Weeee are the champions!

Katy's softball team completed their Cinderella season on Thursday by going all the way to the championship! The girls played hard in the semifinals and maintained a big lead. The other semifinal game went 9 innings in a tie, so the championship didn't start until 9:30 p.m.! There were some very tired girls trying to compete after dark! Luckily, the game only went 5 innings. The girls were behind the entire game, but rallied in their last at-bat to score 2 runs. They held the other team in the bottom of the inning and became very excited and very surprised champions! Here are some pictures from their last two games. I was so proud of Katy and happy that the girls maintained their cheerful spirits all through the season and tournament.

The golden boys (and girls) of summer

It's been a June of many nights at the ballpark, surrounded by the stocatto of the player's shouts, the crack of the bat, the smell of the fresh-cut grass. Katy is on an all-girls softball team - switching from baseball to softball now at age 9 - and she has had an incredible experience. Her easy-going manner has made her friends with every single girl on the team. I feel my mothering fears of her not fitting in dissipating quickly as I watch her in the dugout with her team, smiling and laughing.

She's still permanently in the "clean up" position in the batting order. She regularly crushes doubles and triples far out into the outfield above the fielder's heads. She is happy that her "slugger" status remains intact with the larger ball and "distracting" windmill pitch delivery.

Legging out a single into a double is something my big girl - once too scared and shy to run bases, she actually walked for an entire season - can be proud of. She's been lucky to be on a team with similarly abled girls, and they've had a great season. Her favorite part about her team? She wasn't the tallest at the beginning of the season (there are 10 and 11 year olds on her team as well). She noticed, though, that she passed up her female coach and caught up with the two other tall girls in the span of 8 weeks.

They are currently battling it out in the tournament. They have advanced past the first round with a 7-0 win - their first shut-out - and will be playing again tonight.

Amy is an athlete, there's no doubt. What plagues her is my competitive streak, apparently passed down to her in spades. She rarely recalls any of her good plays, and focuses instead on her mistakes. It's always hard when one of your kids demonstrates a character or personality trait that you've disliked - but been unable to change - in your own life. I'm not sure how I'll help her enjoy the game more - she is so intense!

Maybe it comes from running behind on many other skills - fine and gross motor and functional cognitive level. T-ball is where she is a rising star, the backbone of the team. Maybe because it's in her control and she is starved for recognition of excellence - maybe that's why she tries so hard.

Caleb is still showing very little interest in sports. He's good at t-ball - when he focuses his limited attention span on it! He is too much of a daydreamer to enjoy the game. We're on the fence (no pun intended!) about having him play next season. Our schedules are already so packed, why fight it?!!

Yes, that's him sitting in the grass looking the wrong direction!

My, how they grow! T-ball season is over, softball will be by next week. After that, Rosy is off to gymnastics for 6 weeks, Amy has soccer camp, and Katy has basketball camp. In our spare time - wait, what spare time?? Three kids in sports really cuts into your weekday evenings!

It's been a good distraction to watch them enjoying a sport I still enjoy playing. And these days, I'm grateful for any distraction.

Olympians & Little Leaguers: Competition & God's Glory

In the middle of the first week of the Olympics, we take our eldest to a special event for her baseball team, an opportunity to warm up with the local minor league baseball team. Amid discussions about parents who push young children into athletics far too young and tailor their children's dreams to their own passions, I still can't help but feel a surge of happiness as I watch my daughter catch and throw with the same joy and prowess I enjoyed as a young girl on the mowed green of the fields of my youth.

I might have introduced her to ball, but it's hers now. I've passed the torch, and she has grown to love it every bit - and perhaps even more so - as much as I ever did. It was only that first year, crippled by shyness, that was difficult. Now it's easy as apple pie, and just as sweet.

What is it about competition, physical contests, teamwork, that lights us up and drives us to higher heights, I wonder? What about sports is indelibly tied to our patriotism, nationalism, pride, and yet personal endeavor and achievement?

Perhaps it is as simple as this: it is one of the few places left where ceremony is ubiquitous and unencumbered in a society tossed to the winds of change. It's done the same across the country at ball parks from Little League to the Major Leagues from spring training to the golden bats of September: warm-ups, national anthem, 9 innings of contest, hot dogs and beer, sunflower seeds and dirty kids, sunset and mosquitos in the night lights. In an era where even church is different in a thousand different sanctuaries across the city every Sunday morning, it is one of the last predictable ceremonies of our time, this world of athletic competition. Once you're initiated into the traditions of it, you can play your whole life without ever giving thought to the order of events ever again.

There is a kind of slow worship to training your body in the calculated movements of a sport. A liturgy to the ceremony of the game. Undertaken with the understanding that our gifts are from Him and ultimately for the glory of God, it can truly be an act of true homage.

...do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (I Corinthians 6:19-20)

T-ball Trio

We've been having a lot of this already this May...little kids, the sandy fields, the crack of the bat, coaches chasing children helter-skelter into positions. It brings back great memories of my childhood. Did you play a sport as a child? What do you remember about playing?