Of all the sports I ever
played the one that has been my favorite and the biggest part of my life
is softball. I started playing when I was six
years old and grew quickly
to love the sport. I think what I love most about it is the combination
of teamwork and individual skill. A team that has a bunch of average
players that can play well together will easily beat a team with one
or two star players. This is a concept that many of my teams have proven
along the way. I have had the privilege to play with some extremely talented
young ladies and most of my friends have been made through playing softball.
There are thousands of memories I have from softball, but the story I
always love to tell occurred in the summer of
2001.
That
summer I finished up my freshman year of high school
and was busy participating on 3 different softball teams,
but all of them were made up with relatively the same
girls. As the summer wore
on we got used to playing together and were very good. Our senior league team had a habit of winning the state
championship, but
had yet to win
a regional title. That summer we came from behind to
win the regional tournament and the next day we were
on a plane to Kentucky for the Senior
League World Series 
representing the East. We were
the first team from our area to make it to the World Series
and that was an accomplishment
in itself, but our town responded so well to the win.
After receiving
very little press, our games were being broadcasted
on radio stations in our town. Our families and friends
could listen to our games
and although
we didn’t win our presence in the tournament was well documented
in Delaware. I don’t think we ever really understood how huge this
was for us because we had been playing softball all summer. This time
all our food was being paid for and some of the teams we were playing
didn’t speak English. We all made a lot of new friends and learned
about other cultures, but the one important thing was that we were there
to play softball. In terms of athletic prowess that was not the best
team I have ever played for. However, we had all been playing together
since March and the World Series took place in August. We all respected
each other and knew each other as people and softball players. We worked
well as a team and that’s what made us so successful. I learned
a lot about myself and other people that summer, and
I got the opportunity to play in a World Series all
because of my love
for
a sport. It just
shows how there is a lot more to sports than working
out and being the best. 
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