostility in person.
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“Ive gotten so many hate texts, death threats, people commenting on my posts, all of that stuff,” she said. “So at this point, Im kind of used to it, but it was definitely weird for them to be able to hear it and be like, Oh, people are actually like this. Someone has enough to say this out loud to a person.
“They have no rebuttal to what were standing for,” she added. “They have nothing to go against what were trying to say, and so they just go back to calling us names.”
The confrontation allegedly grew more physical when Gaines arrived shortly before the game. Kotzmacher said Gaines had initially planned to attend the entire rally but delayed her appearance because of safety concerns.
Kotzmacher alleged police officers nearby did not intervene and said a male bystander started to push people around.
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“A man, just a bystander, had to push him out of the way while the cops watched all this happen,” she said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Minneapolis Police Department for a response.
Kotzmacher said she and her family took precautions before traveling into Minneapolis, including parking near the arena and making sure no one walked alone. Once she joined the larger crowd, however, s
