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"An Ode to my Daughter"
As the preseason conditioning and softball skills camps wind down, I wanted to use the time to reflect about my daughter as she tries out for her high school team as a freshman. I am sure there are other parents wondering many of the same things: Will she make the cut? Do you think she will be on the Varsity or JV team? How much playing time will she see? What position? Etc. These thoughts alone started me on a journey down memory lane, a path I am sure many of us travel on at sometime or the other, especially father/coaches.
To say my daughter's trek through her softball career was that of an underdog would be an understatement to say the least. She has always been, let's say, "under-sized" with no remarkable traits, with the exception of one, eye-to-hand coordination. Additionally, she was left-handed, which is viewed as a negative trait by many. I assisted her first coach when she played her first season as a five year old. God, where does ten years go! After assisting a couple of years, I decided to be a head coach, a role I really cherished. With that role came the natural pressures that exist between the father/coach and their daughter/player. Add to that, the need to be realistic about you daughter's abilities on the softball field. It is easy to see how objectivity can go askew. So was the case in how I viewed my daughter.
I think it is always the desire of a coach to be viewed as both fair and unbiased. For the most part, I believe that was the standard that I adhered to over the years as a youth coach, except in the case of my own daughter. It was always easier to split her playing time with some of the lesser skilled players on the team. I never really viewed her as front line player. It took years for this notion to be dispelled by coaches other than myself. Now she plays travel ball and is on the threshold of making her high school team.
I think she epitomizes the term "late bloomer". No, she is not a giant in stature and as size goes she will always be in the front row of the team picture. I think the important term here is "team picture" because she will most likely make her high school team and maybe even the varsity. Over night she grew stronger, hitting balls farther, throwing harder and running faster. All of this in spite of her father or is it? Just the other day I heard her tell one her teammates how she learned to catch fly balls with two hands, "It is easy when you live on top of a large hill and it is a long way to the bottom, and dad tells you ten catches in row before we quit". I have yet to here her lament about the time I had her eighth grade club coach bench her for the entire game because of what I viewed as a lack of hustle the previous game. Or the time I yelled at her for swinging on a 3-0 count with bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh with our team down one run. She grounded out to end the game but responded with an, "I was going for the win and not a tie".
In closing, I would like to thank my daughter for all of the hard work she has put in to get were she is today and for being the person she has always been. I won't tell her of the times that I here onlookers say, "Watch that Lil Number 5, she's a hitter". As a coach, I wouldn't want her to rest on her laurels. Good luck to all of the girls and parents as they move forward to tryout week.
