"When I say Rip, you say Ers"

Our softball team has played 6 games so far and while our record is a paltry 2-4, after last night's game I have reason to believe that this team could be a contender in the play-offs.

Our first game was what some people might call a disaster. We didn't know the rules (two different sized balls threw a lot of people off), our team was disorganized, our hitting was a disappointment, and our pitchers had been practicing at a distance probably a good 10 feet closer to the plate than what it turned out to be. We lost against a team that today we probably would beat.

Since then though, we've grown. Our batting has shown significant improvement, and our pitching is very good-- bordering on excellent. Most important to me, in this last game we made much better decisions than we have in the past. We held the ball instead of throwing it away, and when there were overthrows or misses people were there backing each other up. I think we listened to each other better than we have before.

Our batting was surprisingly poor this game considering how good it's been lately. This is mostly due to low pitching that the ump accepted as strikes, but besides that I think it was one of the best games we've played. It ended up going into extra-inning-overtime, where each batter only gets one pitch. If it's a ball they walk, if it's a strike or hit foul they're out. We really stepped it up and got 5 runs out of them and then played some solid D to hold them for the win.

It was suspenseful and exciting and so much fun. We even had fans-- the Boulderite parents showed up in force to cheer us on. I hope that the rest of our games can be as fun as this one.

We have a make-up game this Sunday: Stazio field 6 at 5:00pm against Intela, a team with a record similar to ours. Should be a good game. If you're around I hope I see you there!