What happens at the end of softball??

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Cannonball

Ex "Expert"
Feb 25, 2009
4,854
113
The answers are so different from this question. For me, it is still hard to accept that it ended and my dd graduated in 2015. She is now a coach and I get to coach against her. For my wife and I, we found so much free time. I still coach but those hours of practice that my dd did away from school/TB practice disappeared. I've started golfing again. We can travel now and not for a softball "vacation" weekend/week. We seem to have more money now. LOL I have thought about selling her softball stuff but she will someday have a big garage and children and she won't have to buy that stuff since I am keeping it. What humors me sometimes is that I need to put it all away better but I just leave it in that 3rd garage bay almost like a shrine. Maybe this summer I'll pack it all away.

Some other things we are doing:
  1. We are having a display case made by my brother to display all of her awards and helmets. She has 7 helmets from the various teams she played on including TB, HS, and college.
  2. We hare having a blanket made from all of her T-Shirts from the various tournaments she played in.
  3. We are going to have a plaque made for her with her college awards but are waiting for one more very special award that we hope she gets next year. (She and her team are in her college hall of fame but we hope that she now gets inducted as an individual. We know she has been nominated.)
From there, those memories are special and you enjoy thinking about them when something gets said or you read something, for instance on this site, that jogs your memory. For many of us, it is amazing just how close we are to our dds. Those memories and that bond will never end.
 
May 15, 2008
1,913
113
Cape Cod Mass.
Softball 'withdrawal' is quite common, I see it a lot, for players and, as Cannonball mentioned, parents as well. It's unfortunate but for women there isn't much available when you graduate, not like golf or tennis that you can play into your senior years. Coaching is the best way to fill the void.
 

radness

Possibilities & Opportunities!
Dec 13, 2019
7,270
113
There are multiple ways to continue participating.
Playing is only one of them.
Life is what we make of it!
Plan :)
 
Mar 28, 2020
285
43
Each child is different. My daughter just ended. She was in college and one day she called and said softball was interfering with her studies. Since most of her scholarship was academic and softball only covered 10% I said ok.....and that was it....Softball ended....I picked up the 10%......and the focus was grades.

Now 10 years later she wishes she didn't stop, but at the time that was her decision...and that was that.....

Each child is different and girls stop for multiple reasons..... some sooner than they want. But I am confident unlike boys...girls just move on to another interest.....
 
Nov 8, 2020
402
43
Like anything else.... after its over you grow old and, eventually, die.

Baseball coaches said to us in HS that every year as you age the game speeds up until it reaches a speed.that you can no longer play it. For some players that speed is HS ball as most players never reached Varsity. Some players the speed was too great at the college level or minors and some players would reach the majors....for a few years before it would reach a speed to fast for everyone, eventually.

You hope you gain enough life experiences and had a good enough time to have fond memories as we decay on our paths towards death. Hopefully we learn ethics and obtain skills that we can use in other ventures in our lives.


The end is just that, the end. When our girls reach the end of their softball playing days then they just dont play softball anymore. If they're lucky they are able to have gotten part or all of their education paid for, if they're real lucky they might get to represent their country internationally for a few years. For most, all they will have is memories. Memories of games, practices, friendships and god awful chanting and squealing from dugouts.
They may have kids and maybe those kids will show interest in softball someday, chances are they won't but maybe they do. If they do, those girls may get to experience it all over again.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
 
Mar 4, 2015
526
93
New England
Depends on the player. I played tennis for many years, and I've seen guys who were just as passionate about the game after college and continued to play very competitively, and then others who hung up their tennis racket and never really wanted to play again, not because they were sick of it, but just had the freedom to find other fun things in life that they'd been missing. My daughter shows some occasional interest in playing slow pitch, but for the most part, she hasn't missed softball after going pretty heavy at it for 10 years. But I don't think she loved it as much as others did.
 

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