truax.org / Tom / Activities / Tess Truax first Softball Game 3/20/10

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Tess's First Softball Game
Game Day, 3/20/10, Article post 3/23/10

First day of spring.  The girls had been doing 3 practices a week for about a month, so they were excited to to play in the real show.  Progress was impressive from the first day of practice to their first game.

For clarification, Carpinteria is a small town, only 3 stop lights.  Tess rides her bike to practice, which is from our corner of town the other far corner.  Tess's age group only has 3 teams, and spans 3 years.  Tess is in the middle (1st grade).  Some of the girls have been playing for a year or 2, and the smallest girl, Phoebe, looks like she can barley lift the bat.

Tess played center field.  Since none of the balls made it out of the infield, she didn't have an opportunity to show off her fielding abilities.  They don't keep score at this age.  Each team bats their full rotation, and then the other team has their turn at the plate.  Each girl can take up to 4 pitches from the machine, and if they don't connect then they hit off the T.  Everyone hits the ball and gets a chance to run toward 1st base.    The first game went 2 innings.

Tess was a little slow running on her first at bat and was thrown out.  She got the idea that running fast was important and made it to first base in the second inning. Since she was in the middle of the order, she sequenced around and was batted in.  She was very excited and called her grandparents the next morning to tell them she made a "home run".  Grandma passed the story around so Tess is now ready to quit her day job and enter the hall of fame.

They had their group picture after the game, but Pam's camera battery ran low, so we didn't get any photos after the first inning.  I might be able to get a group photo from one of the other parents.

/ Tom