New Seasons

It is officially softball season in the college world. Pacific had it's first outdoor softball game at home on Feb. 11. Yep, never would have happened in Iowa!

I am the softball contact, which is kind of exciting. It's the first sport that I know well and can use correct lingo the entire season! Also last season Pacific was one of the best offensive teams in the nation hitting 44 home runs as a team and being ranked in the top 5 in the nation for home runs and top 15 in several other offensive categories. I am excited to see how their season goes, especially after they hit 5 home runs in the first doubleheader which was just two 5-inning games! For the spring, I will also be covering tennis and golf.

Last weekend, the softball team had another game scheduled for home. It snowed in the morning and proceeded to rain the rest of the afternoon. It was lousy weather for a game, but the coaches held out on cancelling it and they got one of the two games in after a 1.5 rain delay. I didn't fully enjoy having to be in the press box during the delay because it was cold! (Side note, cold to me when I am in Oregon means in the 30s. Also this coldness happened when Iowa was in the 50s!!) However, we played softball and got another win. After writing the release after the game I headed to Seattle for the President's Day tournament. Just a nice little 3 hour jaunt up I-5 at 9 p.m., luckily one of the Pacific volleyball players and also an Athena coach decided to ride with me so I didn't have to go alone. We got to the hotel around midnight and then I had to write a tennis release before heading to bed.

The tournament was a three day affair, with my 14s team playing in the AM session, which was 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. everyday. We didn't win a lot, but they were started to show more competitiveness by the end of the weekend and were actually diving on the court for the ball and communicating 75.26% better than our last tournament. I was proud of the effort they put out, especially after one of the middles sprained her ankle and we had to put an outside hitter in to finish the match. It was definitely an interesting weekend to see how a team of 13 and 14-year olds react to staying in a hotel and playing three days in a row. I also had a very interesting question asked to me by one of my players. We are getting ready to scorekeep a game and she turns to me and says, 'hey sara, do guys get periods?' After evaluating her quickly to see if she was serious (she was), I responded with a nope.

The weekend in Seattle could have been a weekend in Vegas with the 18s, but I chose early in January to head north. My co-coach for the 14s has not been around much in the past month, so I wanted to make sure the 14s had a consistent coach and saw it important that I go to Seattle rather than tag-a-long to Vegas as an assistant coach. While in Seattle, I decided being in Washington during President's Day was more fitting than Neveda! :)