Take just one minute

This past weekend a good friend who's DD also plays TB asked to join our team for a practice. His DD is a year younger and decided to play Basketball at a high level and move to a less intense travel team. He had not seen my DD play in a while.
After the workout he called me and said "your kid has improved so much since I've seen her last, it's hard to believe."
My initial reaction was to point to all of the unachieved goals "we" are working on. Then it hit me; maybe we as parents don't take the time or realize just how much our kids have improved year over year. Maybe a little appreciation for their progress is a good thing. We are always looking at the kid who is better than our kid, but never at the kid who sits next to us in the car that never misses a practice, gives everything they have and who is better than we every thought they could or would be.
Just a thought, maybe we need to just take a second and do what some of the veterans on here tell us to do... relax and enjoy the ride!

BT3100 said:

all of the unachieved goals "we" are working on.

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I am glad you put we in quotations. I let my DD set the goals, her goals. She says she wants to play D1 ball, and I am all for that, but for as much as I can I leave it up to her to set her own course.

I’ve had similar discussions, my usual response is “thanks, she’s been working really hard”.

Great post. My ride (dd's) is pretty much over. All she has left if senior year of high school ball in the spring. Wish I would have taken more pictures. More Videos. It is over way too soon.

Il softball fan said:

Great post. My ride (dd's) is pretty much over. All she has left if senior year of high school ball in the spring. Wish I would have taken more pictures. More Videos. It is over way too soon.

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For those that think the ride is over after HS, you're completely wrong. Whether your DD is lucky enough to find a place on a college team or not, the ride continues. If they are playing, you have 4 more years to ride around half the country, or even most of it, watching your DD play college ball and mature even further in the game. If your DD doesn't get that opportunity, then you still get to watch her mature through the collegiate life and apply the life lessons she's learned theough TB to her collegiate life. Even after college softball is over, or college in general, you get to watch them continually utilizing those very same life lessons as they move on from there. IMO, nothing is lost whatsoever in playing sports at a high level no matter how far they take it. The life lessons learned continue to guide them throughout their lives and hopefully, the competitiveness and time management skills gained through such knowledge from the sport they played will give them an edge to make them more successful than others.

Thanks YOCOACH, great post. You are right. Lots of life lessons learned in playing TB and being a good teammate correlates a lot to being a good person. My DD has decided that she is not going to attempt to play college ball. She has hopefully narrowed down the college search to two. She has had a couple of coaches contact her, and one last week from a NAIA school in Missouri got her thinking about it. Coach said they still had money available, but did not offer any type of numbers. So, I get to looking, and with tuition and room/board, the school is ONLY around 37K a year. I will be glad when this search is finalized. Then all I have to do is look up as many Ramen noodle recipes as we can stand for the next four years.

YOCOACH said:

The life lessons learned continue to guide them throughout their lives and hopefully, the competitiveness and time management skills gained through such knowledge from the sport they played will give them an edge to make them more successful than others.

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Agreed. I am also very glad my young teenage twins have something so important in the lives that helps them establish their identity that has nothing to do with physical appearance.

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