You were that girl who during the summer had to leave the pool early to get ready for practice, the one who turned down weekend trips to the lake, the one who couldn't stay out late on a Friday night because you had games early Saturday morning.
Most notably, you were that girl who everyone thought was absolutely insane for sacrificing pretty much your entire summer for a sport. In retrospect, you may not know what having an actual summer is like. For years now you probably began tournaments the weekend after school ended and played up until early-mid August, with maybe a weekend off here and there.
To the outsider looking in, this concept of spending every single weekend at a tournament is just baffling. The idea that typically your entire family would pack a cooler full of goodies just to spend the weekend at a softball field was just unheard of.
SEE ALSO: Dear Softball Parents, Thank You
Even crazier, this idea that you would travel sometimes across the country just to play in a national tournament was definitely cool, but still not understood by the “non-softball family”. To those “softball families” and trust me you know who you are, this is not only normal, but spending your weekends any other way would be strange. For those girls whose summers have been consumed with softball, here are some things that you can relate to.
First of all, chances are that all of your family vacations have been planned around softball for the last several years. You may have had to wait until the week before school to take a family vacation, or better yet turn an away tournament into a family vacation. Whether you were at PONY Nationals in North Carolina or lucky enough to be at the ESPN Wide World of Sports in Disney for USSSA Nationals, the sunny states provided a perfect opportunity to go a little early or return home a few days later in order to spend some days at the beach.
With away tournaments comes the horror of hotel beds. They may look great and dandy, but after sleeping on them for a few nights you feel yourself longing for the comfort of your own bed. Additionally, if you happen to have siblings, chances are you didn’t have the bed to yourself. If you were really unlucky you spent a night or two on the rollaway cot after your brother or sister had a temper tantrum about sharing a bed.
Away tournaments go hand-in-hand with long hours spent driving to the various tournament locations. That being said, you’re most likely a pro at sleeping in the car.
At longer tournaments, you typically didn’t have enough uniforms to avoid doing laundry. The clan of mom’s from your team went down to the laundry room together with a sharpie and piles of smelly uniforms, most likely using every washer and dryer that the hotel had available. Afterwards there were texts exchanged when someone had the wrong sliders or pants brought back to their room. In a way this was like the social events for the moms, something that they seemed to take pride in doing. I have never seen a group of people so excited to do laundry.
Regardless of what you do though, you will always have those mornings where you are running around like a mad-woman because you are missing one sock. You run up and down the stairs swearing under your breath that the dryer ate your sock, when reinforcements are called in: your mom helps you look. Come to find out it was stuck inside of your sliders the entire time. Let’s face it we’ve all been there.
If your team was anything like mine, if there was spare time before games there would be a braiding train going on behind the dugout. It is an unspoken rule of softball that your hair must look good in order for you to play well.
Along with the braiding comes the bows. Now I'm sure all of you are thinking of that one girl on your team who was notorious for coming with cute and exotic bows for the entire team. Granted she stayed up until 1 a.m. the night before making them, but hey, you looked good. Thank God for her.
Unfortunately, your uniform is awkward and leaves you with some pretty funky looking tan lines by the middle of the summer. During the week when you can actually find some time to hangout with friends by the pool there is constant talk about how distinct your tan lines are. We all know that our arms look like we spent a year in Mexico, but the rest of our body looks like it could use a little more Vitamin D.
Walking into games with your team behind you, bucket in hand, hearing your catcher drag her body bag across the pavement and the metal cleats pound against the pavement is such a comforting mixture of sounds.
When warmups start your music starts too. I mean what’s a talented team without an on point playlist? Of course we all have that one old Jesse McCartney song that finds it’s way into the play list amongst the pump up songs that even get a laugh and little smile from the opposing team.
God forbid you have to pee. Spending the entire day at the fields it is likely that you will have to go to the bathroom at least once, if not multiple times. On average softball complexes don’t have the most luxurious bathrooms. It is actually pretty common for the only thing available to be a porta-potty. I know you all have had the awful experience of rushing to the porta-potty in between games. You have a lot of factors working against you with the porta-potty alone: lack of space, the foul stench, overall unsanitary, lack of toilet paper.
Now factor in that you may have already played two games, you have dirt in places you should never have dirt, you’re sweating like an animal, and your sliders are actually glued to your legs. Even if you manage to get your uniform off, the chances of you getting it back on properly are slim to none, leaving you with a massive wedgie for the next game.
All of these things probably made you laugh a little reflecting back on all of the little things that you love about summer ball. Regardless of how crazy people may think you are or how many parties and other various events you missed because you were out of town or had games, there’s a reason that you did it for so many years. All of these little relatable things are those reasons, because it has given you some of the best memories.
