A prayer vigil outside Cooper University Hospital drew family, friends, teammates and neighbors for 12-year-old Xavier Taylor on Saturday night as he remained in extremely critical condition after a baseball accident during pregame warmups earlier in the week.

The vigil gave the community a chance to stand with the Taylor family at the moment they have been dreading since Tuesday, when Xavier was warming up with his Maple Shade Youth Baseball team and was hit in the back of the neck by a baseball thrown by another player. He collapsed, went into cardiac arrest and was airlifted to Cooper, where he is still on a ventilator.

The reason so many people came back out after the hospital visits and phone calls is that Xavier has become more than the boy in the ICU. He is a pitcher, a shortstop and the player whose number 6 now showed up on shirts worn by supporters outside the hospital. Many others wore T-shirts that said “Shade Strong” with his name across the front, a sign of how quickly a local youth baseball injury turned into a wider show of support.

Greg Taylor said the family is staying at Xavier’s bedside and that their youngest son brought a pair of shoes for Xavier to wear when he comes home. “Our youngest son brought a pair of shoes for him the first day we got here and said these are for Xav when he comes home because he's walking out of here dad,” he said. That hope is carrying the family through a case that has already tested everyone around them, and through the uncertainty of a child who remains critically ill.

Greg Taylor also said he spoke to the teammate who threw the ball and does not blame him. He called it a freak accident, a hard detail to absorb when the result has been cardiac arrest and a ventilator in an intensive care unit. But that response also explained the tone at the vigil: prayer, not anger, and a family trying to hold the team together even as it waits for movement that has not yet come.

Support has reached far beyond South Jersey. Lisa Duvall said people she knows in Iowa, Nebraska and Texas are sending messages and showing support for Xavier, while Sarah DiPhillipo said the turnout reflected how deeply the Taylor family has touched others. “It just shows how much the Taylor family has impacted everybody, but I really believe that just prayer and faith and unity has really brought everyone together,” she said. Greg Taylor put it more bluntly: “It's undeniably the reason why we're able to support each other and support Xavier in whatever he needs.”

For now, the next development is still medical, not ceremonial. Xavier remains in extremely critical condition on a ventilator, and the unanswered question is whether the care around him can bring back the activity his family is praying for, or whether this vigil becomes only the first of many gatherings around a boy whose life changed in seconds.