It is, afterall, SOFTBALL season!

So as much as I love to blog about everything but softball, I am, afterall, here as a softball player and it is, afterall, softball season. For that reason, I dedicate this blog (and this blog only) entirely to softball! Haha! :)

This weekend was weekend #2 that had two 2-game series in store for us. First up was an away trip to Söder. Söder is a town just outside of Stockholm and approximately 3.5-4 hours away. Since we had a haul in front of us, we all met up around 615 in the morning at the field. Despite the early wake up call, I was kind of excited because these games meant that we would get to play against two of our buddies, Tess and Jonna. I've gotten to know these two gals off the ball field and actually wasn't here for the first game of the season when Skövde took on Söder at home. Given this, I was excited to play against two of my friends. That and I knew the competition would be good :)

As we warmed up, we jammed out to some AWESOME tunes... Thank you SPOTIFY! In the first game, Tess and I started on the mound for our teams. The very first batter of the first inning, I walked. She ended up scoring and giving Söder the advantage early on. We battled and battled but had trouble stringing together hits. Finally, in the 6th inning, we scored to tie it up. Neither team scored in the 7th which meant only one thing: ITB baby!!! ITB stands for International Tie Breaker. For my friends and family less familiar with the sport, I'll go ahead and explain it. In the case of a tie afte the regular number of innings (7) have been completed, the 8th inning (and any subsequent innings) will begine with the last out from the 7th inning on second base. There is no special count on the batter, but just a runner on second. We were unable to score in the top of the 8th. This took us to Söder's at bat. Tess was first to bat with Jonna standing on second. Haha, really? I couldn't have written it any better. Tess bunted to move Jonna and was thrown out at first. Ok good, 1 down. Next came possibly the dumbest thing I've done on a ball field since I was 12 when I did the exact same thing. Next batter bunted, I picked up the ball, checked Jonna at third, and thought she looked way off the bag. I went to throw annnnnnd of course overthrew the bag. Söder scores. Skövde loses. I haven't been that upset with myself in a very long time. I sat there and beat myself up between games, during the second game, on the way home, and for the next week or so at practice. I walked the first girl who scored, then over threw 3rd base in an idiotic play that never should have happened. I just couldn't believe i had done something so dumb! My team was awesome as usual though. They ralied behind me after letting cool off and helped me realize that it was only one game in a string of many. They also reminded me that it's a team thing. We win together and we lose together.

With the ugliness of the first game behind us, we were able to come back and win the second game by a substantial margin. We hit, ran, and overall, just played harder. There was no way we were going to drop two! haha. It was great that we ended the day with a W (it made the ride home much more bearable). After the game, Lina, Elise, and I stood around chatting with Jonna and Tess talking about their upcoming visit to Skövde :) When we all piled back in the car, we headed home and started gearing up for the following day when we'd take on Enköping at home.

Welllllll while we were more than ready to play, mother nature was not ready to stop her crying. It rained all night Saturday soaking the field beyond recognition. We got to the field and almost immediately tried to restore it to playing condition, but the moderate to heavy rain that was falling was making that near impossible. We put tarps over the pitchers mound and home plate, and trashbags over the bases (yes, that's right trashbags) to try and keep some of the rain off of the field. We needed to play these games badly. We could not afford to lose these games because we had lost the day before and that would have forced a 3 way tie for first place in the league... So there we were all soaked to the bone in the locker room watching Annelie's puppy Doris run around after a tennis ball. Finally, the decision came. We would cancel the games for the day. We only had one option as to when we would be able to play them: the day after we return from Prague. A double header after a 26 hour bus ride? ooooh boy this was going to be great! hahahaha :)

Ok soooo there actually wasn't much ball that was played this weekend, well at least not nearly as much as there was scheduled to be. But I figured this may have been my only opportunity to write exclusively about softball... even though I didn't exactly do that ;)...