Softball

We signed Katya up for softball. I don't actually like softball. I think it is a boring sport to watch, it is such an inactive sport that you really don't get much exercise playing it, and when I was in elementary school I got hit in the face by a softball and have really hated it ever since. However, Allie plays softball and really wanted to Katya to play so Alex practiced with Katya for about 45 minutes before we shelled out the money to see if she really wanted to play and decided that she had enough interest that it would do.

So we paid the $50 to sign her up and then Alex went out and spent another $100 bucks on the stupid gear that she just had to have! (I get that she needed a mitt and cleats, but did she really need to have the bag, a new pair of shorts, and a bat? We just bought a bat for Allie last year...) We were a little worried about how Katya would do on a team sport. She doesn't really play well when someone is telling her what to do. We signed her up for gymnastics and two lessons in, Alex had to have a talk with her (which of course resulted in a "pouting moment") about how she needs to listen to the teacher and do the apparatus that everybody else is doing - she doesn't just get to wander around and do as she wants.

She has actually been doing pretty well. I have to really complain here about the time commitment, though. The softball games are basically every Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next 5 weeks. The coach must think these girls are planning on going pro, or something, because he has practices every Monday and Wednesday. So essentially, we spend all of our free time participating in a sport that I find to be very uninteresting. I wish she would get into soccer - I at least like to watch that.

We have only had one moment when Katya said she no longer wanted to play. It was after their second practice and (I wasn't at the practice, so I heard this after-the-fact) she got hit by the ball and Alex had scolded her because the coach was having all the girls run from one side of the field to the other and Katya was just moseying along at her leisure. She told me afterwards that she wasn't going to play anymore. I was thinking about the $150 that we had into this little adventure and sternly told her that we had spent a lot of money on this and that she was going to follow it through. It was funny because at this point she was still mad at Alex for the scolding and usually when she is mad at one of us she is unusually nice to the other one. She must have decided that I was just as mean as Alex after that and so she forgot to still be mad at Alex. I haven't heard anything more about quitting...

She had her first game on Tuesday. The coach had her play in the outfield. The problem with softball for girls this age is that they are required to have one of the girls pitch and really none of the girls, on either team, can pitch so there are very few hits that actually come out of an inning (although there are sure a lot of "walks"!). So she was bored, of course, and she was out in the field trying to catch bugs with her mitt, looking around at the sky, and at one point she even sat down (to which the coach reminded her that she needed to be ready - because a hit might happen!).

Katya did make the game interesting when it was her turn to bat. She got one strike for swinging at the ball after it had already gone by. On the second pitch, she was standing at the home plate, waiting for the ball, and swinging her knees like she was doing the chicken dance. The second strike was actually at a ball that was mildly "hittable". At the third pitch, the coach motioned to her to swing and then run (he was actually just meaning that she should run even if she missed the ball, but I believe that translated into swinging no matter what - even if she maybe wasn't going to anyway). They have this stupid rule (at least I think it is a stupid rule) that if the catcher misses the ball on a third strike, they can run anyway. With the way the pitching goes, the catcher is almost guaranteed to miss the ball - since it is almost impossible to catch a ball that is nowhere near the strike zone - and so the girls almost always get to run on a third strike. Well, Katya swung, and then ran - carrying the bat along with her all the way to first base. It was pretty funny! In softball, they have the "base coaches" that tell the girls to run. Imagine if you were playing a game that you really don't understand and just standing there waiting for them to tell you to run - how confusing would that be! Well she was confused and when they told her to run from second to third, but then had to run back to second because the girl running from third to home ended up back on third - well it is a good thing Katya is such a fast runner!

I'll take some pictures at their next game if my mom comes. It is really hard to take pictures when you are worried about your seven month old crawling around getting "conked" on the head by the ball. We had a near hit the last game...watch out Tony!