I have played softball since before I can remember. The sport runs in my family’s blood. We bleed softball, eat softball, sleep softball… though it doesn’t come from the women in my family. Rather, it comes from the men. Fast-pitch softball was huge back in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, and both my dad and his youngest brother played on adult men’s softball teams. Many times I would be down at the field watching games, cheering for the “Fishbones” and asking my grandma to buy me snacks. Once I was old enough to start playing, I had the best support system and coaches around – namely my dad. Because playing ball was so important to the men in my life, they were sure to teach me everything I needed to know and get me the equipment I needed to play. My dad was the one who taught me how to throw, catch, field, and hit before I even joined a little league. Many days were spent practicing in the sunny, cloudy or windy weather.

Eventually, my family moved to Bad Axe, Michigan. My parents, my sister, and all of our pets made the long trek to our new home. I continued playing in little leagues over the summer months. It was clear to me that softball was something I loved to do. When fourth grade came around, so did the opportunity to become a pitcher. At the age of ten, our age bracket was that which introduced live pitching. Every girl at that age wants to be a pitcher. You’re the star of the show, after all! The spotlight is on you! But when I first began pitching, there were only four girls total on my team interested in the position, one of which was the coach’s younger sister. Unfortunately, the younger sister got a lot more time on the field pitching simply because her older sister was the coach. (Unfair, yes. Frustrating? Yes.) I proved my worth with my dedication to days of throwing a ball against the fence, doing wrist flicks and K’s. I was able to get myself put in a few games, throwing some of my first game pitches. It was amazing. Had my coach never approached me about being a pitcher that year, I would never have begun.

My time in the little league softball program at the uptown ball fields came to an end as I “graduated” into the older travel leagues. All of the girls who had been playing softball on different teams for years in my town were put onto two teams: Bad Axe Blue and Bad Axe Gold. (Bad Axe Public School’s colors are blue and gold. The team names were very original.) As a proud member of the Bad Axe Blue team for two years, my pitching skills improved tremendously. I was taken under the wing of the Bad Axe Varsity Softball coach and started practicing multiple times a week in a small gym, pitching countless balls and strikes and doing lots and lots of drills. This was something I did during the school year in between softball seasons, so when summer came around, I had crazy amounts of hours of practice under my belt. I was able to perform really well against teams from the surrounding areas in the county. I caught the eye of other coaches and a few umpires who acknowledged my talent and dedication to my position. A few coaches had voiced their jealousy, saying, “I wish I had you pitching on my team!” This was around age 13-14.

Middle school ended and high school began. Now I moved onto the Junior Varsity softball team at my high school. Right before the start of my freshman year, I made the decision to discontinue playing every other sport but softball. I said goodbye to volleyball, basketball, and track. I decided that I would rather be really, really good at one sport that I loved than divide my time among multiple sports that I didn’t enjoy as much. Softball became my whole life during high school. Hours spent during the week increased, the speed at which I pitched increased, and my enjoyment? Also increased. Deciding to dedicate myself to just softball is still one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

My relationship with Coach Don, the high school varsity coach, grew strained as he pushed me harder to make me into an even better pitcher. There were nights I went home from pitching practice crying because I was mad at him, mad at myself or mad that I couldn’t get my body to do what it needed to. I learned new pitches, new techniques, was sent to elite pitching clinic lessons in the city, and was bumped up to Varsity for tournaments as a freshman in high school (though I mostly sat the bench and pinch-ran for the catcher or pitcher. I did pitch once freshman year though, and a few times my sophomore year. Varsity tournaments were very cold as a JV player). I spent more time working hard to be the best I could than a lot of my peers, and it caused some tension between myself and my teammates. While they continued to play every other sport offered, they were baffled at my decision to only stick to softball. What they never realized is that I spent the entire offseason practicing my pitching nearly every single day a week while they played other sports. My JV pitching career was outstanding. A coach who came to work with the pitchers at Bad Axe told me that I had a lot of potential. The compliments I received from the adults around me and from some of my teammates, combined with the thrill of loving what I did, pushed me to always work harder.

JV made me realize even more so than before that my teammates depended on me to play the game. Without someone pitching on the mound, the game cannot go on; however, having a pitcher on the mound who is not throwing strikes is almost worse than having no pitcher. I began to realize that I needed to work hard to better my pitching for myself but also for my teammates. My pitching became just as much about them as it did me, and I always counted on their encouragement before every pitch, between innings, and when I was in tears from performing so terribly. I’ll never be able to repay them for being such amazing teammates.

Moving up to Varsity is really cool but really nerve-wracking. The pressure is on more than ever before to perform incredibly well at whatever position you’re playing. If you’re a pitcher, your ability to throw pitches that your opponents cannot hit defines your worth as a player. Still my practice time outside of the regular season increased with the addition of Saturday batting/pitching practices. My speed was recorded, my ball count written down, and my ability to locate pitches noted. I became the only pitcher for my grade level and competed with pitchers from around the county, some of whom had many more opportunities to get training from professionals and made me look like I didn’t know what I was doing. (I won’t say names because I don’t want to be petty, but I will say that I think it was unfair for one local school to recruit their players. I’m not bitter about it, though.)

I don’t play softball in college. In the beginning, it was so that I could focus on my studies, but now it’s because I don’t have the time to commit to the sport. It’s heartbreaking and upsetting, but I still stand by my decision to not compete in college. I miss it like crazy though. The cheering, the sunflower seeds, the eye black, the cleats and the sweat… seeing the softball players in uniform at my college reminds me of my glory days. It makes me think about just how much time and investment were sown into me by countless coaches, family members, friends, and my parents. Choosing to stop playing softball makes me feel terrible about the efforts of my coaches and support system and about the talent and joy I left behind. In high school, I knew that my softball career would end as I played the last inning of my senior year. I began to consider becoming a coach one day myself, whether for whole teams or for pitchers, and was delighted at the idea of being able to bring others up around me, yearning for the knowledge and experience I have but no longer use.

Just this past Friday, the dream of bestowing what others have given me onto others was realized. A coworker, much older than me, found out through a conversation about his daughter’s softball team (that he coaches) that I was a pitcher for many years. Long story short, he’s been looking for two years for someone to come and teach his daughter and the other pitchers on his team how to pitch. Neither he nor any of the parents of the girls know anything about pitching, and so couldn’t help their daughter’s. He asked me if I could perhaps give a little lesson on how to pitch to a few of the girls on his team, noting that the parents could pay me ten dollars per attendee. (I would have done it for free! As a broke college kid, I wasn’t going to say no to a little pocket cash, though.) I told him that I would absolutely love to do that, so at 4:00 on Friday afternoon, five girls arrived with ponytails, cleats, and gloves in hand, all 10-years-old, ready to learn from me. I was ecstatic. I finally had the chance to give these girls everything that had been given to me and help them realize their potential and their dreams. I would have a hand in helping them become the next amazing group of pitchers, and the feeling I got while seeing their improvement and progress just in a two-hour time block is something I’ll never forget.

After starting each girl off at the very beginning – gripping the ball – we moved onto wrist flicks, K’s, how to stand on the mound, closing your hips, watching your drag foot, and finally, working individually with me on the mound. Every single girl had the chance to spend 10-15 minutes with me, one-on-one, so I could help them put the motion together and work on their problem areas. The smiles on their faces as they threw strikes were so big and bright they could have replaced the sun. I was so proud of these girls for picking up what I had told them so quickly, and being able to teach them and invest in them as others had done for me was an amazing feeling that was fuzzy and warm (and not just because it was 88 degrees out).

The point is that I believe we so often are given infinite wisdom, knowledge, and experience by those around us in so many things, yet we forget that we are to give unto others what has been given to us. We sit with our wisdom on couches, in cubicles, and in break rooms and don’t remember to give the younger generation, our peers, or the older generation the knowledge we have. We don’t share our gifts and talents. They stay in us. But is the talent and knowledge doing us any good if we’re not using it anymore? No, it’s not. In giving that talent and wisdom to others, you give new opportunities to those around you. You give new life to the passions and dreams you have. I was poured into and invested in more than I’ll probably ever know by every single coach, friend, and parent when it came to pitching. I refuse to let their time and commitment to bettering me go wasted. I will give to these five girls and the others I meet the efforts that created the passionate pitcher I was two years ago. I will teach them everything I know, learn new techniques, practice pitching again myself, buy training equipment if that’s what it takes, and I will love doing it because, to me, there’s nothing better than seeing the smile on a girl’s face when she’s just thrown a perfect strike.