Range of Competition

Unfortunately, in high school athletics, there is quite a different range of competition in each class. Now I bet you can expect that the competition is hardest in 5A, and it declines as you go down each class. This is unfortunate (not really unfortunate because it's fun to play hard teams) for my school because we are 5A.

It's pretty crazy to think that the state champion in 1A could probably be crushed by the worst team in 5A. I've had a few encounters with this situation. At a school volleyball tournament, we played a team called Tripoli. I had never heard of them before (they were 1A). They had gone to state the past like ten years, and we hadn't made it to state in five. We absolutely crushed that team. They were not very good... That makes me mad though because that would mean we would make state and probably win it. 

Now this doesn't mean that there are some really good teams in lower classes, it just means there are fewer of them. If you really think about it, it makes sense. In a 5A school, there are 2000 people who could potentially go out for a sport. There's probably a lot of good athletes to choose in that pool of people. But then you go to a 1A school, with only 100 people in it. Less people to choose from, probably means less quality athletes. 

I think one time, we should have a whole state tournament, including all classes. That would determine who the real state champion is, and it would be a LOT of fun to participate in. 

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The Importance Of Vitamin D

I bet you read the title of this post and went "what's this got to do with athletics?". Well let me tell you, it has a lot to do with it! I didn't know how important vitamin D was until I was running low on it! I don't think most people will have vitamin D deficiency, but if you do, it's important that you figure it out right away! I will never understand why I am vitamin D deficient because you get vitamin D from the sun, and I'm outside more than I'm inside.

The first symptom I had was fatigue. I was always tired. When I ran track, I could hardly get through a 200 without feeling like I was going to pass out. It was absolutely terrible. Especially because it hit me right when I was doing three sports. I would go to track practice, then go right to softball or volleyball after that. Hardly any breaks in my week (I'm doing that again this year and holy cow is it so much easier with vitamin D!). I just wanted to sleep for the rest of my life. 

Another thing that happened was that my muscles were always sore. My legs were dead, my back was killing me, and even my arms would be sore. Apparently you need vitamin D to clear out the lactic acid in your body. Imagine the pain I went through. A whole track season with lactic acid just building up in my legs. I don't know how I finished the season to be honest! 

I think the worst thing that happens with vitamin D deficiency is that if you don't have enough vitamin D, you can't take in vitamin C, and that is EXTREMELY important. If you don't have vitamin C, your bones get really really weak. Unfortunately for me, I didn't know what was happening so my bones got really weak and I ended up getting scoliosis from it. If you don't want scoliosis or a bunch of broken bones, dreaming make sure you have enough vitamin D! 

Now that you've heard all the fun symptoms of vitamin D deficiency, make sure that you have enough. I promise you, it is terrible. Hopefully I have prevented someone from going an entire year with the pain I went through!

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Sore Muscle Remedies

No one likes sore muscles. Amirite? It hurts like no other and it hinders your performance. So how do you get rid of sore muscles? There's only two things I do; stretch and ice baths.

Stretching. Yes I know you all probably could have thought of that on your own, but it really helps if you do it at the right time. Right after you do something physically straining, you need to stretch. Everyday after track practice, my team stretches together. It helps keep your muscles loose, even when they really want to tighten up. Another thing you can do is get a rolling pin (or a fancy rolling stick thing that all runners have) and have someone roll out the sore spots. This is really effective for your legs. After a really grueling week of track, I have her roll my legs out. It is probably the most painful thing ever, but it really does help. You could probably rub some icy hot on there to get it real nice and loose while they're getting rolled. Before track meets, I spend at least thirty minutes just stretching. It's kind of funny how flexible I can get! 

Oh man who would ever want to do an ice bath? ME! I'm tellin you, they work miracles! I don't know what it does, but holy cow you feel like a new person afterwards! Yes, it is the worst thing of your entire life when you first get in, but after like two minutes, your body goes numb. If you're a first time ice bather, I would say only go right to ten minutes, but for all you pro ice bathers out there, kick it up to fifteen minutes! It really feels fabulous once your done! 

I'm sure there are a thousand and ten more ways you can relieve muscle soreness, but these are the two methods that work best for me. I do know that it's better than doing nothing, so if you have muscle soreness, don't be afraid to try these two things. Stretching isn't hard, but ice baths can be kind of scary. Once you get your first one done, the other ones won't be as bad. You just have to rip the band aid off and get it done!!

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Rain, Rain, Go Away

Who thinks it's terrible to play softball in the rain?? ME. These past two weekends at our softball tournaments, it has been constantly raining. This is bad for all sorts of reasons. First, it makes it hard to throw the ball. It gets all slippery and mistakes are made up the wazoo. Second, it gets more dangerous. When you slide it's easier to get hurt. Third, it's just plain uncomfortable. Everything is wet, outfielders feet get soaked, infielders get SUPER muddy, and it's just not anything to look forward too. I really feel bad for the spectators though.. They just have to sit there and get wet for no reason!

One thing I worry about a ton in the rain is if the pitcher is going to be able to handle it. Some pitchers can do it, but some can't. They use "the ball is wet" as an excuse and can't ever throw a strike. I always hope and pray that it will be the other teams pitcher that is like that, not your own. The other thing to worry about is control. It's not as bad in the infield, because for the most part, the dirt doesn't get too wet. But as an outfielder, I worry about my inexperienced players a lot. The ball gets absolutely soaked when it comes into the outfield and you have to know how to handle it in order to throw the ball in control. I asked my freshman right fielder how she thought she was supposed to keep it in control and she said "just grip the ball harder". NO. DON'T DO THAT. That will probably make it worse. It's actually quite simple. You just make absolutely sure that you finish waaaaaayyy down. Way further down than you usually would, and it helps keep you from launching the ball over the cutoffs head. 

I Hate with a capital H, having wet feet. It's not comfortable. After a while it even gets numb. And then your shoes smell terrible and it's just a mess. But if I can say for myself, I love sliding when it's raining. Not when it's like sticky mud, but when there's puddles of mud and water. You fly. I did a slide by last weekend right into a mud puddle and I just flew right by home plate and it was probably the funniest thing I've ever done in my life! The downfall to that was my shoes, batting gloves, and every other inch of my body was caked in mud. Mom had a fit when she saw my shoes😱

Usually umpires are good about calling games when it's raining so majority of the time, you don't even have to play in the rain. I think that's best because it's not real softball when you play in the rain. Too many mistakes to see who the real winner is. 

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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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