Looking for an opportunity for a former player of mine (CA)

CoachJD said:

Let me tell you about Crystal. She was a sophomore last year, and she had never played outside of a semester in PE. I don't want to overstate this, but I have never, ever seen a person her age who had never played the sport (or, as far as I know, any other sport) have as much natural ability as she has. I called her Vlad Guerrero because she would swing at everything. She'd also hit everything. One time she hit a pitch I threw that was so high and outside that I sort of did an "oops" after it left my hand. I just laughed and said it was a nice hit, but don't do that. She asked why not, and I told her because it wasn't close to the strike zone (my thinking, of course, is that we don't want to develop bad habits even though it worked out that one time). She said "what's the strike zone?"

She truly had no idea what she was doing, but it gets better. Early in the practices, I identified the infielders and outfielders. She was in the outfielder group, and I started with just soft, thrown pop-ups with Incrediballs. She caught everything. She demanded I make them harder (and use real balls). So I'd throw angled balls to her left and right. She'd drop-step, run to the spot, and catch the ball. She isn't fast, but she did everything right. She had no idea where to throw the ball once she caught it, but, oh, I didn't mention her arm. Yeah, she'd fire the ball on a line from center field to home plate.

As we practiced, I had her pegged as our starting CF and cleanup hitter. She was the one player I was absolutely certain of. Just had to teach her the rules of the game, right?

We had an optional Saturday batting practice session in mid-April. I'm in the gym setting up the pitching machine. My wife goes to let girls in the school. She comes back and tells me that that practice would be Crystal's last because she was moving to California to live with her mother on Monday.

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