It was 2015, on a stupidly humid day in June, while I was living in Lufkin, Texas. I was nine years old, and my baseball-obsessed Dad was over the moon excited to meet up with a bunch of our extended family to go watch their favorite baseball team play in Houston. I couldn’t care less. I really was never into watching sports growing up (and I’m still not), but I was young and excited to do something with my cool extended family. Little did I know that I was about to fall in love with something that would affect the next six years of my life.
 During that game of baseball, my dad started explaining the game to me and what each play meant. I knew a ton of my friends loved baseball and softball, so I was a little interested since I wanted to fit in and understand what they were always talking about. In Texas, softball and baseball were among the sports that many people started playing at a very young age and were taken very seriously from an early age. That day, I decided that I wanted to give it a shot.
The first team I ever started on was called the “Xtreme,” and it was just a little rec league team that all the competitive kids joined to practice. I was ten and in fifth grade, and I was so excited to start doing what everyone else was, and while I was so excited to learn a new sport, I sucked. There was even one boy in my class who told me I sucked, but I just laughed and told myself I would show him and everyone else just how good I would become.
I had dreams of playing competitively there, but I then moved to Oregon right before sixth grade and didn’t have the skills nor the confidence to play competitively, so I stayed in rec leagues, and I loved it. It was, by far, my favorite sport. I loved playing games with the friends I’d made on my team, and I loved learning more and more about it to improve. Then, everyone got sent into quarantine, and my eighth-grade year of softball was canceled, and this was the first time that I thought I was done playing altogether. I knew I wasn’t skilled enough to play competitively, and rec leagues weren’t an option going forward, so I thought about switching and playing another sport instead. I was then convinced by one of the coaches to come back and play for my high school, which just so happened to be a melting pot of all the major competitive teams.
When I showed up, I was surprised they let me stay on the team. I was TERRIBLE. I basically had to start over completely, brand new, and learn everything again, and when I think about some of the things I did while playing freshman year, I get horrible second-hand embarrassment. Nevertheless, my coaches believed in me, and I was determined to become a decent player, so I practiced and worked as hard as I possibly could to get on the roster and play.
My coaches recognized my work, and some of it even started to pay off for me. But once sophomore year came around and my opportunities grew to keep getting better at softball, I started playing for other club teams and was so excited to keep playing. But unfortunately, I realized that I might’ve joined the game a little too late. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed like I could never be good enough to play in games, and when I was given opportunities to play, I would say to myself.
“Don’t screw up. This is your only shot”
And low and behold, I would always find a way to screw up. After a while, it all just felt like a waste of time, and I began to hate everything about the sport. The fire in me had died, and I was breaking down after almost every game and practice. I just couldn’t take it anymore. By the beginning of my junior year of high school, I was completely done. I told all my coaches I was quitting to “focus on school,” and I had no plans of ever returning, yet when my dad tried to sell off all my old things, I just couldn’t get rid of any of it.
“Who knows,” I would say. “What if I go back?”
Even though I told everyone I knew that I was done with softball and how much it had drained me, I switched schools my senior year, dusted off all my old gear, and joined the school’s softball team. This time, though, I went in with the mindset that I was only there to have fun and just do the best I could do. I had more friends on this team, and I had so much fun for the first few months, but once again, I found myself in the same trap I’d always run into eventually. I could never perform as well as I wanted, and this time, my new coach had a terrible habit of screaming at people when they didn’t perform well, which absolutely did not help. I found myself in the same place I was sophomore year of high school, the only difference was this time I didn’t care as much since I knew I just had to stick it out for a year.
Now that I am officially done with softball, I know that I can blow a sigh of relief that I never have to go back to anything. Of course, being in softball during those years taught me so much about myself and lessons I still carry with me every day, and a part of me misses the girl who fell in love with softball after watching it for the first time at nine years old. But, while it was such a formative time for me, and I’m forever grateful for the people I met, memories I made, and lessons I learned when playing, I’m more than happy to leave it in my past for now.