Posing the question about the purpose of playing college softball….

[Gtrips07]

The answer: Everyone who has ever been there to watch a game at the best stadium in the country with the best fans in college softball.

There is no place to play like Alabama. Despite what is happening there this week. Whether they ever win a second national championship ever again or not.

Not to mention some fine Educational programs like the Culverhouse School of Business, which is very highly rated and respected. They were also one if the first programs that made Accountancy a five year program.



They also produce quite a number of Rhodes Scholars.


And if you've never sang Dixieland Delight after a win, you've never lived..

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

 

[_MIA_]

My apologies @Vertigo for the wayward path(s) I took the thread down..

 

[Vertigo]

My apologies @Vertigo for the wayward path(s) I took the thread down..

No worries!! My dh is a ChemE so I totally get it.

 

[Orange Socks]

DD had a former pitcher on her team that only played for them in the fall. She moved b/c her dad thought she should be getting more circle time. Ok whatever. Smallish spinny pitcher. She graduated in 2018 went to the local Houston big school. I saw that she was coaching TB, which was a surprise. Gave up playing softball...so we thought. Her 4th year we hear rumors that she is posting IG photos of her wearing a uniform at a Southland Conference school. What!? How is that even possible. Spring comes along and she is suited up at a local JUCO. What!!! This is crazy. She had a great season. How does that happen? Then I hear that she took a visit a top D3 team in state and then I hear from a dad that she asked her DD to talk to coach about her. Ya get 5 years to play plus Covid years. I'll be following where she ends up in the fall.

 

[_MIA_]

I obviously cannot speak for any of todays softball players but I can give my mindset 30+ years ago. Up to Jr. year in HS I did well in school because if I didn't I would get in trouble. School was boring and all I pretty much cared about was baseball/basketball. I thought I was going to be drafted and/or get a scholarship to a D1 school somewhere. From the interest I was getting both were a good possibility.

My Jr. year I tore my ACL and sat pretty much the whole baseball season. My ACL injury pretty much eliminated any chance I had of getting drafted or getting a scholarship to a D1 school...I wasn't nearly the same player after it. That year also coincided with the time where some of my HS classes started to get more interesting. At that point I decided I wanted to be an engineer so I applied to 5 Engineering schools in the Northeast. Four of them were D1 schools, where I would have had to walk on, and one was a D3 school where I knew I would make the team. While I did get into all 5 schools, the D3 school was the best one academically so that combined with knowing that I would definitely be able to make the team, I decided to go to the D3 school. While that decision didn't work out baseball wise, it did work out academically.

I did have a late 90's "portal moment" after my freshmen year. I was playing summer ball and after finding out where I went to school, an Ivy League coach told me he needed a SS if I was interested. However at that point in my life I realized that going to a better baseball school and maybe only a marginally better academic school, wasn't worth the trouble of leaving a school where I had made friends and was comfortable at (at least outside of baseball).

I do wonder sometimes how my life would have been different if I hadn't torn my ACL...

 

[schwabach]

You made friends?

 

[Greatdaytobeawildcat]

I do wonder sometimes how my life would have been different if I hadn't torn my ACL.

My college roommate / teammate (a really smart guy and a very, very good - but not "great", as in slam-dunk great, just best player on a terrible mid-major very good - ballplayer), tore his hamstring on the last swing of a spring-training tryout. Never played again. He went on to a ridiculously successful front office mlb career (where he still is). I imagine he probably saved himself a bunch of years struggling in low A, and missing the opportunities he got as front office guy.

 

[_MIA_]

You made friends?

Not many...I had a few. One was imported as he was my friend from HS and a couple others.

Edit: also met DW there..does that count?

 

[_MIA_]

My college roommate / teammate (a really smart guy and a very, very good - but not "great", as in slam-dunk great, just best player on a terrible mid-major very good - ballplayer), tore his hamstring on the last swing of a spring-training tryout. Never played again. He went on to a ridiculously successful front office mlb career (where he still is). I imagine he probably saved himself a bunch of years struggling in low A, and missing the opportunities he got as front office guy.

It isn't a "damn what could of been" wonder but just a curiosity sort of wonder. I have 3 beautiful kids and a wife who puts up with me so whatever it may have been wouldn't have been any better, just different.

 

[nikkilugi]

They probably won't have a shot at a conference title, but who really cares about who wins D3 conference championships?

I would venture to say the players, parents and fans do care. I know all DD's former teammates playing at CNU care very much about winning their conference championship and now playing in the D3 World Series. (Go Captains!!). As fans of those girls who are close friends we absolutely care. I know for a fact many of the people we know from VWU who won the D3 World Series last year cared very much as well. FYI - both the fields at CNU as well as VWU are nicer than the mid major D1 my daughter is going to, lol. So I imagine the schools and boosters care also.....