Molalla Softball 2018

12/23/2023

I’ll never forget it.

I was a high school freshman and we were in the middle of a heated basketball game with one of our rivals.

I was on the floor when I heard my coach yelling for me, “Mandy! Mandy!”

I heard him. But I was blatantly ignoring him.

On the third, “Mandy!” I turned away from the court to the bench and yelled “WHAT?!!?” My hands were in the air to signal I was annoyed.

This coach was not one to mess with. He knew basketball like the back of his hand and he DID NOT DEAL with disrespect. His face immediately got beet red and his eyes were bulging out of the sockets.

I heard the buzzer blaring for a sub and I knew I was coming out of the game.

I went to sit in an open seat at the top of the bench and he said, “no. You go take a seat at the end of the bench. And get comfortable.”

It was the first quarter and I didn’t play another second of that game.

During halftime he said to me, “if you ever talk to me like that again - if I ever hear you talking to a referee or another coach like that - you will be so far down on this bench you won’t even see the court.”

Noted.

After the game, he walked up to my Dad who was a long-time boys’ basketball coach. He wanted to explain why I was benched but my Dad cut him off. “You’re the coach. You don’t owe me any explanation when it comes to your team.”

I think about that moment a lot because I think we’ve drifted so far past that when it comes to teaching our kids about accountability.

In our house, if you’re not playing, that’s on you. Work harder so you leave no doubt (even if politics are involved).

You look cross-eyed at your coach, I hope you are benched.

You’re not focused in school? Benched.

You tear down a teammate? Benched.

Youth sports have changed so much…some days the stories I hear or see firsthand it’s like inmates running the asylum.

Coaches are too afraid to hold kids accountable because parents lobby to have them fired 🙄

And it’s sad because a lot of the parents are my generation…and come on, we know we learned and benefited the most from the teachers and coaches who pushed us the hardest and held us ACCOUNTABLE.

I love youth sports because it’s so much more than scores and records.

It teaches us teamwork, builds and reveals character, we learn to work through adversity…the list goes on and on.

There’s nothing wrong with coaches holding our children to higher standards by saying “that’s not how we behave here.”

I don’t know about you, but my kids need that because I’m trying like hell to make sure I’m not raising narcissistic, entitled and self-absorbed humans.

They’re going to make mistakes…
They’re going to have low-character days…
They’re still learning and growing…

I just hope every coach and teacher knows that I have their backs when they tell my kids: “nope. Take a seat.”

Forever grateful for Coach H for telling me to get comfortable on the bench. Nothing I could have done on that court that night could have overridden my disrespect.

In order for youth sports to do its job, parents need to stay out of it. Park the helicopter and stop hovering.

It’s the fighting through the adversity that will lead our kids to endless success. Truly.

Character > athletic ability

📸: that’s me in a good ole mid 90s polyester uniform. And yes, I’m chewing on it 🤷🏼‍♀️

11/03/2023

We ❤️❤️❤️ Softball FAN SHARES! Thanks for sending it in! Cute cute rockford peaches

11/17/2022

This is so true

11/08/2022

08/10/2022

The greatest moment in the history of sportsmanship

It happened in the very first inning of the Southwest Region championship. Two boys who when they woke up this morning only cared about one thing… get to Williamsport. Suddenly everything changed, because in real life things happen just like that … things change in a heartbeat.

Kaiden Shelton is the big man on the powerful Pearland team, their big picture, their big hitter. Isiah Jarvis is the shortstop on the scrappy Oklahoma team that had through incredible perseverance made it to the championship game . One team has already been to Williamsport, the other has never been.

The Pearland team scored 3 runs in the top of the first, but Oklahoma came right back at them in the bottom of the inning , they scored 2 runs and had a big rally going on, there was noise everywhere, coaches were yelling for the pitcher Shelton and the batter Jarvis to ”Battle” “win the battle.”

Then it happened, a twist of fate, Shelton lost control of a fastball and hit Jarvis right in the helmet, and Jarvis fell in a heap at home plate

Suddenly nobody was thinking about Williamsport anymore. With Isiah laying there and coaches and medical staff rushing to his prone body, Shelton kind of circled around the area between home and the pitchers mound. The staduim was silent. Jarvis’s mom stood in the stands , one hand clasped to her face, the other to her heart. And every mom who has ever sent their boys into these games was right there with her.

The Pearland players took a knee, eventually so did Shelton. Seconds seemed like hours. On one knee, Shelton was totally alone with his thoughts. But going through his mind were the words of the umpire immediately after Jarvis had gone down .”Oh my God” the umpire had said.

Finally they helped Jarvis to his feet , on replay you could see how the ball had hit his helmet in a good spot , it got more helmet then anything, Jarvis had been more frightened then anything . He trotted down to first , but now the trouble was with Shelton.

Before that pitch he had only one thought - Battle… win the battle … the words of coaches…now the only words he could hear in his mind… were the words of the umpire: “Oh my god.”

And just like that he started to cry. He was standing on the mound crying, and nobody went to him, not his teammates, not his coaches . Then one person did go to him… Isiah Jarvis left first base threw his helmet off, walked right to him and hugged him. That hug said… it’s okay. It was just what Shelton needed at that particular moment , I am sure his mom had wanted to Rush out there and hug her boy, Isiah took care of that for her , because Shelton was a big kid with a big heart and he didn’t want to hurt anybody , he didn’t want to hear an umpire say “Oh my god” over something he did . He was there to play baseball and make new friends, he hadn’t bargained for this

The game resumed , somebody won , somebody lost, one team went to Williamsport, the other packed their bags for home, it will all be forgotten , but that moment of perfect sportsmanship will live for as long as there is human competition

Before the tournament Isiah Jarvis said his biggest dream was to make sports center . I think it’s going to happen.

His name is Isiah and in the book of Isiah there is a famous passage about coming quickly to the rescue “I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” It’s almost perfectly symbolic that a boy named Isiah would come quickly to the rescue and do it when it was most needed.