Key to Victory

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life

Hailey's Homer

C's Story
The Struggle in the Age of Specialization
Sports: My Anti-Bully

The Importance of Being Well Rounded
I Ain't Never Been Nothin' But a Loser

Fight Through the Night Together

If you've learned anything about me, you've probably gathered that I hate losing more than I love winning. After wins, I typically yuck it up with my players and their parents. I might talk to a player about something specific I saw or congratulate them for doing something great. We rarely have post-game talks after wins. 

Losses are another story. There's typically a lengthy post-game talk. I still might pull a player to the side and discuss something. More importantly, I usually have some introspection by myself, away from the team and even away from the other coaches. Typically, I start out mad about how bad we hit, then I will cuss myself for base coaching errors, and then I will typically open up the GameChanger App, (you can follow us at AO1 14U) walk myself through the play by play and check the box score.

After a thorough review of this second loss of pool play, before the next game, we have a pre-game talk. First, we discuss why we aren't hitting. We can't win if we can't score and losing 3-2 or 2-0 isn't any different than losing 13-2 or 20-0 because we aren't hitting well enough to make a difference. 

Then I bring something else up for discussion. We shouldn't be losing games with the defense we are putting on the field. From my perspective, it IS about our hitting performance, but it's also about how we are booting easy balls or making terrible routine flaws. More importantly, we are making these impossible plays on defense to keep us in the games and if we could just make the easy plays and put a few more balls into plays, we would win a lot more games.

I call it the razor's edge and this team rides it like no other. 

Let me give an example. It's the last inning and we are tied with two outs. We need to get this last out so we can get back to bat. Batter lays down a bunt, Hay charges, scoops up the ball and fires it a mile over our first baseman's head. Next pitch, runner steals and Key comes up to throw and we get the out. Except the field umpire calls safe because he claims Lindsey dropped the ball, which she didn't. We appeal the call and don't get it. Next pitch, runner executes a delay steal since our pitcher wasn't watching. Key throws a rocket, Hay puts down the tag but the runner cleats the ball out. That's the third time we should have this player out and we should be hitting. If I was the catcher, I'd be losing my mind, first at my own team and second at the umpires.

The base runner is feeling her salt and decides that she's going to continue to mess with Key, our catcher. She dances off the bag the next pitch, just begging to get thrown at. 

She dances too far and Key throws her out at third. 

Great play? Yea. We needed it. 

Routine. At least for this catcher. 

A few months ago, I am talking to a fellow coach and we are talking about pick off plays and what our catchers' throw-out percentage is against base stealers. 

When I gave him my guesstimate of 80%, he laughed. His default response was "well, the base runners at our level are too good to get thrown out like that."

I didn't argue. I don't know what kind of talent he refers to. All I know is what I've seen. I've seen Key hold players at first and third an entire inning because coaches are terrified of what she is capable of doing and does on a weekly basis, or they wouldn't fear her. 

Key, along with her pitcher and shortstop have consistently executed the old first-and-third baserunner steal pick off play to the point that it's become routine. It's so routine, we don't have a visit in the circle to talk about it. We don't even have a sign. If there's less than two outs, she's going to execute it and bait the runner at third to come home. If there's two outs, she's going to throw the runner out at second. I've seen them get both runners out at least three times. In terms of straight stealers being caught? It's gotta be around 90%. Teams don't even bother straight steals, anymore.

What I would give for people to have feared me as a player and keep them conservative. What I would give to have the talent to strike that kind of fear in other teams.  I've been able to do neither in my life. I'd be insufferable if I had. 

So as I sat and wondered how we were staying in games where we were being out-hit 7-2 or 10-5 or whatever, the same thing kept coming up. Other teams could not get free bases on us and when they tried, we got outs. That was all on Key. Key consistently makes these clutch, game robbing, desperation outs.....with the assistance of her teammates of course. We have girls who make circus plays all the time, my own daughter being responsible for a lot of them. None of them as asked to do it every game.

Without Lindsey at short catching those throw downs or Zay's rifle shot from right field, none of those outs happen. Still, catching the ball in that pressure cooker of a situation and catcher's gear is hard enough. Getting that tag down while blocking the plate and doing it consistently is something that few can do. In terms of a team, this team can do the impossible on the field, if they could just do the grind of routine fielding and hitting. 

On the flip side, Key's hitting hasn't been where it needs to be and I've taken it personally that what she does great has nothing to do with me and what she's struggled with IS on me. I pitch to her in the cage enough to know what she's capable of doing to balls, but it hasn't translated to numbers during games. She's getting on base often enough, but she's done it by getting hit, by being walked, and beating out grounders to first. 

More often than not, she's popped up to the infield, not from a lack of power but because she tries to do everything herself, which is the mindset of a great catcher. The other teammates and coaches see the helmet getting thrown, the bat tossed, the scowls, the bad side of her intensity. They don't see the other side of it. There has been nothing more heartbreaking than to be on the other end of the basepath from her as she's having a crying meltdown as she runs to first because she's under-performed again. As far as the team is concerned, Key is emotionless on the field. She's too big and tough to cry. 

Everyone sees the toughness. Everyone sees the grit, ability, and the domination behind the plate. Everyone hears her yelling in the dugout. No one sees her other side. So, in last week's championship game when she absolutely unloaded on a pitch that hit halfway up the wall and never got above 10 feet, I got to see something else no one else saw: the relief in her eyes as she watched that ball soar. 

Key is my Spirit Animal, my Power Creature. If I could be any player on our team, I would be Key. 

She's fearless and relentless, aggressive, quick to forget mistakes but plays with a chip on her shoulder after them. She loves to prove doubters wrong, whether it's about her speed, or her arm, or playing through injuries or errors, she's going to prove you wrong. She wants you to know when you've messed with the wrong player, just as she did with that baserunner. When she doesn't do it, she goes on to the next play. But when she does, which is more often than not, there's no chest beating. It's a point to short. It's a fist to right. It's get back in her crouch and go to the next play. It's getting the catcher's gear off to hit and help her team. 

Obviously, when we desperately need an out, she's one that we can count on to make that out, whether it's just holding on to a third strike, diving for that foul ball, blocking up the plate, or fielding a do-or-die throw from right field while blocking up the plate to save the winning run. And she did all of that just last tournament and she will do it again next tournament, over and over. 

During our tryout last year, Key was the first player to greet me at tryouts and she did so with a hug. Now, I shy away from hugs and I don't like people in my bubble. I especially don't care for any of that to come from a 15 year old girl, especially one that's sweaty and stinky. So after she had jumped in my arms and hugged me, none of which I could stop since she is bigger and taller than me, she smiled as only Key could smile and said:

"Remember when I picked up with your team last year and you said you didn't like physical contact or hugs? I remembered!" 

I was in no position to debate that, though I couldn't really remember her playing and I felt like I would remember her. So, I made an assumption that she must not have been good enough to remember if I couldn't recall a twin blonde braid, all smiles, biggest kid on the field with the biggest smile. 

Almost a year later and I can't figure out why she's still playing for me when she could be playing for anyone else. For that, I certainly thank her and her parents for their trust in me, but coach Alex most importantly for recruiting her and getting her on the field with us. 

I want to bring her out of her shell at the plate. I want her to swing at the first strike and do so without swinging out of her shoes. I want her to see her future and how bright it is, if she will embrace it. I have NO DOUBTS this kid can play college ball, if that's what she wants. She wants me to hug and dance, and wear a tu-tu during games. She wants me to be "extra" when I coach first and dance around. I try to meet her halfway. 

Whether or not she knows it, she's a heart of the team(there are a couple of them) and while she doesn't QUITE embrace it, she's a natural born leader. She has all the qualities if she will just put it all together. She's who we send to the circle to calm our defense. She's who we turn to to get the dugout loud. She's who we will bunt when we need to move a runner, even though she's one of only three on the team capable of hitting a dinger. She's so close to being as good as player as she is a teammate. And what a teammate she is. 

 She's our Key to Victory.

Fight Through the Night Together

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life

Hailey's Homer

C's Story
The Struggle in the Age of Specialization
Sports: My Anti-Bully

The Importance of Being Well Rounded
I Ain't Never Been Nothin' But a Loser

It was just after game three of the day and I was standing just outside the tent city that our team would call home for 21 hours. I can't recall if we had a team talk as we usually do after games. The hotter and later it gets in the day, the more we typically just let the girls decompress before we reassemble for the next challenge. It was hot and it was late, not in terms of the time, but because of losses that were piling up. 

I felt the losses piling up on my shoulders like the weight of the world. Through three games, we had been outscored 16-1, 2-0, and 6-5. It was essentially the mirror image of the week before and the week before that. Can't hit. Can't score runs. Can't win. 

I sensed doubt in the players. I sensed doubt in the parents. That could be real or imaginary. I had doubts in myself and that was very, very real. I was worried that our players had lost faith in us and the parents wouldn't be far behind. It happens all the time and you can't blame parents for wanting what's best for their players. 

Doubts. Regrets. Questions. 

I'm not saying I know much about hitting. It's not like I went to a hitting coach school and I never played fast pitch softball. I was never a great baseball hitter. As these thoughts piled up, I reached the conclusion that maybe it was time to seek help or accept reality that I had overstepped my bounds and ability. 

In these dark moments, you analyze everything. What are we missing? What's the X-factor? How can we motivate them? How can they grow as a team?

Over the last month or so, we've identified and addressed team chemistry a lot. They weren't fighting for each other or pushing themselves past their preconceived ideas of their abilities because they weren't seeing their teammates doing the same.  "Getting along" has been the focus because we thought that being a family off the field would make them a family on the field, which would likely fix a lot of what we were seeing. They are a group of really good players playing well below their ability. 

All they needed was that galvanizing tournament. They needed that moment when it wasn't just difficult but hard to seemingly even impossible to win. They needed to hold not only their teammates accountable, but more importantly themselves and they decided that 11 girls would push together in the same direction. It's so easy to point fingers and fracture that trust and push each other apart. 

Game four is an elimination game at 6PM. In all honesty, I fully expected to lose and go home. I didn't see a team that wanted to fight through the night and all the way through the losers bracket. They are smart girls. They know how schedules work. I wasn't going to be shocked if they lost and we were home by 9PM. I wasn't going to be shocked if parents and players alike started looking elsewhere. Who could blame them? 

In the pregame we take a different approach. I went right at them. I told them up front that this was the same shtick they've heard from a dozen different coaches a dozen different times but I wanted eyes on me. All of them. And I better have their attention until I was done talking. 

"Do you want to be here? Do you believe in us? Do you believe in each other? If any answer to those questions is no, then let's call it and go home.  Don't get there and decide it's not worth it. Accept the challenge or let's walk away. Decide now if you want to fight through the night together and win it all, or let's go home now." 

And then I did the hard part for a grown man. I had to be emotional. 

"We love each and every one of you more than you know. You have to love each other and us, not in the personal sense but how we coach and believe in you. This is never going to work if you can't love each other and us. If you doubt, you are on the wrong team." 

Instead of trying to be the home team at the coin flip and worrying about that first inning, we decided that we would be the visitor and we would take it to the opposing team. 

And then we went to work. 

8-3 win and we never trailed, but more importantly, when the team scored, AO1 dropped a six run last inning on them and buried the team from North Georgia. Ball after ball is barreled. Three doubles and one triple on the six total hits. 

Then it was the team that beat us 16-1 with first pitch at 9:45 PM. The team from Cobb County Georgia punched A01 right in the mouth in the first inning, dropping four runs after A01 put up 3 in the top of the inning. 

Here is that moment. This has been the situation that has demoralized this team game after game, week after week. Couple that with the knowledge that if they win, it's three more games back-to-back-to-back. In the way lies a one-run deficit to a team that blasted them earlier in the day. 

AO1 scores one run in the second to tie it and hold the team hitless. Something is different with the team. Coach Alyse is yelling at Emma, the pitcher, to keep giving 100% every pitch. It's a reminder for her, but also for the defense behind her to give their own 100% and have her back. Emma pushes harder than I've seen in the years I've known her. Alex has the defense and pitch calling down. The defense is pushing behind Emma. Both teams are hitless and scoreless in the third. 

It's 4-4 in the fourth so we go to International Tie Breaker. Now we have to hit. Now we see if they've responded to me as a hitting coach. AO1 drops a five run fourth inning on them and backs it up with another flawless inning to win the game. Nine hits. Nine runs. Emma throws four innings of hitless ball and has pushed herself passed what she thinks she's capable of. More importantly, it sets the bar for the rest of the team, but most for the next pitcher, Deanna whom I refer to as "Smoke". 

It's 11:45 PM for the next game against another Georgia team. The bats are still white hot and swinging with confidence. AO1 is up 6-0 in the bottom half of the last inning when the team scores two meaningless runs. "Smoke" throws 60 total pitching in the game, 35 for strikes while piling up six Ks and allowing just one walk and two hits. Smoke has always had the capability, but we've never seen her push like that before. It's inspired pitching in front of a defense she knows will have her back. 

It's now 1:10 AM on Father's Day and we are on to the first Championship game against another team that beat us earlier in the day. 

Alex asks the girls do they want to be home or hit? It's unanimous. 

"HIT!"

AO1 throws three runs on the board in the first. Smoke shuts them out in the first. Nothing for us in the second. Smoke gives up a homer with one out. Promptly walks the next hitter. Then the next. Then a triple. It's a tie game. 

Here we go. This is when the wheels come off. This is when the defense fails the pitcher and the pitcher fails the defense and the hitting fails all while the blame game spins in the background.

But Smoke is angry. Weak groundout for out two. Three straight strikes to end the inning. Nothing for either team in the third, so again we go to ITB. AO1 throws up two runs, which would have been an impossibility before now. 

Leadoff reaches on an error and now there's runners on first and second with no outs. It's Gut check time. A past ball puts the tying run in scoring position. Ball hit to second. Aubree goes to Emily at first with it. Emily goes home to Key. Double play at the plate. Next batter ends the contest on a dribbler to Smoke. 

It's 3:07 AM and we start with a Shoot Out game, which is essentially ITB rules for one inning. First two hitters strike out and things aren't looking so hot but Hay is up and she's not only our best over-all hitter, she's been on fire the last four games. First pitch she sees, she destroys. If not for the humidity in the early morning air, she'd have a homer. A01 is up one.

Other team scores one and we are headed for another inning before the umpires inform us they've had enough softball. We are forced to call the "if necessary" game a draw and split the championship. No fancy talks. No trophy presentations. Just one little girl in the car with me having an absolute meltdown about how hard her team pushed and how far they came and had nothing to show for it. 

I feel for her but I'm smiling at 5AM while driving into the sunrise. 

Nothing to show for it? Not true. 

Not when you fight through the night together. 

I Ain't Never Been Nothin' But a Loser

Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life

Hailey's Homer

C's Story
The Struggle in the Age of Specialization
Sports: My Anti-Bully

The Importance of Being Well Rounded

Many of you will read the title of this post and likely realize that it is a Paul "Bear" Bryant quote with just one word substituted. There are no two words in the English language with polar opposite meanings than the two words that have been substituted. America loves a winner and hates a loser. 

Here is the entire quote, if you don't know it: 

“I’d like for people to remember me as a winner, because I ain’t never been nothin but a winner.”

A lot of you are racking your brains on how a staunch Auburn fan would dare quote the antithesis of Auburn football, much less to take that quote about being a winner and turn the quote on himself and call himself "nothin' but a loser". 

We will get there and when we do, I hope you will see that there is no greater force than a motivated perennial loser and that being motivated by losing is the single greatest teaching force in sports. If you want your kid to reach their full potential, to harness every ounce of grit, determination, talent, and work ethic, they will have to lose and the more they lose, the better it will be for them to reach the pinnacle. Furthermore, losing in sports can promote tremendous personal growth and strength off the field. That kind of thinking isn't going to be popular with many people. 

After one of the many brutal losses I took in my first year as a softball coach, I was approached by a parent and asked a very pointed question. 

"How can you be ok after losing like this?"

That would seem to be a fairly nebulous question with many meanings and possible answers. 

Oh, I knew exactly what this parent meant and perhaps they expected a litany of excuses or reasons. The good Lord knows that I know them all. Instead I crossed my arms as I sat on the bench in that tiny little dugout of that tiny little teeball field and shrugged as I thought about my answer. I took off my pink Killa Kupcakes hat and sighed. 

"All I've ever done is lose. I've been a loser all my life. This isn't a new experience for me."

That's probably not EXACTLY how the quote went, but it's close and it isn't the only conversation I had with this parent along these lines. When it comes to ball parents, there are only a few stereotypes and this one was firmly in the "win at all costs" category and the reality of losing game after game, sometimes by a wide margin was unacceptable, for whatever reason. From this parent's perspective, I wasn't doing my job to win games and that me accepting losses in such a calm manner must mean that I was apathetic about coaching and therefore a bad coach and a loser. 

The truth is, there was a lot more going on with coaching this team than just the W-L column and I was in it for the future. I wasn't willing to take a little immediate success to sacrifice the future. I'd lost a lot of games, what's a few more? 

At least part of what that parent thought was right.  I am a loser. I always have been and I embrace that as the perhaps the single greatest strength in my personality.

Losing in sports started at an early age. In my case, before birth. God gave me a great mind for sports, a desire to succeed in them, and ALMOST all the physical gifts to be a great ball player. I say ALMOST because genetics remains undefeated and I would never have the size or height to do anything to the level I wanted to do. 

As I've written, I played a lot of other sports. I loved basketball, but can't ever recall winning any games. I know we had winless seasons. I played peewee football for just one year and we literally scored two touchdowns the entire winless year. I poured my heart and soul into highschool football and despite playing for the largest school north of Birmingham, our win totals over four years: 6-4, 4-6, 1-9, and 4-6. The best year of soccer I ever had was a .500 team my junior year. We followed that up with a single win my senior year. 

I could tell story upon story of being a loser. Even today, I still play adult league softball, flag football, and soccer. I'll let you guess how those seasons typically go. I've joked with people that I have lost more sports competitions than probably anyone on the planet. But I think the following story shows the power of being a loser and being motivated by that, in the right way. 

Like most kids, baseball was my first sport. Each and every year, we had a baseball draft and each and every year my dad ended up with the same players, but not because they were good players, but because they were the players no one wanted. Every year, there was a really good team from our park and a really bad one. You can guess which team I played on. In the first three years of playing for this team, I don't know if we won a single game. Not only could we not beat the team from our own park, we surely couldn't compete with teams from the more "well-off" areas with much larger populations. There was a lot of frustration to go around, for sure.  

On the fourth year, things changed. I'd love to tell you that we had some sort of great sports moment. It wasn't like that. I believe my dad and the other families came to grips with being handed select players, handicapped on field time, and losing. I believe they accepted this as motivation and not an excuse. That season, we won the only championship I ever won. It was an incredible experience that made a life-long impact on a 3rd grader. It was accomplished by a lot of hard work, working through adversity off the field, but perhaps more important, treating every player equally in attempt to develop them all and refused to give up on a player. Each player was given opportunities that other teams would never give them for fear of losing a game.

Having the power to accept losing by extracting the potential of every player was huge. I've seen it elsewhere and most of the great teams and coaches exhibit this. There's the old cliche about a team being only as good as the worst player, but not every coach lives by that. 

When Aubree began playing softball, I was re-acquainted with this process and I found myself in the same situation that my dad had found himself in years before. I made many phone calls with my dad, who explained that this is what he had dealt with in my youth. I could despair and be overcome by the situation, or I could use my life's lessons on losing to help me in my time of need. 

So, when the question of "How can you be ok after losing like this?" was leveled upon me, I was well prepared for it.  Another loss for me wasn't anything new and it wasn't going to change me. I'd still wake up tomorrow, just as I had done every day after losing. Hopefully, I would wake up with a little more knowledge and just as much determination. Or, I could be the coach society expects. I could yell and scream at players and argue with the umpires. I could quit playing these six year old girls in different positions when there was CLEARLY a better player to play there. I could send the "bad" players into right field and let them kick dirt. 

Games aren't decided by a play. Seasons aren't decided by a game. Sports careers aren't decided by a season. Life isn't decided by a sports career. I am living proof of that. All I've known in sports is losing, but it's made me a motivated coach because I've seen what harnessing that motivation can do and I've been a part of it. So, I accepted the losses as fair trade for giving each and every girl a chance to get better and certainly to keep them from quitting. I looked to the future, hoping they would have a moment like me. 

That team never won anything of relevance, but as I look at the picture on my desk of the 2013 Killa Kupcakes, I am proud to say that at least SEVEN of the ELEVEN players on that team are still playing travel softball, to this day, and they all approach me when I see them at tournaments. That's a far cry from today's expectation of player turnover, which I believe is almost completely driven by coaching to win at all costs. 

Obviously, this entire post is about losing and dealing with adversity. In a society obsessed at winning, and sometimes winning at all cost, the term "dealing with adversity" is thrown around a lot, but not in the context of losing. Losing is simply something that is deemed unacceptable. You can see that if attend your local teeball game. If you don't accept losing, you can't accept the motivation and knowledge it brings. I think this is why sports are on such a decline and society has so many problems. 

The jury is out on just what kind of coach I am for several reasons. First, I am just getting started at being a serious travel ball coach and it will take some time to see if I can develop ball players. 

Second, and most importantly, while preparing them on the field is my main goal, my ULTIMATE goal is to produce well-rounded, humble, and hard-working players who will translate what they learn from me off the field as young adults. Since the oldest player I have coached is just 14, we still have several years to see what kind of young ladies they will become. For all I know, this could be my last year to coach but if it is, I hope I made a positive impact on them, even if the results on the field were negative. 

All of these girls will play their last game sooner rather than later, but life will just begin for them.  I would be remiss if I only coached them on how to field grounders or hit dingers when they will spend far more of their life in the workplace and/or parenting young ball players of their own. Life is going to throw them nasty curves, so to speak. For the vast majority of us, life is going to knock us flat time and time again. Can they get back up? If they know how to respond to losing, they will. 

I sure have. I Ain't Never Been Nothin' But a Loser

The Importance of Being Well-Rounded

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life

Hailey's Homer

C's Story
The Struggle in the Age of Specialization
Sports: My Anti-Bully

As coach of our travel softball team, AO1, my daily routine to get to practice involved picking up four 13 year old girls and driving them an hour, one way. When I tell people that, I get a lot of "bless your heart" or "you poor guy." To be honest, this drive has been one of the best things I have in my life. It's become a bit of a ministry for me where we discuss a lot of life. Obviously, I haven't seen it all, but I've seen a lot and I have a lot of life experience and I try to give some of that away.

One of the harder conversations that I've had is one that I have been harboring deep inside for a very long time despite being their coach who wants them not only to exceed but to excel. It was a pretty simple one and one that a vast majority of people would see as common sense to the point of being superfluous. 

Do not let sports define who you are. Be a well-rounded individual. 

Most people certainly understand this because they aren't playing sports, anymore or sports were never their focus. Some of you are going to say that this is counter-intuitive to say to girls who want to play sports at the highest level. Some of you may say that this is actually counter-productive to helping them harness that obsessive need to meet those goals. 

We live in a society that does not believe in mediocrity and we obsessively celebrate those that reach greatness. Of course, the problem is that 99.99% of us live in mediocrity and that mediocrity isn't a  bad thing. For the most part, we see the greatness in what these people do and achieve but we do not understand the risks or prices they paid to achieve them. Most people won't accept those risks or put in the work, but for the rest it's simply a matter of life situations being in conflicting paths with our desires OR not understanding where our greatness lies. 

It is easy for most of us to see the path of greatness for some of our greatest athletes but the story of greatness and the prices paid for the greatest minds of our time are the very same. Whether it is Steve Jobs or Tom Brady, everything aligned just perfectly and yet there are still hefty prices to be paid that, frankly, 99.99% of people aren't will to pay. And, understand that we are discussing people who were gifted great minds and great abilities to begin with. Face it, most of us get neither. 

The hardest thing to tell these girls is that one day, sooner rather than later, they WILL play their last softball game and that's where life REALLY begins. Will they be prepared for it or will softball have defined them to the point that they don't know who they are outside of the diamond? 

I can speak from experience on this subject, which is why it mattered so much to me. For every Tom Brady, there are thousands, if not millions of Best5Zachs. Somewhere along the line, I chose my obsession to be sports. That's where I would make my mark of greatness. I didn't think of it in those terms, of course. But certainly being a college football player was a goal I had early in high school. My path, largely, had zero chance because of things out of my control, specifically my genetics, which decided before I was even born that I would never be taller than five-foot-three. 

That didn't stop me. I had made this decision because I allowed sports to define me, but not because of what happened on the field, but how I reacted to things off the field. We humans take the path of least resistance most of the time. So, two weeks into my freshman year in Spanish I, when I completed reading a paragraph in Spanish (very poorly), a girl in the back of the room yelled "NERD!" and caused everyone to laugh at me, I decided that I would not be a nerd. I would push myself as far from being a nerd as possible. If people didn't like nerds, they had to love an athlete. 

I gave up music. I gave up trying to be a good student. I never pursued Honor Society or any other clubs. For the most part, I gave up relationships outside of sports, entirely. For the better part of the next four years, I spent a quarter of my school day (that would be one of the four periods) working out in PE. The rest of the time, I kept my head down, looking forward to practice. I played three sports in high school, so my afternoons and even weekends were dominated by sports. The rest of the time was just filler. 

The only real relationships outside of sports I had for most of high school came from my youth group at Church. I was basically the only kid that didn't attend the local private school, which made me a bit of an outsider, but I still fit in with them really well despite going to another school and being younger than all of them. Sunday was the only day I wasn't doing sports, typically, so it was the only time I had to make relationships. And, frankly, I wasn't very good at that because sports was the only thing I really knew anything about and the only real thing of value I possessed. 

Two things happened when I became an upperclassman. One, the kids in my youth group graduated and went to college. For the most part, I never had any relationship with any of them afterwards, something that still bothers me to my core and I've only recently opened up about to people other than my wife. For a very long time, I harbored a grudge for the feeling of abandonment. I felt like I had put effort into relationships, forsaking those at school, for people that didn't appreciate it. I realize now that they were not entirely to blame for this. I had cornered myself. 

The second thing that happened was that when I attempted to build relationships at school, I was appalled to how many people didn't care that I was a three-sport athlete. Most of these kids already had groups of friends, with whom they had been hanging out with during the week and weekends and, try as I might, I couldn't identify with them. 

One day in May of 2001, I played my last game. Now what? I was unprepared for college, both educationally and emotionally because I had focused my energy for four years into something almost obsessively. 

Now, I don't want people thinking this is some emotionally-charged post about poor me. Everything was ok. I did have friends and a lot of fun. Truth be told, it wasn't until I was an adult that I even knew this had happened to me. Would I have given up sports if I had known it would never take me anywhere? Absolutely not. What I would have changed was my focus on things off the field. School wouldn't have been a means to an ends. I would have been more interactive and involved. I'd have done a much better job and making friends outside of sports. I would have made myself a more well-rounded person. After all, these are the things that mattered for the next 20 years. 

As I am telling this to these girls, there are a couple of stipulations. Yes, I ended up getting a great education and a terrific job. It's hard to complain about being a NASA engineer. But, I point out that a lot of this happened because of the pieces of the path laid out before me by factors I didn't control and while I am lucky and happy to be here, what would have happened if I had focused more on education and less on sports? I gave up three years of my life in college to struggling to pass classes because I had no work ethic in studying because I had built such a work ethic in sports and only on the field. 

When sports were done, I filled that void with what I had been missing: having fun and making friends. I lost a free ride scholarship. I had a terrible relationship with my parents because of my college grades. I nearly gave up and dropped out multiple times. In the end, I had the work ethic to be great at something, but instead of choosing to be a great student and become an elite engineer, I had chosen sports. That choice to focus on a single thing, the wrong thing, set me back years and likely cost me the ability to be a great engineer, which I was far more destined to be rather than an elite athlete. 

Kids need clubs. They need jobs. They need a lot of life experiences, especially in high school, to prepare them for the rest of their lives. Sports alone don't do that. Everyone has some sort of greatness in them but so few ever find what that is. Without life experiences, how will you ever know. Playing sports wasn't what I was meant to be great out. Engineering probably isn't either. Parenting? I hope so. Secretly, I've wondered if it's coaching. I won't know unless I keep trying things with the focus on being great. 

Is that a tough sell to a car full of girls who love the game? Was it what they expected to hear from the guy they only see on the field, who pushes them to excel? Almost certainly. But it is something they need to hear and not only from me, but from their parents. I am not saying not to push them or support them to be their very best. I am simply saying that so few of us find that path and that preparing them for life outside of sports, to be well-rounded, will serve them well in their life. Eventually we all play that last game and what happens next is what defines us. 

Sports: My Anti-Bully

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life

Hailey's Homer

C's Story
The Struggle in the Age of Specialization
The Importance of Being Well Rounded

A life spent around people from all walks of life has taught me one thing: sports aren't for everyone. Some of my very best friends are as well-rounded people as you would find and they didn't play a second of organized sports. Riding to work today, I listened to a story on the radio where a teen shot three other teens due to bullying and that started the wheels turning in my mind about this post and why sports are so important and how dealing with adversity on the field prepares you to deal with problems off the field. I don't know if it would have helped these individuals, but there isn't a doubt that sports prepared me for dealing with bullying and it did so on and off the field.

Not many people can say this, but I think I can. There was a moment when sports made me a man and not only showed me this growth in an instant, but I believe all of the young men around me. 

In the summer of 1997 after my eighth grade year, my dad drove me to a summer workout at my future high school. After practice concluded, my dad introduced himself and I to the varsity coach with the sole purpose of begging the coach to allow me to play varsity football as a freshman. I had played on the freshman team in seventh and eighth grade, but this year there would not be a freshman team and my dad did not want me to fall behind.

This was, frankly, a ballsy move by my dad. I was five foot tall and weighed 100 pounds. Not only did I not have anything of value to add to the team, I would be the only freshman to go through summer workouts. While two of my future teammates would eventually find their way onto the varsity team as freshman later in the year, I was the only freshman to have a roster spot on Day One. 

I don't recall being overwhelmed at playing with grown men. I just put my head down and went to work, which I already had a good reputation for from the previous two years. Was there bullying in the locker room towards me? Some. But in the heat of the summer, no one had the energy to push me around. There were warnings, however, of what life would be like at school. For a kid that came from a tiny K-8 grade, for which many kids had already dropped out, for a kid that started in "advanced" classes, for a kid that played Cello and went to Church three times a week, for a freckle faced five-footer that weighed 100 pounds, it was terrifying. If there was ever a kid that would be bullied, it was me. 

Over that summer, I completely lost touch with my friends from eighth grade. I knew no one from the other middle schools, whose population dwarfed my small rural school. So, on day one of high school, I knew no one in my classes. The first morning before the first bell rang was probably the most intimidating moments in my life. The old Sparkman High School had narrow and dark hallways and my freshman classes were at the end of a long row of upperclassmen lockers and I had to walk past big scary boys that seemed like giants to me. 

No one touched me. No one pointed and laughed. On that first Freshman Friday, I remember getting off the bus and standing outside the breeze way because I was terrified of getting thrown in a garbage can. I literally waited for the first bell to ring before sprinting to my first class. I had even planned the route. After the last bell rang and all of the football players, including the guys my age playing JV, made there way into the field house, my worst fears seemed to come true. It was a free-for-all on underclassmen and while I didn't get the brunt of it, I still got a lot. That stopped almost entirely one day and it is that moment to which I refereed. 

For some reason, we were short on running backs. I know that our senior star was out with a torn ACL and while there was no way I was going to play running back for varsity, coach needed a tomato can on the practice squad to play running back. I had played QB my entire football career, but I wasn't about to second guess coach. He was far more intimidating than anyone else on the field. I was absolutely terrified at first, but after that first hit, I settled in to playing this position. 

Goal line drill. Sweep right. The ball is pitched behind me and I slow my momentum to catch the pitch. 

I woke up staring at a blue bird Alabama sky in August with tears streaming down my face. 

I was helped to my feet and handed my helmet, which had nearly been knocked into the stands. 

A lot of things happened in a very short time but here is what I have gathered. The defensive end and offensive tackle thought it would be really funny if the D-end came off the ball untouched to destroy the little freshman kid from the backwoods school.  

Coach didn't think it was funny. More importantly, neither did a lot of the other players. But while they were arguing, coach gave me my helmet, strapped my helmet back on,  and I wiped the snot from my nose, and he said:

"Run it again."

This isn't sensationalism where the little kid that could started for varsity and became a college running back. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never played running back again. I had virtually zero playing time that year. The bearing on the team's success or failure wasn't affected a single bit from that day. But I took the hit and I got back up. 

My life changed that day and I become the competitor I am because of the events leading to that moment. 

What changed? 

First, despite being a musician, a nerd, and generally a little boy in a world of men, I earned the respect of not only that football team, but a lot of people in the school. It didn't just happen that day, either. Going through two-a-days, bleeding with them, making the trips with the team even though I wouldn't see a second of PT made me one of them, regardless of the difference of size, age, social background, or ethnicity. There could not have been a wider gap between me and those guys but that was a gap I never knew because of sports. That gap disappeared for those guys, too, because when we are all throwing our guts up, race, religion, age, and ability just don't matter. A player is a player. 

Because of that earned respect, I was never bullied by the guys that may have been stereotypical bullies despite being a stereotypical kid. 

That doesn't mean I wasn't bullied. I was, but eventually that stopped for the second thing that changed for me. Coach made me get up. I'm not going to say I would have done it on my own because, frankly, that was the most physically dominated I had ever been, and probably remains so. But I did get up and after that few seconds of fear passed, I realized that I had just lived through the worst hit I would ever take and that gave me such confidence. 

So, one day when these same guys kept bullying me, that newfound confidence bubbled over. They used me to practice their WWE moves and how I managed to avoid brain damage is still beyond me. In the past, my best defense was to basically play dead. Not this time. I won't go into what happened, except to say that I was never bullied again when I caught these two guys by surprise. 

Last, there were still some moments that were scary for me and these typically involved a big mean kid that didn't play sports. I was easy prey being the little freshman boy by himself without any friends his own age. But what they didn't realize was that I did have other friends. I can tell you that some of the biggest, meanest men I ever played with on the field of battle took up for me in the moments when I needed them. These guys owed me nothing. Aside from football, we had nothing in common and, really, still don't. When I became an upperclassman, I brought the same mentality for the young kids, being the senior player. 

Sports aren't for everyone and that's perfectly acceptable. It seems that our society has decided that if you aren't good at sports, then there is no place for you in sports and therefore nothing sports can do for you. That simply isn't true. The lack of participation in sports is getting to all-time lows in this country while the affects of bullying are at an all time high. Understand that I am not saying sports will prevent kids from making rash decisions because it won't. But it will help. It is a respect problem. Respect is earned, but that works both ways. The people who bully have never been there, have never earned respect of others nor had respect earned by others to them. 

Sports made me who I am. It forged relationships that I never would have had without it. I never made a cent off of sports. I never played a second after high school. But it taught me work ethic. It taught me toughness. It taught me respect and how to be a teammate on and off the field.  It was my anti-bully. 

The Struggle in the Age of Specialization

Confession's of a Travel Softball Coach
Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1

Part 3: Early Years

Part 4: Kid Pitch

Part 5: The Valley

Part 6: New Life
Hailey's Homer
C's Story
Sports: My Anti-Bully

We've always wanted Aubree to be well-rounded, so we have encouraged her to play other sports. Aubree is playing soccer and running track and that leaves precious little time to hit, but her mom and I had been on her that she needed to be in the garage working on the tee every spare moment she had. She wasn't doing that and we knew it. 

At the time I am writing this, AO1 has played three tournaments and will play our fourth this weekend. Our team has done well with an 8-6 record that included two second place finishes. As we looked over Gamechanger stats to make our line-up for the finals, it was impossible to ignore that Aubree was batting .000 through three tournaments. Everyone goes through slumps, but she wasn't even close. Most of the at-bats were bad and when she did hit the ball, she put it in really bad spots. 

To say I was frustrated is an understatement. She was just waving at pitches. She was watching good pitches. When she was slapping and did put the ball into play, her bad mechanics and timidness to really put the bat on the ball had almost every contacted ball going to the right side of the field. After each at-bat, I was on her, reminding her that the lack of preparation was showing. Bad mechanics, not seeing the ball, poor pitch selection, and timidness at the plate. These are things we can't fix at a tournament. We have to do these things Monday through Friday and she wasn't doing these things. Those daily excuses of why she wasn't hitting at home had built up in my mind and the anger and frustration was bubbling over. 

I have a very bad trait and I know it's there. I can't let things go, especially in situations like this where I feel it could have been avoided. I get angry and I yell. I have terrible body language and despite everything that may be going right for the team, I just can't let it go. I finally had that moment of clarity that I had to change something when I found myself yelling at her and kicking rocks before she was even out at first base. Literally, the second baseman hasn't even fielded the ball to throw to first and Aubree and I are arguing about it before she was even called out. We get a second place finish and play excellent and all I can do on the ride home is steam about her performance and how that makes both of us look. 

My sister came to our last tournament because the tournament was five minutes from her house and we were going to spend a couple of days over spring break with her. As she heard me lament on Aubree's preparation and performance, she said something to me that really made me just stop and shut up. Essentially, she asked how Aubree could be expected to play to my expectations when she was playing two other sports, struggling in school, and trying to just be a kid. It was also the way that she said it, without being accusatory or really even with the intent to make a point that was striking. It was just an observation. It was absolutely true.

As a coach, I want the best performance I can get out of every single player and that goes double for my kid. But what are my goals as a parent? Isn't that more important? Is it fair to expect her to be as good as the other girls when she is playing two other sports and they are not? Wasn't our goal always for her to be well-rounded? 

One of the things that I give my parents a lot of credit for is making sure I was a well-rounded person. I did just as many off-the-field things as I did on the field. When it came to sports, I played all of them. Did that come at a price? Certainly. I was  never great at any sport, but I was good at them all. Maybe that cost me a chance to do bigger things. Maybe not. We will never know. What we do know is that the focus on playing different sports put me around a lot of different people over the course of my life. I fostered different friendships and thus different outlooks on life that would not have been possible had I just focused on just one sport. I can promise you that the football team, soccer team, baseball team, and wrestling team was comprised of many different socio-economic and diverse backgrounds, which was influential in my upbringing to identify with all walks of life, for which I still believe I do. I wanted that for my kids, even if it meant they weren't as good as they could be at just one thing. 

There are a lot of people that will read that, who have a kid that just plays one sport, who are completely devoted to getting that kid to the next level that will disagree with me, here. That's perfectly fine. I know a lot of people who focus on one sport and they practice that sport each and every single day. I hope every one of them gets the reward they seek because they deserve it. Don't misunderstand me and think I am not trying to get my kid into college. I am absolutely trying to do that. Even if you do achieve your goal of getting your child on a college roster, college lasts only a few short years and there is a lot of life after sports. Now, think about that in terms of the relationships they will make with others. By playing one sport, they are around just one group of people and you limit their exposure to other walks of life. 

To bring this full circle, after thinking long and hard about what my sister had said, I sat down with Aubree before our last game in the finals of the tournament. I told her that I was being too hard on her to expect the same level of play of the rest of the team who were practicing every day when she was playing two other sports. I had started a vicious cycle that led to a lot of pressure on her, which was affecting her performance and my attitude as a coach. She needed to just go play her best and we would get back to working hard on her hitting when soccer and track were done. 

Lastly, while I want her to still hit when she could, I understood that when she did get home from a whole day of school and practicing another sport, that it wasn't fair to rob her of time to just relax and be a kid. If she wants to hit, she should. If she needs to relax, she should. Lord knows she needs more time to study, anyway. 

We live in an age of specialization. You don't even have to look at it in terms of specializing in particular sports. Even within softball we have a ton of specialization. There is no doubt that doing so produces terrific players and it is really, really hard to compete with that, as much as it pains me to say that as a coach. As a coach, I want to win every game. I want kids to fulfill their dreams of playing in college, especially my own kid. Yet that is such a small piece of the pie. 

We need to take a step back and realize that even the goal of every softball player out there is likely to end at college and playing in college should be an means to an ends to get a great education. Let's face it, life really begins after sports and isn't it important that these kids enter the real world well-rounded individuals? They won't work around former softball players for the rest of their lives. It is important to venture out of the world of like-minded people and experience the bigger world out there, even if it comes at the expense of not being quite as good as you would like in a sport. 

This is the struggle in the age of specialization. We, as sports parents, want our kids to be great for the sake of being great. We like to tell ourselves it's about the future and goals, but it's more about the pride of being the parent of a great athlete, of being the best player on the field. That's a problem with our society, I believe. Sports careers will come and go, some of them will last longer than others, but life goes on. Can we afford to shortchange our kids and limit their personal growth for the small amount of time they will play on the field? 

Hailey's Homer

Confessions of a Travel Softball Coach

Part 1: About Me, But Not Really

Part 2: Year 1
Part 3: Early Years
Part 4: Kid Pitch
Part 5: The Valley
Part 6: New Life

C's Story

Sometimes perception isn't reality. First impressions aren't always right. 

It was the very first tournament for AO1. More specifically, it was the end of the first tournament as we had just been beaten in single elimination and sent home after posting a 1-3 record. I can't say that I was shocked and neither were Alex or Alyse. We had very little time for this team to grow and the dynamics of the team just weren't there. 

I pulled three players to the side after our team meeting. These three players were our three older girls, those that were not playing their first games in 14U. I had coached just one of these girls and that really wasn't anything more than a single tournament she picked up with a team that I coached months before. 

I leveled with the three girls, all of whom were what I thought were our best hitters. 

"This team will go only as far as you three take it. Your bats are the only thing that are going to produce wins for this group."

Thinking back on this conversation, it was probably really unfair to level those type of expectations on these three players. None of them had ever played together, far as I knew. At the time, I was talking to two of those three players, but I knew the third had potential, though I wasn't sure what to expect from her. I've never had a player hit a home run for me and I felt one of them would do it.

Key and Em were easy to level with because Key is a natural leader, a great player, and has a personality that was easy to deal with. Em is also a gifted player and I believed she was the best hitter that I had ever coached, despite knowing that she had some confidence issues that I would have to overcome, eventually. 

Then there was Hailey, the player I knew the least about and really only included her because she was the second oldest player on the team. 

I didn't partake in the recruitment of any players. I left that to Alex because I hadn't embraced doing anything other than coaching the players under my care. Hailey was at our open tryouts, coming to us as a potential pitcher. She threw hard, for sure. She also plunked about three straight hitters.....at a tryout. The only thing I can say about her was that it didn't bother her. In the field, there was obvious work to be done, but nothing I didn't think I couldn't overcome, because it was mostly the expectation of effort. 

Her first time at the plate was not impressive. At the end of practice number one, I just didn't think she was a good fit, not just because of what she laid out on the field, but because she was so quiet. I was used to vocal players and I assumed silence was disrespectful, especially when I corrected or coached them up. 

Second tryout was much the same for Hailey, except the bat came alive and in a big way. Liner, liner, liner, liner. The problem with this is that without a defense to play against, you can't really judge just how good those liners would be. One thing was absolutely certain, she got all of the ball.

We offered her a spot. In the limited practices before our first tournament, I didn't take stock in the fact that almost 100% of the team had played together or at least had a mutual friend on this team. Hailey did not. That left her as an outsider and her quiet demeanor almost came across as stand-offish or even stuck up. The lone conversation I had with her was about just how bad her old team was and sometimes that comes across wrong. In addition, her parents came to every practice, sat on the fence, and constantly talked to her, something that I was wary of from other parents that may have been a little more involved than they should. 

Following that first tournament, I had considered that they may pull her from the team. What little I knew about her was that she is quietly extremely competitive.

Considering how she didn't really fit in the with the team and her quiet nature, I can't say that I was going to miss her. I asked Alex about it and he had a talk with her parents. The surprising news was that not only were they NOT leaving, they didn't attend a single tryout after practicing with us. They informed us that she didnt want to go anywhere, period. A shocker for me, as I had been on her hard, just to get emotions from her.

Over the fall season, Hailey and I spent a lot of time with each other. For the most part, she only hit in games. She pitched some and would occasionally play in the field, but it was obvious what she was made to do: hit. Yes, she was quiet. Yes, she has a very dry sense of humor, something that can come across wrong, especially coming from a young lady.

The conversation that forever changed my mind came during a mid-season game when she either struck out or hit out and she stopped at third base and told me, pitch by pitch, what went wrong and what she should have done. 

Throughout the season, this happened time and time again. On occasion, she would ask me what I thought. These were high game IQ questions that, truly, no one else would ask. "I knew this pitch was coming because these two pitches proceeded it. I hit here because the defense shaded this way" and so on. 

Her final stats: .333 batting average (2nd), .435 OBP(2nd), .538 slugging (2nd), led the team in total hits and RBI, tied for second with most walks, and had just four strikeouts in the entire season. In finality, she was the best hitter on the team, any way you sliced it. But, she kept finding defenders with her hits. I meant that quite literally. She was taking pitchers and shortstops out of the game because her hits never got off the ground. For a player with home run potential, this became very frustrating to hit almost every at bat but be stuck on first base after barreling a ball. 

Despite having up to five players on this roster with homer potential, not one was hit for me and the drought at coaching a long-ball hitter continued. 

In the off-season, I have worked very, very hard with our girls on hitting. Most all of them needed significant mechanics tweaks or at least to see hundreds of pitches to work on seeing the ball. I took a different approach to Hailey. Sure, I might work on front foot rotation or little things, but I stayed in her ear. I wanted her to be an extension of myself in the box. 

"A walk is a win for them."

"You get one pitch an at-bat."

"You can't win a tournament with one swing." 

"Be aggressive, first pitch is best pitch."

"Know who you are and be who you are."

None of this is 100% true, but I believe that building a power hitter is just as much a mental game as it is a physical one. Her issue was never seeing the ball or hitting it square. It was hitting the wrong pitch, being too passive, or taking too much pressure on herself in one at-bat. 

Friday night before our first tournament, the team went to a local hitting facility, where we've been trying to hit off the simulator at least once a week. By Friday night, the girls were absolutely hitting the cover off of the ball. The bad news, we found out that due to school ball restrictions, Hailey wouldn't be able to play with us until after her high school season. Naturally, we were upset about that but nearly as upset as her parents. They were worried we would move on from Hailey, which prompted a huge laugh from Alex and I. We assured them that we would make do and her spot wasn't going anywhere.

Saturday morning at 8AM, we were in Calsonic Indoor Arena in Shelbyville Tennessee for our tournament. I knew that hitting the ball wasn't going to be an issue. What would be an issue was keeping the ball off the ceiling or off the nets. The only way to hit a dinger was to thread the narrow gap between the net and the ceiling.

First inning of first game, Hailey swings at the first pitch and it is smoked to the wall, but because of the walls inside the arena, it bounces right back to the outfielder and she's stuck on first

Second game, Hailey walks her only at-bat.

Third game, she doesn't like the first pitch. She smashes the second pitch for a double that scores two RBI. Next at-bat, she fouls the first pitch, she swings in desperation at the third pitch, watches the fourth pitch for a third strike to end the inning. We discuss it and she knows what went wrong. She fouled her pitch and then became passive. 

Forth game is the semifinal game. We jump up to a 1-0 lead and Hailey is up to bat. I normally have some words of instruction or encouragement. But, I've noticed that this pitcher's windage is perfect, but she struggles with elevation. The ball is either in the dirt, down the middle of the plate, or over the batters head. So, I tell Hailey that if it comes out of her hand straight, she needs to jump on it. Typically, the first pitch has been money. 

I'd always wondered what my reaction would be when that first homer was hit. Em smashed a no-doubter off the ceiling earlier that day and I felt robbed by that. I know she did. I celebrated when that one came off the bat, just to see it bounce harmlessly to the middle of the outfield for a single. The same thing happened at least two other times that day. By 8:30 that night, I was tired and had honestly given up on being able to yelp and scream and hug that player who would gift me something that I had worked very, very hard to see. 

I had imagined running to the plate and getting in line with all of the other players, none of which have had homers hit for them nor have they hit any themselves, either. I imagined fist bumps and hugs and all types of exuberance. A watershed moment, just as we had the final game of the last season with C's Story. 

The reality was so much different as I watched the ball clear the net and hit the seats. I didn't find myself jumping and yelling like the idiot I imagined I would be. The truth is, I turned my back to the celebration and let the girls celebrate on their own. I watched it from a distance. I reveled in it because it is their team and her moment, not mine. Hailey rounded third and when she did, she saw AO1 screaming and yelling at her. With tears in her eyes, she did something I had never see her do: she showed emotion and emotional attachment to her team. It's been there all along, I know that. But, it HAS been hard for her. She isn't like the rest of the team. She's never had a team that was her family like every other player on that team. I think while she gets along just fine with all of those girls, she hasn't had that bond. Some of that is being from a different school and playing for different teams. Some of that is the gamer in her. 

Some of that is breaking down her own barriers. She's had that homer in her all along and nothing has change in the six months I've known her but she had to uncork it that first time to know it could be done, and it would be done going forward.  Just like that first dinger, she needed to uncork her emotional reservations and show herself to her team and it took Hailey's first homer to do it.

Post Script:

I never high-fived her as she ran the bases. Two plays later, the inning was over and we lost that game 6-2, never scoring another run. Even between innings, the two of us didn't speak. After the loss, after we shook hands and had a prayer, she eventually approached me. Did she want to brag about it? Did she want to complain about the loss? Nope.

She wanted to talk about how what I said before the at bat affected how she read the ball out of the pitchers hand. She knew it wasn't a good pitch to hit for her as it was a bit outside and low (as you can see in the picture) and how she caught just enough of it to get it out to right center. She wanted to talk about how the pitch sequence she'd seen in the hitter before her told her that was her one pitch.