My Turtle Club Gold ‘99s

It's July 1^st – Canada Day to us Canukians.

A cool morning with the sun hidden above a thick layer of cloud that is spitting fine droplets of rain as my faithful black lab Suzy and I sit on the back deck this morning.

The hot summers of years before do not seem to be the plan so far this year. Instead today it feels more like May.

I am pouring over the spreadsheet that is my roster and line up for my Turtle Club house league fast pitch softball team of twelve girls aged from ten to fourteen years old. I'm looking over the combinations of our players for innings one through five, who works best with whom in which of the nine available positions, and the order they will bat in.

You might think that having a team of girls with such a broad age range is too much. That the older girls play too hard – to fast – for the younger ones. I know I did when this season started.

But I was wrong. Dead wrong.

The older girls, at least on my team, are all mentors to their younger team mates. And the younger girls have learned so much more this season than they would have simply by playing against teams exactly their age.

The younger girls' skills have risen so much faster. And the older girls still continue to improve.

The older girls, almost young women about to enter high school either this year or the next have all been fantastic role models.

I am so proud of each and every one of them that I cannot tell you in words.

My best pitchers come from both the older and younger girls alike. And the older girls give the younger ones tips and tricks.

And while our little league has only four teams in total, the talent appears to be pretty evenly spread across the pool the players. And we still play under the rules that all girls must bat in a game, and all girls must play both infield and outfield in a game – and all girls must get a chance at pitching – a very hard skill indeed to hurl a yellow eleven inch leather sphere bound in red threading with a cork center as fast as they can underhanded consistently in a strike zone that changes as the size of the girls change.

But all my girls are up for the challenge – eager for their next opportunity to stand at the center of the diamond and do their best to throw strikes across the plate thirty five feet away.

It's so much fun to be a part of a team that is stepping up to each challenge as well as my little team has done. We are turning double plays, and making the throws from third to first to get the fastest of base runners.

Our team is in first place so far with a third of the season left to play. And I do admit that while the premise of house league play is to be fun, with winning being a secondary, perhaps a tertiary thought to skill improvement and a love for the game, I always tell my girls that while winning isn't everything, it is funner than losing.

They seem to like that mindset.

And when we do lose, they do not like it.

We live in a very competitive world, shrinking day by day as our technologies make our experience on this planet one of a global community. It's not a place where an indifference to winning will help you succeed.

There are no participation trophies given in life. You have to get them and earn them. There are no rewards for simply showing up. And that is what sports can teach our children, if we use the metaphor correctly. Honor and integrity and fair play and justice must all be equal key ingredients for this magic potion to really teach our kids the lessons they so desperately need to learn.

No video game console invented yet can replace sports for teaching our kids true competitive drive. And no game where there are no losers and there are no winners – can help our kids evolve into the kind of kids that help keep our community, our society strong. But it has to be an equal mix of all.

There is no social network they can belong to online – chatting to the world that is more influential than that of a ball diamond dugout – when the team is down by four runs and you need a rally – and the cheers the girls sing together for their team mate at the plate gets louder … and more inspiration.

And you have to learn how to take the unfair with a smile that only makes you try harder the next time. You can't blame the umpire because they made a bad call. You can't say the other team got lucky on a fantastic catch.

I guess that's what I love about all these girls the most. They already seem to know this. And they all want to strive to be better. They are not looking for handouts, or easy solutions. Instead each time they step up to the plate – they want to drive that ball into the center field gap for a double or a triple or even a home run. Each time that ball is hit to them, they don't step out of the way in fear, hoping someone else behind them will make the play. No, instead they charge the ball and take ownership of the opportunity to get the out. And if they bobble it, they fight harder to get it back and still attempt the play.

They don't give up.

And when they step up to the challenge, our whole team is on their feet to congratulate them – to make them feel as special as they deserve to feel at that moment. And then that moment is over and the next challenge is faced.

And when they make a mistake – or they don't do as well as they think they could do, there is no blame chided by their team mates. Instead the whole team is there to tell them …
"it's alright, it's okay we still love you anyway!"

I think that's my favorite cheer of them all.

There is not a kid on this team that I am not incredibly proud of. And while I and my two fantastic coaches might have taught them just a little teeny bit about playing softball, they in return teach me so much more.

Our little Gold '99 team is a fantastic group to be a part of this year. And I am so happy that I and my youngest daughter Ashley-Rae – only ten herself – have had the opportunity to share this experience with them together.

"Hey one-zero, come be my hero, and hit the ball, over the wall"
"Seven seven, hit it up to heaven"

I love those sing-song cheers.

And to all the parents of these exceptional young ladies I have the privilege to manage, I sincerely want to thank each and every one of you for the outstanding job you have done so far.

Because I'm here to tell you it's not easy raising kids today.

But I think these girls are all the cream of the crop.

I can hardly wait for our game tonight against that dastardly Red team. To watch these girls go out there and try their best. And while I hope we win, I know there is a another great lesson out there just waiting to be learned.

What a great way to spend a July First Canada Day.

I just hope it doesn't rain.

I got a buddy, eh ...

I don’t care much for self-proclaimed experts.

For all that I have met, there is one guy who sits at the top of my list.

When I was a younger man, still living in London, I played on a fastpitch softball team with some friends and we were a pretty good team.

The guy who coached us was a bum of sorts. And we dismissed him and usually coached our team by committee. If we all agreed we did it. And this guy would always say that it was his leadership that brought us to our conclusion.

Anytime this bum needed to sound authoritative on any subject, he would always preface his next statement by saying “I got a buddy eh, …” and he would go on to tell us what this expert buddy told him.

And for every subject there seemed to be a different buddy.

This guy was not so likeable that he would have that many buddies. Or that they would all be so incredibly knowledgeable, and more so to be so generous with their knowledge to share it with this bum of a coach guy.

It drove me nuts, and the tripe that spewed  out of his mouth after declaring his buddy status was usually quite useless.

So I have never really held much credence to those who start to impose their wisdoms with the sentence “I got a buddy, eh …”

Until now, because you see …

I got a buddy, eh …  a fellow I work with who over the last two years who is a coach of a much older team than my girls play on. His daughter plays on this team and he has always described her as very good. And we would talk about softball, usually with me asking questions and he giving answers. His answers have always been very good ones.

One day this spring I was telling him about our upcoming trip to a tournament in Toledo. Let me first say that the level of play in Toledo is fantastic, with clubs that that recruit players from up to a hundred miles away. Their coaches are paid instructors – not the volunteer parents and neighbors our leagues here offer. Not coaches like me, who try to work with the basic knowledge of a fan.

So I was telling him about our Toledo trip and he told me to try to get the girls ready to be beaten badly – mercied  if you will –  every game.  Then he told me “spend the remaining part of your time teaching your girls how to defend against the bunt. These teams will test you early, and if you can’t make the right plays, they will spend the whole game simply bunting on you and taking your defense apart.  Train them every scenario with runners in every combination – runner on first. Runner on third, runner on first and third – bunting up and down the first and third baselines – teach them all of those until they know it cold.”

So I shared this knowledge with our team manager, but I prefaced it by saying “I don’t know what level of authority this is coming from … but here is what he told me …”

Our next practice was devoted entirely to bunting – just as my buddy Len had suggested. And it paid off. While we did get beaten badly every game - losing by ten runs easily as we entered the third inning of each – the other teams only tried bunting on us once or twice, maybe three times a game, and our girls handled most well enough that the other teams just resorted to hitting home runs and line drives to every open spot they could find on the field. And when batting, we only had one base runner that entire tournament.

The next week, when I saw Len, he asked how we made out. I told him how humbling the experience was, but that his advice about bunting was great advice that worked, and even though we got completely annihilated, it wasn’t because they bunted us to death,

Our second tournament in Toledo we won a game from a Toledo team, and played close in a couple others, but annihilated by the best teams.

He smiled and told me that was great progress.

This week, I ran into Len in the hallway again, and he told me with beaming pride about how his team actually won that weekend’s tournament in Toledo.

“Really?!, That’s fantastic!”, I said.

“Yes, but we have a lot to work on still he replied”.

That struck me.

Thursday, our coach mentioned that we were going to have one of the other clubs coaches come to one of our practices. I was curious, so I looked at the other clubs website to find out about this other coach. As I was weaving my way through the teams on their site, I tripped over their under 18 girls team. And there was my buddy Len as the coach.

And below in the list of players – his daughters name was listed. And above that list there was another list of accomplishments.

Ontario Provincial Woman’s Softball Association Silver Medalists

Len’s daughter was listed as the PWSA Top Batter from two seasons before, and the PWSA  most valuable player last year.

And I realized the true quality of advice that I was getting.

And I felt kind of silly in my boasting of my own two girls, who are both doing very well and I am very proud of, but not anything like Len’s daughter.  We are truly just beginning.

All of Len’s advice had been excellent advice, and I did take and followed it when given. But I did not realize the level of authority that my buddy held when he told me.

But now I have this conflict. I really don’t want to sound like that bum of a coach that we all dismissed on that team from long ago.

But I’m afraid I probably will now.

I can just hear me during our next practice, standing at the fence with the coaches, and saying ….

“I got a buddy, eh …”