Fastpitch 2003

I was sick and tired of not being a part of a team and not having anything to do after school like I use to.  I was at the REC center one afternoon when I spotted the flyer.  I had no idea we had a fastpitch team and that it was a club team.  I read on…tryouts will be after Labor Day...SWEET!  I was going home that weekend.  I’ll bring all of my softball stuff back with me.  I got really excited about this opportunity.  This might turn into something good but I guess we’ll see what happens.  
 

I got really nervous when it came closer to tryouts.  I did not know anyone that was going to go and tryout.  I had to call the president, Jen Weenink, who was from Sunnyside, Wash., to get a ride to Pullman High School because I didn’t have a car.  There was a big turnout of girls.  I got even more nervous than I was before.  I have never tried out for a softball team before so I really had no idea what to do.  I have always been picked so I don’t know what I would of done if I was rejected.  We filled out some forms, insurance, club waiver, personal information etc.  Since I didn’t know anyone, I just kind of kept to myself and waited until someone spoke to me.  This girl named Jamie asked if I wanted to warm up with her, so I did.  I found out that she was from Castle Rock, Wash., and that she knew people from Toutle Lake so that was reassuring that she was almost from the same area as I was.  We got into infield and outfield drills and the people there were impressive.  I kind of thought less of my talents watching the other people play.  I snapped out of it and told myself that I was just as good as or better than these people.  We hit, ran and even played some fun time-filler games.  We did this for three days and at the end of tryouts we were to get a phone call to decide whether or not we were going to be a part of this team.  I got a phone call a few days later and they told me that I was a part of the WSU fastpitch team.  Now comes the tricky part, getting to know all of these new people and the girls who were already on the team...more names and faces to remember.  Along with myself, Jackie from Bellevue, Natalie from Gig Harbor, Lauren from Clarkston, Jamie from Castle Rock, Jasmine from Seattle, Shauna from Yelm and Stephanie from Seattle, we were the new additions to the team.  This was the first time since I graduated from high school, I felt like I had a group of people to hang out with.  However, I didn’t really feel like I ever belonged until the end of my third year on the team.

WSU Fastpitch Club Mission Statement

• The WSU club is a competitive-highly skilled softball team.
• The goal of the WSU fastpitch team is to ultimately be sanctioned as a PAC-10 fastpitch team. This goal will be realized through hard work and continued development of a solid program.
• It's NOT a huge time commitment. HOWEVER, the team is a well structured-fundamentally sound organization. Focused practices ensure that the team will have great chemistry - solid fundamentals - and play as a cohesive team.

Fastpitch practices went alright considering I had to learn how my new teammates played.  We had a lot of nice weather so we could be outside.  A girl named Lauren acted as our coach so she ran the practices.  I guess she used to play on the team and now just coaches.  She only coached fall semester.  I have no idea what happened to her after that.  One thing I learned about her is that she spent a lot of time at My Office, a popular sports bar downtown.  We played a bunch of games against University of Idaho, Gonzaga and Eastern and I sat on the bench…A LOT.  I had no idea if it was because I wasn’t that good or she would just rather have people she knew play.  I kept score most of the time because I was the only one who knew how or was willing to do it.

I got a few rides with Jen because she must have felt bad for me and she was the only one I sorta knew already.  One afternoon, when I couldn’t find a ride, I got on the bus and road down to Sloan Hall and then walked down the steep hill to the City Playfields.  One time, Nickey drove by in her green Jeep Cherokee and asked if I needed a ride.  I hopped in.  That was the first time I actually got to know Nickey, but on a really small level.

The weather started getting colder and we decided to call it quits on fall ball.  We started the season back up after Christmas Break in the field house.

Field Trip to Montana

I met Christin in my geology 210 class (Earth’s history and evolution).  In fact, she was in practically all of my classes, so we decided that we should be friends, so we did.  She was two years older than me, was from Arlington, Wash., and loved sports.  She spent a year or two on the WSU crew team.  I got to know her pretty well on our geology 210 trip to Missoula, Montana.  The reason for this trip was to learn about glacial Lake Missoula and the ice dam that broke and formed to what is now known as the Palouse and scablands of Eastern Washington.  We stayed at a dorm facility near the North Fork River in Clark Fork, Idaho.  We spent the weekend looking all of the geological phenomena’s around Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Western Montana.  Some of the stuff was amazing.  

I know we are not suppose to do this with school property but…a bunch of the 21 and over kids wanted to go to the local bar and they wanted to use the school issued vans to drive themselves there.  For some reason the professor let us.  My friend Christin wanted to go but did not want to go with out me.  I was only nineteen at the time and I told them that I wasn’t old enough to go.  Christin just told me to say I was the designated driver and so I did it.  We drove on over.  When we got inside, I started getting really nervous.  Christin said not to worry about it.  She would take care of it.  The bar tender was probably over 40 years old, kind of scraggly looking and was totally clueless of what was going on.  She checked id’s and told them to go over into a separate group.  When the bar tender wasn’t looking Christin shoved me over into the checked id line.  We had no problems.  That night I got into a bar under-aged and Christin bought me a drink.  That was my first time in a bar, illegally.  The bar had an outside part to it where some people were playing horseshoes so we joined them.  I actually got a ringer!  I was so excited.  At one point when we were throwing them, I let go of one too late and almost hit Christin in the head.  Also that night, we got to see a lightning storm, no rain and no thunder, it was different than what I was use to.  I still can’t believe that the professor let us go.  Well, a while later he showed up in the other van and told us all to come back to the dorm.   We broke so many rules that night.  Non-registered driver for the van, drove the school issued van to a bar, had alcohol in the vans…I am surprised we did not get into huge trouble.  

 On the way back to Pullman on US 95, our driver Bonny (who was the TA), was going 95 in a 60 mph zone.  I said quietly to the people around me…”wouldn’t be hilarious if we got pulled over and the other van drove past us while we were pulled over?”  Well…we did a few minutes later and the other van did drive past us while we were pulled over.   The cop came up next to the driver’s side and asked Bonny for her driver’s license.  He asked us why we were in such a hurry and she lied by telling him that we were late getting the school vans back to WSU.  He let us off with a warning.  I couldn’t believe it...we were going 95 and didn’t get a ticket!

Summer 2003

After Hawaii, Doug and I helped Megan Champion clean out, paint and repair her house so her and her dad could rent it out.  We spend several hours in the yard cutting the grass, weeding, repairing the porch, painting the house, cleaning the gutters, we made a brick walkway from the driveway to the porch and it even had a wooden archway.  We spent months out there working on that so it could be rented at the end of the summer.  We had a few arguments because Megan felt like she had all the power because it was her house, we got that all smoothed out and it got done on time.

We went over to Grammie’s house a lot over the summer to go swimming in the pool.  The liner was over thirty years old and directly in the center was a tiny hole slowly leaking.  Grandpa bought some pool patches and we took turns diving into the center to fix it.  First we put the water proof glue down and then the patch.  We stood in the center of it for about twenty minutes just to make sure it stayed.  The liner would have to be completely changed in the next few summers.

Often, I would put our family dog Mickey in the back of the truck and take him around the loop just for a nice summer drive around the back roads.  You could definitely tell he was getting older because he had a harder and harder time jumping into the back each time we would go out.  I had to pick him up and set him into the back of the truck.  What really made him unique was he had learned the word “truck” and “keys” over the course of time.  He even knew when we were going to the truck without him even seeing or hearing the keys in your hand.  We opened the front door and he darted for the truck.  He even ran to the truck when we weren’t going to drive it anywhere.  I felt really bad when we got in the truck to go to school in the mornings and he sat there with the sad eyes waiting for us to open the tailgate.

Once the end of August hit, I got all of my stuff ready that I wanted to bring back to school with me.  We loaded up the suburban and back to Pullman we went.

Hawaii 2003

Megan’s dad moved to Hawaii with his new family and she was invited to go in May.  She came into my room at one point in March to hang out.  She told me she was going to Hawaii to visit her dad, step mom and half brothers.  I told her that was cool and that she would have fun.  She suggested that I come along too.  I checked to see how much money I had in my bank account.  I had plenty.  I called my mom and asked if I could go to Hawaii with Megan for summer break.  She said yes as long as I paid for it.  I told her I would but I would have to use her credit card.  I booked my flight and I was well on my way to Hawaii.   Before we left for Hawaii, I went to my high school to a fastpitch practice to help them out.  We were practicing where everyone needs to go during a pickle and I was the base runner.  During one of the pickles, I turned to run the other way when one of the girls went to fake throw it but accidentally let go of it into my face.  I instantly had a swollen right eye socket and I knew it would be a black eye soon.  Yay a black eye, just in time for Hawaii! 

Megan’s mom, Jean, took us to the Sea-Tac airport around 10 a.m. that day.  We got our boarding passes, checked our bags, went through security and waited in the lobby for our noon flight.  We got onto the plane and found our seats.  It was going to be a six hour flight.  We listened to music, doodled, talked to each other and even talked to the guy beside us.  He looked just like Stephen King but sadly, he wasn’t.  He was a literature professor from the University of Hawaii and he was going back to teach summer classes.

When we got to Honolulu, Megan’s dad and step mom were there waiting for us in the baggage claim area.  Her dad had Hawaiian lei’s ready for each of us and slid them around our necks and told us he was glad we were there to visit.  He also made a remark about my black eye.  We got our luggage and went to the house.  When we got there, we took our luggage to the room Megan and I were going to share and she gave me the grand tour of the house.  Megan’s dad made us steaks on the grill.  We watched a little TV, got tired because of the time difference and went to bed.

Sunday we got up, ate some food, and drove to K-Mart with Megan’s uncle Steve.  We then drove down to the beach and got a lot of sun.  My body was not prepared for it one bit.  I slathered so much sun screen on me and I still got fried.  We stopped at a mini mart and got some drinks and popsicles.  We went home ate some dinner and went to bed.  Sun makes me tired.  Found out that I caught a cold.  It wasn’t pleasant.  I didn’t let it ruin my trip to Hawaii.  I think I got it from going to a hot environment from a very cold environment and it probably didn’t help being on an air recycled airplane.

We went to the beach again the next day and got more sun.  I bought one of those floatie mat things and laid on that as I floated through the ocean.  We had a good time.  We went with Megan’s dad and step mom to Costco.  We came home and watched some TV while Megan’s dad made dinner.  We had shrimp scampi, watched Fear Factor and went to bed.

Tuesday we did not go to the beach at all.  It was a good thing because I needed to let my burns heal up.  We went to Honolulu with Megan’s dad and step mom and had a late lunch early dinner at Bubba Gumps.  I had the fish and chips.  We walked around the mall, which most of the stores were outside and birds flew in and out of them…it was weird to get use to.  We drove home, watched JAG with Megan and went to bed.

Wednesday we got up, went to the swap meet at the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu.  We were practically there all day long.  I ended up buying some shorts and some t-shirts and some other little knick knacks for my family.  We had iced lemonade, came home, watched some TV ate dinner of fish and noodles and went to bed.   Megan stayed up until 3 a.m. playing a video game.

On Thursday we went to Hanauma Bay.  This time you had to do an orientation before you went down to the bay.  Last time I was there, in 1998, you didn’t have to do it.  We went snorkeling and took pictures of the fish with the underwater camera.  We went home after a while, ate some pizza, watched the season finale of CSI and ER and went to bed.

Friday and Saturday were catch up/lazy days.  We stayed at home and did some laundry.  We played catch in the back yard, watched some movies and took the dog to the park.  I also called my mom to tell her all the stuff that we’ve done so far.  She was glad to hear from me.

Sunday we went to an all you can eat brunch at a military base/country club (Megan’s dad and step mom are part of the military).  After we went to the Honolulu Zoo with the family, saw lots of animals and exhibits.  We drove down to Waikiki to people watch and to see some of the attractions ate some pizza and went home.

On Monday we went to the North Shore with Megan’s uncle Steve.  We drove through the Dole Pineapple fields, at the time I had no idea what was sticking up out of the ground…so I asked.  “Megan, what are those things sticking up out of the ground?”  “They’re pineapples.” “Really?  I thought pineapples grew in trees.”  I guess not.  North Shore was pretty powerful.  That is where they do most of the surfing competitions because the waves are so strong.  We didn’t realize just how strong they were.  At one point we did not get out of the way of the ten foot wave and it hit us and drug us twenty feet onto the shore.  I was glad it did not rip off my bathing suit.  I stood up and had a pound of sand in my bottoms.  Not the best feeling in the world.  That happened to us twice before we figured it out.

Tuesday we went on a five mile hike to the most western point of Oahu.  The walk was hot and sticky.  When we got to the location, there was tons of Albatross’s nesting on their eggs.  I did not realize how big those birds were until you were right next to one.  I made sure to stay as far away as I could.  When we got back I jumped into the ocean, sure felt good to cool off.  Uncle Steve then drove us to a private lagoon near a hotel.  It was very nice and relaxing.  We went to the movies and saw The Matrix Reloaded.

It was our last day and we had to go back to Washington.  Megan’s dad took us to the airport and dropped us off at the terminal.  We got our boarding passes, checked in our luggage and waited for our flight.  I believe our flight was around 1:00 p.m.  We got on and got back to SeaTac around 9:00 p.m. (five hour flight plus the three hour difference).  Megan’s mom, Megan Champion and my brother were there to take us home.

“You’ve Got 10 Minutes!"

On February 2, 2003 (Ground Hogs Day) I woke up to the sound of the fire alarm.  I heard that the campus sometimes does random fire drills just to make sure that they obey the rules and regulations.  I remember looking at the clock just to see how early it was…it wasn’t that early, only 10 a.m.  It was like my brain shut off and I really didn’t think clearly on what I should grab just in case we were not allowed to return to the dorms right away.  I grabbed my phone, keys, my cougar card and my sweatshirt.  I went down the four flights of stairs because we were not allowed to even touch the elevator and went outside.  I remember looking for the familiar people like Megan, Angela, Izzy and Amber.  At this point Lauren was with Johannes and not around a lot.  I found Amber and decided to walk to wherever we were supposed to go with her.  

 Looking back at this, lots of people were half naked.  Many people were in their bathrobes, shorts, t-shirts and I believe there was even a kid in a towel.  That would suck to be in the middle of a shower or on the toilet when the alarm went off.  We were instructed to walk to the REC center; once we were there we would receive more instructions.  Volunteers were handing out blankets for the people who weren’t fully clothed.  We got to the REC center and put us all in the extra gym.  There, they told us that there was a bomb threat in the Streit-Perham dorm.  They did not know who called it in or if it was a hoax.  They were going to take three days to check every nook and cranny of each room until they declare it safe to enter.  Starting with 6^th floor of Streit, they let a group of people in to gather enough things for three days.  “You’ve got ten minutes!”  Literally.  I was the ninth group of people to go and gather things. 

It was an experience.  They provided food, beverages, t-shirts, bedding, internet, showers and entertainment while we lived in the REC center for three days.  Once every dorm room was gone through and declared safe we were allowed to go back and continue like nothing had happened.   Luckily, nothing bomb related was found.  However, some marijuana plants, tons of alcohol bottles and some interesting sex toys were found in the hunt…

 

None of us could really get our school work done.  This was the era of everything had to be typed out on the computer and we really did not have enough time to spend on going back and forth to the library to type out papers.  Our Gen Ed 111 professor (Amber, Lauren and I shared this class) allowed us to turn in our research assignment late if we could prove we were bomb threat victims.  He told us to write our dorm addresses on the cover sheet while we turned it in.  He was cool with it and we all did pretty well on the assignment even though we turned it in a week later than the rest of the class.

The next few days I collected newspapers of the incident and now every Ground Hogs Day I remember how weird this situation was and how funny it is now.