I’ve never not played softball, not until last year. From my first empowering, albeit small, hits off the tee, I knew that softball would be my sport. I was only five years old, yet I was immediately taken with the orange-tan dirt that stained my cleats and the sound my glove made when I caught the ball.
For the next seven years, I played softball practically year-round, my skill and the level of the teams I played on steadily increasing as I found my stride. The summer of seventh grade, I joined a team based out of a town 45 minutes away from my house and quickly realized that this was a side of softball I had never experienced before.
There was only so far I could go with hopes and athleticism. Finding myself behind my peers for the first time playing softball, I was lost. The curse of a perfectionist: tears and slammed helmets plagued weekends in Stockton and Sacramento. I just couldn’t figure it out. This was the best team I’d been on, and we were heading to the highest level of softball nationals, but for the first time in my life, I hated it.
On the car ride home, I would more often cry than chatter away about my hits. I would feel my heart fluttering between my ribs as I struggled to breathe after I walked another batter. For the first time ever, softball felt like an obligation.
I stared up at the dark ceiling of the hotel room, draining the precious minutes of sleep before my 5 a.m. alarm would ring to leave for the field the next morning. My panic slowly rose. I needed to be asleep half an hour ago.
I had never hated the sport like I did then. Some part of me wouldn’t even admit that sad truth to myself. I told myself that I still loved softball, because how could I not? It was intrinsic to my life.
I wasn’t playing well, we were losing, and I knew exactly what my teammates thought of me. I never even considered quitting until I tried to remember when the last time I had fun was—I couldn’t. I hadn’t enjoyed the sport any time in my recent memory.
The season ended with me sobbing in the dugout, and a plane ride leaving San Diego an hour after our last game ended. I switched teams, but that summer drained away the last of the joy I felt playing the sport.
My new team didn’t last long, but I played better and stronger—yet I still didn’t find the happiness in each of my hits as I had before. After the fall season, I stopped playing. Perhaps an attempt to convince myself that this consistency in my life wasn’t gone forever, or maybe just a rationale, I told myself this was development time. Softball wasn’t going away.
I will play again soon.
I’ll focus on improvement first.
Needless to say, the weeks and months slipped by, and the hole softball left in my heart was filled by friends, other sports, moving, and traveling. But the puzzle pieces of my new life missed the sport I dedicated hour after hour to, the sport that consumed my weekends and weeknights and brought me people my life wouldn’t be the same without.
It’s been over a year since I stepped off the dusty and weed-ridden field with the uncertainty of playing softball resting heavy in my heart. FHC softball will be different, I already know that, and for the first time since middle school, I’m brightly anticipating softball season. I’m thankfully rediscovering the same joy softball brought me as a child, now in the form of a sport and team different from those I’ve known before.
The rules are the same. I still know how to play. Softball doesn’t change.
I just hope I don’t lose my joy again.
