Softball

Winnie played her second year of softball last summer, and she even tried out pitching! We had a great season and won about half our games. Grandpa Scott and I coached again, and this year the girls chose the team name of "Mad Batters." I've tried to keep track of all the different color of City of Iona T-ball/pitching machine/softball shirts I've acquired over the years, and I hadn't yet had a purple one. So this year we were purple. 😅 I'm not sure what color we'll be next year, because I feel like we've basically covered everything. 

While we're on the tangent, Imma list them all here (in no particular order):

• red (Hogwarts Express)
• dark orange (Burninators)
• golden (Pancake Batters)
• gray (Screaming Goats)
• white (Stormtroopers)
• neon green (Base Invaders)
• forest green (Fantastic Beasts)
• turquoise (Bouncing Ferrets)
• royal blue (Order of the Phoenix)
• purple (Mad Batters)
• neon electric coral (seriously ... it burned your retinas) (Fire-Breathing Kittens)
• maroon (Pitch Perfect)

I guess we could always be brown, black or pink next year. 

Anyway, Winnie (and I) learned a lot and improved throughout the season. We had one mishap during the season when the girls were practicing sliding (we had one player who had missed an earlier practice where we focused on that skill and was reluctant to try it) on the grass before the game. One of our players' cleats got stuck in the grass, and she ended up tearing ligaments in her ankle. It was a rough lesson for me to learn; even though we've had the girls practice the same way many times over the years, just one accident like that can happen. Next time we run that drill, we'll either do it on the dirt or have the girls with cleats take them off and run in their socks so that can't happen.

I had implemented a reward system the previous season to encourage the girls to earn three outs in an inning rather than relying on the mercy rules of seven runs. The biggest prize was the opportunity to choose a color to dye Coach Grover's hair if they earned enough 3-out-innings during the season. Unfortunately, the team ended up just one inning short of achieving that goal, but they seemed to enjoy the socks, team sticker, pizza, creamies and other prizes. (I wasn't sure what I was going to do if they got to dye my hair ... we knew that Rebekah was getting married that summer, and I didn't want to have fire-engine red hair for the pictures.)

We wrapped things up with a party where we played lawn games (cornhole, lawn golf, etc.) at the north field (usually I call the reserve the picnic shelter, but they charge for that since I'm not a resident of Iona, so we just crossed our fingers that no one had it scheduled for that time and date) and had root beer floats. 

Winnie pitching during a game. The girls earned the striped socks by getting three outs in several innings.

Sliding into home.

Coach Grover and Coach Scott conversing before the start of an inning.

Winnie pitching.