What do coaches remember about you?

I was 10 years old, and the older of the two pitchers on my rec team, so naturally I did more of the pitching. The younger pitcher was only 8 and just learning to pitch. She developed her skills and became very successful as she got older. We were playing in a regular season game - she had the mound and I was playing first base. Each time she threw a ball away, or walked someone, I would look over to my coach (who happened to be my mother at the time) and shoot her that 10 year old look that says “Hey, you know I can do better than this.” I still remember the conversation we had after the game to this day, and I am still embarrassed about the way I acted. She sat me down and asked me what the All-Star committee would have thought about the way I played today. So, of course I responded that I didn’t make any errors and that I had hit well. She then asked what they would have thought about my attitude. I didn’t even know what to say. I don’t think I had cheered for my teammate once the entire time she had been pitching. I was too worried about the fact that I was not the one pitching and thought I should have been.

Moral of the story- don’t be like 10 year old me. Eleven years later I am still just as embarrassed that I acted that way as I was the day it happened. It is one of the moments on the field that define who you are for the rest of your career. More often than not those moments have absolutely nothing to do with softball. The way you carry yourself, the support you show your teammates, and the attitude you portray are what people remember - not that you went 2-3 with a triple, or that you threw a 3-hitter.