Busy with Softball

It's been a super busy week!  It's spring break and we were scheduled for a softball tournament the last two days.  Tuesday, we only had one game in the afternoon, so I was still able to go in to work that morning to train my clients, but I had to take yesterday off since it was an all day softball event.  When they schedule those things, they don't keep in mind that the rest of the world doesn't exactly get a spring break off of work! lol

As I've mentioned before, we don't really have a very strong team this year.  I only have one REAL pitcher on my team.  What I mean by that is, she is the only one that takes pitching lessons and actually works at it and is pretty decent.  Not great, but average.  The other girls we have pitching are mostly just humoring me and working at it so we have at least some sort of back up.

At any rate, scheduling us for a spring break tournament with three games in two days was not in our favor.  She just can't, or at least shouldn't, pitch that much in such a short amount of time.  During the summer, when we play anywhere from 4-7 or 8 games in a weekend, it's not that big of a deal because they are in shape for it by then.  But not right now, at the beginning of our high school season.  If she were to get injured, our season would be pretty much toast.

Tuesday, we had an 8 run lead going into the 6th inning.  It's a solid lead, so I brought in a back up pitcher.  She proceeded to walk her first two batters, and then gave up a homerun.  Okay.  Next back up pitcher.  We still had a 5 run lead and we should be able to score more runs.  Nope, she gave up a few runs too with a few walks and a hit batter.  (this just goes to show how bad they really are)  So then I had to bring back my starter to finish the game and our team proceeded to make 5 errors, we couldn't get a baserunner ourselves, and we lost the game 8-9.  Suck.

Yesterday, we boarded the bus to head to the tournament at 9:30am.  We won our first game 20-7, although it was not that much of a blow out until later in the game.

First play of the game: the lead off batter for the other team hits a ball to the fence.  My left fielder goes after the ball, has it in her glove, and then plays with her shoe while the girl runs around the bases.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  I was livid!!  Throw the damn ball in!!!  As it turns out, her shoe lace was stuck to the fence and she couldn't move.  We had a talk about how next time that happens (like it's a common occurrence.  NOT!) she needs to at least toss the ball to the other outfielder standing right next to her, so SHE could throw the ball in!  Sadly, this same girl, in the same game, later chased down another ball to the fence, rolled her ankle, and was out for the rest of the day.  Turns out she's probably out for the season because the ER doctor thinks it's fractured.  Waiting for the results from her orthopedic doctor.

This game ended up lasting 2 1/2 hours!!  That's about an hour longer than most softball games.  It. Took. Forever!  This forced our second game of the day to start late.  Because my #1 pitcher pitched practically the entire first game and second games, there was no way I could pitch her a full game in the last one.  We started another gal, who DID actually throw strikes, with the intention of bringing in the #1 if the game was close.  Well, it wasn't close.  We lost 2-12.  It just wasn't worth the risk of potentially causing an overuse injury to my pitcher by having her pitch all 3 games.  I'd rather sacrifice that one game than our entire league season and a potential state playoff spot.

So, we left at 9:30am and didn't get home until just after 8:00pm.  Then I had to call the paper to report the game results, eat dinner, take a shower, and be at work this morning at 6:00am for my first client. 

I am SOOoooooo far behind in my blog reading!  But I promise I will catch up!