Take the Gold

Sunday, October 1, 2023

The day started iffy, but ended in gold.

Amanda’s daughter stayed with us in the hotel last night so Amanda didn’t have to worry about leaving at a certain time. Not that it mattered in the end because the games were running TWO HOURS LATE. The girl completely dominated yesterday and were the first seed going into the brackets today. Their first game was supposed to start at 2:30… but they didn’t even take the field until 5pm. Steph was starting to feel a bit anxious after missing a few simple grounders during warm-ups, so she asked for her emergency anxiety meds. But, even with the rocky start, they crushed.

I was worried about the Championship game because the ump was quite clear he just wanted it to be over. My kiddo was catching and he started off by yelling at her to hurry up. I had to step in. Being the scorekeeper, I was behind the plate and firmly (but nicely) told him to knock it off, that she has anxiety and if he keeps talking to her like that, he could trigger an anxiety attack. That seemed to help, although he kept asking if she was okay, after that.

The game was pretty tight with a lot of back and forth on score. Then, our girls bats started catching fire. Unfortunately, though, this caused a scary moment after one of our girls, a power hitter, hit a beautiful ball to left field. I’m not sure exactly what happened, since she was far away, but I think she either missed the ball, or it popped out of her glove. Either way, she went down. Hard. The game wound up being paused. Our girls’ coach was the third base coach, and closest to the girl and ran out to her, followed by the other team’s coaches and, I’m assuming, the girls father. She was carried off the field, and we were told she was taken to Urgent Care. UPDATE: She is okay, but has a minor concussion.

Because of the injury, the game was greatly skewed in our favor because the coach didn’t have any backups, which meant that when the girl was supposed to bat, it would be an automatic out. In the end, it was that out that ended the game, giving our girls the gold. Even with that, our girls played their heart out and absolutely deserved the win. They went undefeated all weekend, with most games being won by at least 7 runs.

With a gold medal in hand, we hit the road at 9pm to drive the almost 2 hours home.