It’s My Imagination

Softball Tournament – Keller Texas

The alarm went off at 5 a.m. yesterday, Saturday, and our day began.  Do you know just how hard it is to get up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday?!   After getting dressed and getting everything loaded into the van, we were off to Keller, Texas and a day filled with nothing but fastpitch softball.   Somehow, my daughter’s team is somewhat unlucky in the draw and seems to always get assigned to the first game of the morning, 8 a.m.  Since it was a 75 minute drive from our house, and she needed to be their 45 minutes before game time for warm ups, we had to get out of our nice warm beds at 5 a.m.

I had directions from both Google and Mapquest (amazing how they don’t send you the same direction), and for some reason, we left our TomTom in the drawer at home.  Thankfully, we only had to make 3 u-turns before arriving at the sports complex.  We had been told that it was located in the middle of nowhere, but it turned out to be a nice area with plenty of shops and restaurants.

The 8 a.m game was horrible.  The temperature was 40 degrees with high winds and it was just starting to get light out.   The girls were all very cold and had trouble making plays and getting their bats around to the ball.  They wound up losing and it was a game to forget, right away.  The next game was at 10:20 and was better.  It was slightly warmer, 45, but still quite windy.  Having the sun up was a plus though and the girls seemed to be more awake.  They made some good plays and managed to win, boosting their spirits.

At 1:00, they played their third game during the warmest part of the day.  I think it may have reached 50 and the winds were a bit calmer.  A few of the girls even played without their sweats and hats on.  They played a team that was very experienced and older, a team that should have been playing in an older age tournament.  Amazingly though, our girls held their own and it was a very close game, one of the best I’ve seen our girls play.  Had it not been for some bad throws and a couple of missed catches, they could have won.  In the end, they lost 7-4, but were pleased with their performance.

The final game was against a team that they’ve played against several time.  This team has come to represent everything that is bad on sports, unsportsmanlike conduct form not just the coaches, but the players themselves.  They are cocky and rude, even calling our players names.  I look forward to the day when our girls can be victorious over them, but, unfortunately, it was not to be last night.

Our day ended with 1 win and 3 losses, but I saw great things from our team.  This was only the 2nd tournament for them to participate in together, they have used these as growth experiences and it shows.  They have one more tournament in a couple of weeks and then will take some time off before regrouping in February.  I do believe that once they get a few kinks worked out that they will be a strong team and even more enjoyable to watch, win or lose.