April | 2008 | JUST a bit outside...

We have played in 3 tournaments, and it’s rained in all 3 tournaments.

But, we only had one small delay and just a little rain on Saturday.

We started out with the Lady Rebels — great team, and they jumped out to a 10-0 lead on us early. But we kept just chipping away and actually got pretty close at the end. Final score was 15-11. We were happy.

Next game was against the Lady Roadrunners, and my family came to watch! My mom, dad, brother, his wife and their little girl all came to watch my game. We won, but I can’t remember the score. I know we scored around 15 again.

Our 3rd game was against Birmingham Extreme – another really good team, and we won! Again, forgot the score, LOL, but we really hit well and had a great time.

Our fourth game was against the Lady Roadrunners again, and this time they scored just a few more than we did… but that pushed them into Sunday. And it rained ALL night Saturday night and most of Sunday morning, so I don’t think they had much fun.

We got our new shirts (pants should be arriving shortly) so we had to take a team picture… we look great! We also have white ones with black letters lined in that royal blue, and a black shirt with royal blue letters lined in white.

Front row: Michelle (Scrappy), Amanda (A), Tonya, Stacey, Cindy, Tracey
Back row: Anje (J), Amy (Amos), Shannon, Kristi, Sheron, Sherrie (Bear)

Drafted has now played in two tournaments. And both were cold and rainy. But, we’ve had fun, we’ve played ball, and we’ve laughed a lot. It’s good to be back together with this group of women — they’re all fun to be around, and we all are playing a game we love to play.

Our first tournament at Metro was The Spring Fling on March 29th. We lost our first game 9-12 to The Bounty Hunters, and then lost to an Alabama team 14-13 in the 8th (extra innings for softball, we only go 7). The rain started some time during that game.

We had a couple of hours until the next game so we headed for dry grounds and a bite to eat. While we were gone “the bottom dropped out” and the fields were flooded. But ball was still being played. I wish I’d gotten a picture of Field 1, it was definitely the worst. Here’s a sample of how our field looked for Game 3:

You could run around the water unless there was a play, then you had to go right through it. Oh fun. Field one had a mud puddle (more like a lake) that went from 5 feet past 1st all the way to 2nd. The 2nd baseman had to play in the middle of it.

They moved the tournament to a one pitch, and we lost — don’t remember the score, because we were actually kind of happy to leave — it was still raining and didn’t look to be ending any time soon. I know at one point I walked to the plate and asked the catcher if she smelled what I smelled and she did — it smelled like lightning. ick.

We were hoping on April 12th we’d have better weather — if not warmer, at least drier. Not to be so — the high was in the low 60s if we were lucky. It started raining some time Friday and was still going strong when we arrived in Conyers at 9:30am. Our game was supposed to start at 10, but we knew there was trouble when 1 field wasn’t being played on – was totally under water. So the 9am game from that field played on our field before we could play – so we started around noon.

I played first and those are my cleats after the first game — AND after I’ve cleaned some of the mud off. I had mud up the inside and outside of my pants to my knees. We beat the Lady Roadrunners and didn’t have another game SCHEDULED until 4:30pm. We were guessing we’d play around 6 and we were wrong.

We got cleaned up (i.e. changed clothes in the parking lot) and went to Applebees so Shannon could have a Perfect Margarita (or two). Then off to the mall for a stretch of the legs and back to the fields. To sit and wait…and wait and wait. We actually wound up playing after 6:30pm. We played Ladies in Action (used to be a B team) and lost 16-5. We had a couple of bad innings in the field but otherwise didn’t play as bad as it seems looking at the score. And so then we got to… wait some more!

We wound up playing Fully Loaded (another used-to-be B team, with an A team player) at 8-ish (the sunset was amazing, but I was coaching 3rd and didn’t get to take a pic!). We were winning 3-2 for a while, but wind up losing 3-5. We came in 5th place — pretty good for our 2nd tournament, and up against some strong opponents!

We’ve opted out of playing in Cumming this weekend, and look forward to playing April 26th in Lovejoy for Flag City.