For The Love of the Game

Following a long spring with a shortened high school and college softball season, travel/club softball across the country has started back up… and all I can say is “It was wonderful seeing the game played again”!

Across the country, softball teams have begun to get out to just “play” and “compete”. What a blessing it’s been to see games streaming live on the internet, social media posts about players successes and video highlights from weekend games and tournaments.

I was fortunate enough to get out to the fields these past few weekends to identify, scout, evaluate players and just talk softball and the recruiting process. Seeing games played again made me smile. Seeing the smiles on the parents and players faces were priceless. The excitement I saw these past few weekends, in most everyone was not just being able to get back outside to play but being together as one large softball community. This just shows the power of sports. The great game softball represents our communal spirit, with our ability to recreate and be joyful… ALL TOGETHER!

There is a steady path forward to getting softball play back on track, it’s just about making sure player safety is taken seriously as well as the safety of everyone who would be involved in each of the games and tournaments. I see softball coming back strong by the end of the summer and into the fall. We all want that, we want to be able to see sports on TV, and I genuinely think that at some point things will get back to normal and everyone across the country will be playing ball.

It was good just to be out at the ball fields and see these young ladies play. To get back to just a little bit of normalcy for everybody has been a blessing. I hope that all players and coaches will think about how they interact with their teams and the families that attend the practices and games. We don’t want to take steps backwards in our pursuit of moving forward to getting back to normal at the ballpark. Everyone should be encouraged to keep their distance and wear masks whenever possible.

Players, coaches, spectators and college coaches (the ones that can get out to evaluate) did say they’re pumped to be back out at the fields, but things will be run differently this summer season. If we want to have sports, especially softball get back to normal then we need take care of ourselves now… That’s probably as good of advice as I can put out to everyone right now.

These young ladies were really enthusiastic and excited to be back at the ballpark again  as I was. Let’s do all we can to keep this going… For the Love of the Game.