The Girls of Summer

Just a quick post for today. Softball season officially started last night with Reagan and Abbie both playing their first games, and we're all pretty tired this morning.

Abbie's team, TNT, won their game (3-2), but there was a little confusion toward the end. The games are timed, and they have a rule at her age about not starting another inning within 5 minutes of the time running out or something like that. So even though we were ahead, when the home team finished their last at bat with 4 minutes left on the clock, the game was called. All of our girls got ready to go shake hands with the other team when our coach was called to the mound for a conference with the other coach and the ump. Shortly after our girls took the field again.

When the coach came back over, I asked what had just happened. I thought we had just one the game. She said that the other coach recognized that we had won, but hadn't been able to bat her whole lineup during the game, so she wanted to use the last few minutes to let them have a chance at the plate. "So, we're just being nice?" I asked, and the response is why all of us Templins would love this coach: "I'm not really all that nice when it comes to winning, but I didn't want to hear her whine about this all season."

Reagan's game was a little more exciting. Her team is the Reds, and for her first game out they got to play the Pink Flamingoes (at least that's what I'm calling them). The interesting thing is that most of the opposing team was the girls from Reagan's cheer squad. The other wild card for the night is that we discovered that the girls can steal bases at this age. No lead offs, but they can steal after the pitches releases the ball. Now, I don't know if our coach knew that or not, but I can tell you that we didn't practice for it, Reagan didn't know, and none of the parents knew until the first kid from the Flamingoes got on first and stole second. Uh oh!

They walked and stole their way around for 5 runs in the first inning and that ended that half-inning with the 5 run rule. Our team came out with a better hitting lineup, and pounded the ball back to them to bring around a few runs ourselves.

Next inning we changed out pitchers and had started having success with strike outs, and pretty soon our team really started coming together. It was 9-9 with less than a minute to play, and at this age they keep starting innings until the time runs out (and of course home team, which was us, always gets last bat). We went ahead and took a third out to get another inning of play and brought the Flamingoes back to the plate. They managed 3 runs and then we were up again. It didn't work out so well for us. We brought a couple of girls around to 2nd and 3rd, but we couldn't bring anyone home. Final score: 12-9.