I can remember the first time I played softball but not the first time it became a part of my life. Until middle school, I was not aware that a sport called "softball" even existed or that I could play it. During summer vacation I can remember going to the park with my dad and my brother and my dad would pitch us balls and I would bat while my brother would field and vice versa. I don't refer to that as the start of softball for me though because it wasn't, but it kept my arm strength up and although when I got to middle school I was not the best one on the softball team I had the coach notice that I could throw so hard. I was put into the outfield since I didn't need a cutoff throwing in to the infield, something uncommon in middle school and to some extent high school softball.

The summer before high school I did a softball camp. Simply put, on the varsity team I wanted to get played. I can remember walking on to the field the first day of the camp and meeting the coach who was also a coach on the varsity team at SJHSc. Unknown to me when I signed up, I was one of the oldest there by two years, but I quickly realized that I had three things against me because most of the girls there had done the camp in the past, played on the same travel teams in the fall and summer, and also knew how to play nearly every position. I now know that age does not necessarily insure that you are better than others at something because that first day of camp I was put into the group with ten year olds. Why? Because the girls closer to my age were that much better, because I did not know how to bunt, because I could not throw as accurately as them from short distances, because I was not as fast as them; but having younger girls be better than me at a sport that I loved so much caused me to actually put in effort, and by the end of the week I was in the same group as the older girls.

I learned a lot mechanically about softball during that camp, but a comment the coach made about one of the player's attitudes has stuck with me, "On my varsity team I will always play somebody in a game who works hard in practice to develop their skills and has a positive attitude about it, over somebody who is the best player but has a bad attitude." I now know what he was talking about from playing on the varsity team for the past three years.

The first team meeting we had for the softball team was in November. There's something about walking into a room, that's full of upperclassmen, and at the head of a table sat the head coach flanked by possibly the two most terrifying seniors, Alex and Isabella, who also conveniently happened to be the captains. After realizing they were the captains, I thought about leaving but then thought again about the reason I was there and decided to stay. In that meeting we covered the basics: what position do you play, how long have you been playing, possible team trip to Florida, winter workout schedule. As soon as it started, it was over. Of course, my first season on the team was not as easy as the meeting lets on.

I now know that nearly beheading your coach and captain by extremely hard but arrant throws is not the way to show anybody how hard you can throw. From the first preseason practice, there was no question that I could throw the hardest from the greatest distance (albeit possibly lease accurate in the beginning); and I can remember many times having to throw with Alex who threw as hard as I did, because the team philosophy was that you needed to catch a throw that would be the equivalent of one of your throws without flinching. While anybody who's caught for Alex before can vouch for it being difficult to not flinch from her throws, I tried my hardest not to, even when my hand was pulsating from the power of her throws and I could barely move it.

I can remember my freshman year having team bonding time with Isabella; how every practice when we stretched as a team she would ask everyone how their day was or if they had gossip to share. But Isabella and Alex differed in the way they went about the team as captains because Alex approved of very few people and if they were bad they were bad but Isabella would work with people to make them better.

One practice I can remember working on batting with Alex and it wasn't really working for me. I couldn't understand anything she was explaining and she was getting frustrated at me for not listening to her. It was then that Isabella came over. "Alex, what are you doing? Just stop. Go back to practice." Alex walked back to practice dejected. Isabella turned to me as Alex walked away and mumbled something about Alex under her breath. Then out of nowhere she said "Can I see you swing?" I stared at her motionless, now holding the bat. She said something I thought to myself, as she repeated "Swing…" I pick up the bat and prepared to swing. She walked over to me and having changed her mind, told me not to swing just yet as she re-positioned me, while singing the entire time, until I stood exactly as she wanted. When she finished she backed up and told me again to swing. I swung and she smiled in response.

From that moment, I knew that small things that captains do can help anyone improve as a player, and I stored that in the back of my mind for future use. From freshman year to junior year I made my way from riding the bench to having the highest batting average and being a starting player. Junior year I took on the challenge of a new position: catcher. Learning a new position and a challenging one at that took me nearly the entire season to master, but what was even more important for me was that softball was something I could now relate to and relate things to.

As cliché as it sounds, Hall of Fame by the Script summarizes how I feel about softball and what I have learned from it when it says "Dedicate yourself and [you're gonna] find yourself". Softball taught me that you often have to work for what you really want and it also helped me learn things about myself along the way. But the base path may end for me this year as I round third coming home, because even in division III schools softball is competitive, and while I may have made softball sound like my life, it's not.