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.