Tournament Season

People say that laughter is the best medicine. Sometimes it is easier to laugh at your mistakes rather than to sulk about them. But that is something that has never really been easy for me to do, especially when it comes to softball.

Many people know that I play softball year round. Softball is my life, and I spend a lot of my time doing it. In August, I have tryouts, and then we have a couple fall tournaments in October. Then, we practice about once a week until we start our first indoor session at the Topsham dome. Once that begins, we typically have a game almost every Saturday night, if not two, starting January and going into February. Then, once that session ends, we start a second one that goes until school softball starts. Once school season ends, we begin practicing for tournament season. We play an average of 5 tournaments in the summer. The last tournament is usually in August, and once we finish that tournament, we typically have a week off then we have tryouts again for the next team.

As you can see, I spend a lot of my time improving and perfecting my skills. I play shortstop, so a lot of the balls that are hit come to me, so I have to be ready for anything at any time. I am typically successful with my fielding, but I make some mistakes, as does everyone else. But the hardest part about making mistakes is when you feel like the one play you messed up could have changed the game.

I was playing shortstop at one of our tournaments, and a ball was hit to me. Well, not exactly to me, but I know I could have stopped it if I were to dive. But, I didn’t, and it skipped into the outfield, causing the runner at third to score. Every time that I make mistakes like these, I always tell myself that I should have done better. In the end, we lost that game by one, knocking us out of the tournament. I could not help but think that if I had stopped that ball, we would have won.

It was highly frustrating to me to think that I could have prevented everything from happening. We could have gone all the way if it weren’t for my mistake.

I continued to be mad at myself, and that caused me to give attitude to everyone around me. Nobody else thought it was that big of a deal, but I made it seem much worse to myself than it was. Softball is one of the most important things in my life, and I hate when I mess up when I spend so much time playing it. I had a bad attitude all the way home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about everything I did wrong.

Looking back at situations like those, I realize that I should have just shaken it off and moved on. Everybody makes mistakes, and that’s okay. I know I am a very good fielder, but I can’t make them all, so I just need to work on shaking it off and telling myself to focus on the next play. I know that it is not just one play that makes a team win or lose, it is the combination of all of the plays made in the entire game that make the difference. Sure, I could have stopped that ball, but there were also other things that my team could have done in order to come out with a win, such as hit better.

Instead of having an attitude because I am mad at myself when nobody else is, I know that I should have laughed it off and gotten over it. My team has my back no matter what, and they know that it is okay to make mistakes and it happens. I should have just listened to my team and forgotten about the one bad play I made the entire game and focus on the next tournament to come.

Photo on Foter.com