TYPICAL GIRL FASTPITCH SOFTBALL PLAYER

The TGFPSP (Typical Girl’s Fastpitch Softball Player) takes pride in how much dirt she can collect every weekend.  If she goes to dinner on a night she is not playing, it takes an hour an hour and she still feels self-conscious.  If she goes after a game, she’ll walk right into a restaurant with a streak of dirt across her forehead, ratty hair, stained shirt and brown/white socks or brown toes with sandals! The TGFPSP is ready and willing to play at the drop of a hat! If she can get away with it, she will play on two teams on the same day, no less.  She has a huge wardrobe: Plenty of tournament shirts and shorts from all the teams she has played on.  Her parents do her school shopping every weekend at the tournament t-shirt booth. When you say wear something nice, she thinks it means wear a tournament t-shirt without dirt stains.  The TGFPSP needs to get an athletic scholarship.  Her parents have spent $100,000 on camps, private instruction, batting cages, gloves, bats equipment, uniforms, player fees, concession stands, travel and lodging.  They’re broke!  The TGFPSP is a fierce competitor, willing to stand in against a fast pitcher so close the even a pro baseball player would have trouble hitting.  (And she might be only 5’ 2” and 100 lbs. soaking wet!)  She might play 1^st or 3^rd at 20 feet from home plate,  saying I dare you to bunt…Drive on down my throat.

The TGFPSP is playing for all the right reasons! She could hang out at the mall, stay home and watch TV, or spend her summers at the pool.  Instead she has a tight schedule with limited free time, hangs out at the practice field with a coach in her face, and spends her summers getting baked on a 95-degree field with no shade.  Maybe we should get some of our kids’ IQs checked?  The TGFPSP has he priorities in order: tournaments, league games, team practice, school work, individual practice and batting cage, family,  private softball instruction, church, conditioning, softball camps and boys.  The TGFPSP is diligent and hardworking.  She knows you get out of something what you put into it.  She is not the type of kid to take the easy way out!  She is competitive, not willing to give up.  She learns many valuable lessons during the course of her softball career, like:

1.                  You can stay at Holiday Inn for $12 a night if you sleep 5 to a room.

2.                  Hotels don’t monitor pool usage.  You can go swimming anytime whether you are registered or not.

3.                  Continental breakfast means 3 bowls of cereal, 2 bagels, 2 donuts and 4 glasses of OJ.

4.                  Unlike the geographically challenged, softball girls know how to get from home to every field within a 25-mile radius.

The TGFPSP has a lot of fun every summer, enough to make her come back next year regardless of the sacrifices, the money, the drinking water that people put their hands in , etc…

The TGFPSP, first and foremost, is somebody’s little girl.