Girls Select Fastpitch Softball

I have two daughters, ages 12 and 15, who play select fastpitch softball. The official season has begun and my youngest daughter's team played this past weekend. Unbelievably, the weather has allowed us to play the past four weekends in a row. Now that is very unusual in that we live near Seattle and four weekends with no rain in February and March is just about unheard of. This was the official start of the real season and my youngest daughter's team took second place. Her team is a first year 14. They played the championship game against a second year 14 team, so taking second place was great.

I love softball season. There's not much better than watching my daughters play on a beautiful warm, sunny day in the spring or summer. So far we've played in weather with temperatures in the 40's and 50's. That's not unusual this time of year. Parents, at least, get to sit in the stands all bundled up, while the girls count on under armor to keep them warm. During these early spring days it doesn't help a whole lot.

My first Hub Pages will be about the softball season.

We are full swing into softball season and we've had to weather some horrible weather! We had a quick weekend travel tournament about 3 hours away from home where my younger daughter's team played at 8 pm Friday night, 3 games on Saturday, and 2 games on Sunday. My other daughter played 3 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

Let me tell you about the game Friday night. The weather is the only thing I believe most of us will remember. With the wind chill factor, it was in the 20's! You could stand up holding a blanket against you and let go. The wind was so fierce it kept the blanket pinned to your body.

As my daughter wrote in a school paper, "The bad thing about the game was the weather. The temperature was below freezing and the wind was almost unbearable. I can't really explain how I felt. All I know is that it was the coldest weather I had ever played in. We came out with the win which was good but by then it didn't really matter."

That about sums it up! As someone who has sat, and is willing to sit through some pretty miserable weather, all I wanted to do was leave. It was no fun. And this was with plenty of clothes on and a blanket! The poor girls.

Now on the other hand, last weekend I got a sunburn! Really! A sun burn, not a wind burn. It was in the high seventies and it was gorgeous! the perfect softball weather. The next day we had typical northwest weather so of course by this weekend, the little bit of color I got on my arms will have dissipated! Such is life.

So, isn't April supposed to be spring, and along with spring, isn't the weather supposed to be warm? Well we played a 9 am game in the rain and 30 degree temperatures. People in California would think we were nuts, I'm sure. The night before there was 2 to 8 inches of snow in the area. My younger daughter's team got rained out but my older daughter's team played - another miserable day. They finally called the tournament after we finished our first game, which at least we won, 11-1. We'll try again tomorrow. This is getting ridiculous. Please come to stay, spring and sunny weather, or if not sunny, at least not rainy - and temperatures at least in the 50's would be nice.

My 12 year old daughter plays select softball and this year, after not playing for several years, is playing Little League as well. The reason being is our district hosts the Juniors World Series, and in order to get to the World Series all we need to do is win Districts. This is opposed to winning Districts, State and Nationals. Quite the shortcut for the host team.

My older daughter got to do this a couple years ago. In softball, there's nothing quite as exciting as Little League playoffs. And when you have the World Series in your backyard, you do what ever it takes to try to play in it. My younger daughter hates playing Little League because the competition is just not what it is in select ball.

We have a strong team - we haven't lost this season, and not only that, we've outscored the teams we've played by nearly 120 runs. I'm not kidding. We've scored 120 runs more than our competition. This is quite an accomplishment no matter how you look at it. Now, with this statistic, we should be a shoe-in to win Districts, sending us to the World Series, should we not?

Well, I thought so. But now I'm starting to have doubts. I'm getting nervous. My daughter, who is normally an excellent pitcher, one of the best in the state at her age, is in a funk like we've never seen. I'm thinking it's mental, because nothing physical is wrong. She's still not allowing runs in Little League, but she's just not herself. And our number one pitcher, who is one of the best in state, won't be playing when we play Districts. She will be playing with her select team. Our third pitcher is quite good too, just not as dominating as my daughter (when she's herself) and our other pitcher. She and my daughter were clearly the two number one pitchers before my daughter went into her melt down. She can't explain it to us.

I hope my daughter gets her groove back soon. We need her.