World Softball Day...

This picture will always represent softball to me…

We always used to talk about why you play travel ball... why you pay so much in money, in time, in miles on your car... and it was always this... she played because she wanted to play at the top level whenever possible. She played to improve her game. She played for the friends she would meet. She played because she loved the game and for that alone we would have paid much more. And we watched her learn to be confident, to be a leader, to learn that things didn’t always go as planned, that even the most preparation didn’t mean things would work out... she learned to stand up and be there for a teammate good or bad, and she learned that that teammate would be there for her too... there is so much more to this game than hitting a ball.

The smiles this game brought my girl... the hundreds of trips and weekends we spent together as a family and with great friends... the dinners and celebrations... the car ride giggles and riddles and stories and music and snorts and sleep and Starbucks and reading... the lessons and the coaches who believed that she could do whatever she set her mind to and taught her to believe that too... so much more than a game... so much...

It is hard to think of her not taking the field again... not celebrating another win or another great play at third or another great inning in the circle or learning from a tough loss... she may have quit playing the game and that would have been her decision to make - we always told her when it stopped being fun we were done... but that would have been her choice. Not this...

This picture will always represent softball to me... the joy, the friendship, the discussions about what hairstyle we should do and then the resulting mess at the end of a hard fought day on the field, the 33 she loved so much, and the celebration... ♥️

#worldsoftballday #stronglikeJ #33jordynstrong #dosomethingbig#forher​