Burns, Raspberries, and Bruises

What's the worst thing in the world, but also the best? BATTLE WOUNDS. They hurt terribly bad, but they usually have a cool story to them. You can get all sorts of battle wounds. You can get a floor burn in volleyball, turf burn in football, raspberries from gymnastics, ball marks from softball/baseball, strawberries from softball/baseball. There are all sorts of fun things!

My favorite thing ever is when you get a ball mark on your body from getting hit by a pitch. It's the best when it leaves a seam mark too! I can't count how many times I've been hit by a pitch. I've even gotten hit by a line drive right in the arm. That one hurt a lot!!

I think it's safe to say that the worst things ever are floor burns. I am a back row player, so I basically have burns on my elbows, knees, and hips constantly. The worst ones are the ones that burn over a burn and bleed. OUCH!

A lot of people have never experienced a raspberry from gymnastics. SCARIEST THING EVER. It's when your foot slides down the side of the beam otherwise known as "straddling" the beam. This happened to me so many times when I was a gymnast and they always scared me to death. It's painful when you fall on it because it's wooden.

Another thing I get all the time are strawberries. I steal bases almost every single time I get on base, so that means I do a lot of stealing. Because I steal so much, I have huge holes in my pants and my knees get scraped up. Also, I sometimes do a slide by, which means I slide around the base and then flip on my stomach and grab on to the base, so my arms and stomach get scrapes on them too. I don't mind these too bad, they just take a long time to go away. 

So you see, battle wounds are not a bad thing. I strive to get one every game so I feel like I played my hardest (except for raspberries, no one wants those). So suck it up and be happy.

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Mental vs. Physical

A lot of people don't know the difference between a mental and a physical mistake in athletics. When you get to a certain point in your career, you can't have mental errors anymore, that's why it's important you know the difference. A physical mistake is when it's something out of your control like a softball popping out of your glove, or a missed dig in volleyball. A mental mistake is when a second baseman doesn't make it to first on a bunt, or a middle back doesn't make it to the line on an outside attack (rotation defense). Mental mistakes are the mistakes that are made because you weren't thinking.

It is very important that there are NEVER any mental mistakes if you want to be a competitive team. This weekend at my softball tournament, we had a rough time with these. We lost to a team that we should have crushed because of mental mistakes. Our catcher wasn't talking to the cutoffs, the second baseman didn't make it to first in a bunt, corners didn't come up when someone was bunting. These things can't happen if you want to win. Especially in softball. "Softball is a game of inches"

It's also really important that you have no mental mistakes in volleyball either, because volleyball is a really mental game. You have to be in the right spot every moment in order to keep the ball alive, and then your back row has to talk to the hitters about where to hit, and the block has to talk about getting closed, and it's just a whole jumble of stuff to remember. The really good teams make sure they have no mental mistakes, which in turn reduces the amount of physical mistakes. That is the point you want to be at eventually in your athletic career. 

Hopefully this post has enlightened you on the difference between physical and mental mistakes. It is very important to know the difference if you ever want to be stellar at what you do. At the high school age, it is safe to say that if you are any good at what you do, you will probably never make a mental mistake in your entire season. Or maybe just oneental mistake. If you're making ten or more, it's time to figure out something else to do because no one is going to want you on their team if you can't be mentally strong. Sorry to be blunt!

 

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Athletic Sexism

The only people who can relate to this are all my girls out there✋🏻 So sorry boys, you're probably not going to like or agree with this post. It may not be true everywhere, but at my school, there is HUGE athletic sexism. The boys always get everything. Whether it's school issued money, uniforms, equipment, or gym space, the guys have it better. 

I don't know if there is a formula to figure out how much money each athlete gets when they go to state or Drake (this is for track), but the guys always seem to have more. This year for Drake, the girls only sent five people, and the boys sent seventeen (it's been rough for us girls lately). We got seventeen dollars, and the boys got more (not sure how much). Now if there's a formula, how does that make sense? If you send more people, it should be less money, right? 

Another thing that is unfair are the uniforms. Now some of the boys teams could be fundraising for some extra money to get these uniforms, but I don't see how a girls team should have any problems with uniforms. For softball, we wore old baseball jerseys.. Why is that okay, they were REALLY long (went past my knees and the sleeves went to my elbows). Finally we're getting our own, new jerseys, but we had to fundraise so much for them. Also, in track, we've had the same, black jerseys my entire high school career. We don't even have enough of those jerseys to let everyone in our team have one. And this is sad because we have maybe fifty girls out. The boys team has gotten new, really nice jerseys two times since I've been in high school. Enough for EVERYONE. And they have at least 100 boys out for track. I can't even explain that! 

I bet the equipment a team has deals with the amount of money you raise, but I still don't see how a guys team can have better equipment than a girls team. We fundraise a whole lot too! Baseball these past few years have gotten so much. They got a new scoreboard (not necessary), new speakers (not necessary), and a new backstop (WAY not necessary). For softball, we've needed a new scoreboard for 3 years. The numbers flicker, and at times it just shuts off. We need new speakers, ours hardly works. It's just annoying how we've repeatedly asked our athletic director to help us fix these things, but he doesn't. 

I GET ANGRY ABOUT THIS NEXT POINT. Gym space. I have a specific story for this. It was the beginning of track season, so it was like negative 15 degrees outside. Our practice was at 10, and the boys practice started at 9. When we got there, the boys were in both gyms. We asked them if we could use one (the smaller one) and they said "no, we were here first". We asked our athletic director to let us have a gym, and he said, "no, they were here first". That's just stupid right there😑 So because we are good people, we ran around the halls in our school and OUTSIDE IN NEGATIVE 15 DEGREE WEATHER. We told the boys to come get us when they were done with the small gym, and when they finally were, we went down to find baseball practicing. THEY ARENT EVEN IN SEASON! And we didn't get to have a productive practice that day because there is TERRIBLE sexism in our school. 

Another minor thing that happens is our principal only goes to certain events. I can tell you he was at every football game and every boys basketball game, but I only saw him like one or two times for softball. I've seen him one time for track, and that's because he had to work at the meet. The other night, he was late for the girls soccer game and went and sat at the very top of the bleachers, and then when the boys game started, he went down onto the field and cheered for them. Please, don't be so blatant when you do all of this stuff. It's not hard to pick up on! Our last principal we had was the best person on the planet. She made it to EVERYTHING. And she still makes it to EVERYTHING. Bless her heart. 

All I'm saying is my school is way too sexist about their athletics and it's really unfortunate for the girls. These are just examples from the three sports I play! I can guarantee that there are several other examples to choose from.

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