The Dirtiest Classroom Ever...
...and 8 lessons learned there.
And 8 lessons learned there…
When my oldest was 5 years old I made the mistake of checking an “Angelina Ballerina” DVD out from the greatest library in the world (as demonstrated in this post) and accidentally embarking on a very expensive and time consuming dance adventure for the next 3 ½ years. What started with a preschooler in raptures over a pirouetting mouse ended with about $2000.00 of expenses, a closet full of sequins and tutus, and countless hours invested in lessons, rehearsals, performances and recitals from the summer before Kindergarten through second grade.
After at least 130 hours spent in instruction, many more in driving time and practice, and a half-dozen holiday performances, what did she have to show for it? She had three very intense recitals, for which she worked her little behind off for a year in order to spend four terrifying minutes on a stage in a painfully uncomfortable costume, only to get handed a bouquet of flowers. Then, in May of 2014, my ballerina witnessed her little sister’s first soccer season and was enlightened. You see, little sis practiced for maybe an hour a week for three weeks, then ran around in the sunshine for a half hour game with friends every weekend in a comfy and cool-looking jersey, and was rewarded with a snack after every game and a trophy at the end of the 6-week season, twice each year.
That was it. Performing arts were out, and sports were in. (Disclaimer: I’m not hating on ballet or dance, it just turned out to be the wrong “fit” for us.)
The only problem now was the endless running. Unfortunately, my oldest was very certain that soccer involved far too much of that to suit her. Enter softball, and a new era of life.
In August of 2014 we signed our girl up for “bronze-league” softball. It was a 2nd-3rd grade coach pitch league at the local rec sports organization. It went about how you would imagine. Two nights a week the five of us family “fans” would pile onto the hot-as-Hades bleachers to watch our favorite player trundle onto the field in an oversized helmet and a pair of gym-shorts, and learn the basics of a new sport. The basics of softball are quite chaotic at the beginning. There was a lot of “that’s okay just get the next one” and “keep your eye on the ball” and “bend your knees, choke up.” When there was any actual contact between bat and ball the whole of the parents’ section freaked out and screamed at once, as though through their sheer volume they could propel the child safely to first, or manage to field and play the ball for the out - depending on which side you were seated on. About 26 pitches into a “7-pitch” at-bat (the coaches demonstrated the patience of saints with these kids) my girl finally got a piece of one, and the iconic sound of ball-on-aluminum rang out over the park. Four of us leapt our feet and yelled until we were hoarse. (My littlest was under the bleachers playing in the mud, making clay “hot-dogs” that - at first sight - looked too much like something else.)
By the end of that first season my softball player was hooked. I was pretty pumped, because unlike ballet and soccer, I had played softball, and it’s always fun to share experiences with your children. It took only a few seasons more before my second born was diagnosed with asthma, and traded the endless running of soccer for the game of softball, and it became her love as well. Particularly catching. Then the littles joined up the following year. They were on the same team, because siblings in the same league were always kept together. By the fall of 2016 we were officially a “softball family.”
Even before he was coaching, softball provided my husband (and I) with a lot of “teaching opportunities.” This was particularly common in the older leagues (which cover more grades), where there were always at least two of my girls on the same team. The sister/teammate dynamic took some getting used to, and just when we did we found our younger girls getting “called up” to sub for teams AGAINST their older sisters. “Leave it on the field” never happened, no matter how many times I said it. But watching them cheer and support each other is/was one of the most rewarding things a parent can experience. Nights at the ballpark became our favorite nights of the week. Which was good, because there got to be an awful lot of them.
After her debut in bronze my oldest climbed her way up through the leagues; silver and then gold. Her sisters followed behind.
Silver league introduced kid-pitch (supplemented by the coach after ball 4), and it was the parents’ turn to exercise every bit of their patience. Participation trophies became a thing of the past, but my older girls managed to fight their way to a championship game here and there to bring some hardware home. My husband started coaching while my oldest two were in silver. The coach/dad dynamic was even tougher to adjust to than the sister/teammate one, but they made it work. He kept coaxing out their best efforts and I kept coaxing out the brown stains from the white pants.
Gold league finally opened up the full fast-pitch rule-book. There were no more run-limits and coach pitches. It was a dog-eat-dog, take what you can get, don’t forget to slide kind of game. Taunting the defense and stealing home became my oldest daughters’ favorite thing to do. She also began assistant-coaching the younger teams, and learned a great deal about the sport from a new angle; a fresh perspective.
I’ve found that you get a lot of those in softball, because everything starts fresh at the beginning of every season; different coaches, different teammates, different team names and jerseys. For a while that took some getting used to. Almost every face was a new one, twice each year; spring and fall. In those first few seasons, there was a tendency for girls to form cliques within the teams. Some teams bonded well and held one another up. Some formed chasms and never played well together. Lessons were learned there.
There was also a tendency, in our early years, for everyone else to be considered “the bad guys.” “That team plays dirty, those girls are mean, those people cheat.” There would be animosity for an entire team of players simply because they weren’t your own. As the seasons rolled on, though, more and more familiar faces - those of teammates past - popped up on the opposing teams. Your coaches you loved from past seasons were now the ones you were playing against. The coaches who had been thought to be big bullies were your own coaches, standing up for you at the plate. Those big mean “other team” coaches didn’t look so scary anymore when they were the ones helping you. Those girls who you assumed were nasty, and who you’d had a grudge against, were the ones you were now sharing a jersey color with, and sunflower seeds with, and victories and defeats and joys and sorrows and hugs with. Lessons were learned there, too.
I know that some families have to move around a lot, and I’m sure that teaches their children great lessons like courage and adaptability. I do think there’s something said, though, for staying in one place long enough to put down deep roots. You find out that “home” is more than the house that you live in. You become a part of a community. You are able to watch people that you know grow up over time, for better, or for worse. You see the season rolling on (winter, softball, summer and softball) as the years pass, and you can measure your own growth by the height of the dug-out shelf and amount of hesitation before you answer “yes, coach.” More lessons learned.
Some seasons brought a lot of wins, medals and trophies. Some didn’t. Tournament posters for silver league became a seasonal tradition, and they now wall-paper the workout room in our basement.
Nowadays, every time we step on the field, there are familiar faces surrounding us both for and against. Even the umpires are known by name. We still roll into the same dusty parking lot. We still sit in the same skin-searingly hot bleachers, under the same lights, collecting the same moths. We breathe in the same sweet scent of freshly-mowed grass and hot pretzels. With every “ping” of the bat we let the school and workday stress leave our bones. We still spend too much money on snacks at the concession stand, and get too emotionally charged-up over a recreational game. We whoop and holler as my catcher dives for a foul pop fly. We yell and clap as my littlest doubles on a fast skipper to right center. We cheer and shout as my third-born stretches for the out at first. We scream and laugh as my oldest pushes the defense to the breaking point and slides across the plate on the steal.
Countless snacks and dinners have been eaten under the lights there. Pages of homework have been completed at the picnic tables. We still gripe about the parking lot. We still come home to a PILE of dusty brown laundry that always ends up with one too few socks.
This will be our 10th year. The girls keep playing. My husband keeps coaching. I keep scrubbing jerseys. He runs drills. They get bigger and better. My second keeps catching. My oldest keeps stealing home. We win. We lose. But in the end, even the losing is winning. Because of what we’ve learned in this place. The girls have changed so much that you can hardly recognize them from the limby little things they used to be.
And though they’ve grown so much as people and players, the ballpark has stayed the same; day or night, rain or shine. The same sticky-hot days, the same cool nights, the same dusty clay, the same metal bleachers, the same bright lights and greasy hotdogs, the same thump of the glove and ping of the bat…
Six months out of every year - April to June and August to October - my van seats have brown butt-prints on them, my house is a dirty, clay colored mess and there is dust everywhere. Literally everywhere. Not to mention the mountains of laundry and the water-bottles… But it’s okay, because we love the sport, and all of the lessons that they’ve learned from it.
A decade into this game I’ve come to realize that softball, like school, is training them for life in vital ways. Math is important and reading is essential, but there are some things you have to learn in unconventional classrooms. The ballfield is one of those places for my girls. So I leave you with 8 lessons learned in the dirtiest classroom ever:
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Own your mistakes.
Every time you make a mistake, whether you realize it or not, you are standing at a fork in the road where two character paths meet, and you have a choice to make, and usually an audience. You can own it and grow, or you can deny your mistake, and loop back to where you started. You aren’t fooling anybody by denying it anyway, and blaming others will destroy your team and your credibility going forward. Furthermore, you can’t fix what you won’t admit is broken. So take accountability for the problem and get to work on the solution.
Respect authority (even when they make mistakes).
Somebody has to be in charge. And, like you, they will make mistakes. Umpires, coaches, everyone. There will be bad calls. There will be coaching miscues that lead to outs. Nobody is perfect. But their job is to make your sport playable, and they can do that because they are in a position of authority over you. Your job is to play that sport, and do as they say. So you do your job and let them do theirs.
Practice pays off, and effort shows.
It really does, it’s as simple as that. You get out of it what you put into it.
Nobody is the enemy (just the opponent).
They want the same thing you do. They’re doing the same thing to get it. They’re just wearing a different color shirt. If you’re not the “bad guy”, then neither are they.
No job is un-important.
When all of the infield positions are given to the most athletic and skilled players it is easy to feel like the outfield positions are less important in the broad scheme of things. Often, on a wobbly throw to first, nobody even notices that the right fielder - who played her position to perfection and was there for back-up - was the reason that one base was given up instead of two or three. It’s only when you’re the visiting team up 8-6 in the bottom of the final inning with two runners on and a big hitter at the plate that you realize that infielders might save runs, but outfielders save games.
How to lose with dignity.
This one takes practice, but if you’re in a sport for any length of time you’ll get plenty of that. We tend to feel that the only just outcome for our hard work is victory, but that is not the case. Both teams can give it their best and somebody will win and somebody will lose, justly. You will face a similar fork in the road here as you do when you make a mistake. See lesson 1, and choose wisely.
How to win with grace.
If you thought losing was hard, try winning with grace. For the best success, I would suggest remembering what it was like to try to lose with dignity, and wearing those shoes while you enjoy your victory celebration.
How to be a part of a team.
Words are very powerful. Actions speak even louder. They can build up, or tear down, with remarkable speed and precision, even if they weren’t intended to. So be intentional with them. Remember that your words and actions not only can, but will build up or tear down a person, a team, and a league.
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These are the lessons we’ve learned. Ten years in they still love playing together and we’re still a softball family.
This season - her 17th, because of a lost COVID season and a canceled season - will almost certainly be the last for my oldest. It’s unlikely that there will be enough players in the spring for a season then, so the senior class will have a send-off at the end of this fall season. But this season will be special in another big way; it’s the only one in which all four of my girls will be on the same team, with their dad as their coach. It’s going to be epic.
It also feels a bit like the beginning of the end of an era, like so many others in life right now. It’s bittersweet; sad but full of happy memories and new beginnings. My younger girls are still playing, and still learning, and I look forward to more seasons - and hopefully trophies - ahead with them. But the end will come, eventually. Someday they will all be finished. When they are, long after the medals and trophies - that are already collecting dust - have been boxed up and put away, I hope that they all will remember these nights at the ballpark. I hope that they will remember the lessons learned in the dirtiest classroom ever, and carry those lessons with them through life.
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