TEAM LEADERS

Kayla's Summer Youth League Softball team (which is part of the Country Girls Softball League) consists of girls who are entering grades 8,9 and 10 in the next school year. This makes Kayla and her friends the senior members of the team. As is appropriate with that status, they decided to approach their first game last night with all seriousness and maturity:





*note the regulation socks....Kayla - pitcher; Maggie - catcher; Becky - first base.

As the younger members started arriving, I decided to find the "older" girls and encourage them to introduce themselves and make the younger girls feel welcome.

In every high school sport my kids have participated in, I've been very impressed with how the upperclassmen take the new kids under their wings and make them feel instantly like part of the team. This was true for football when Blake was a freshman and in both of the sports Kayla was involved in this year The juniors and seniors take the younger ones to dinner, they invite them to movies and cookouts, they offer them rides. It's always been a very inclusive group no matter what the program. I wanted to encourage our girls to pay it forward with this kind of attitude.

I was a little concerned however, when this is where I found the older girls:

*Kayla, Shannon, Maggie, Becky

Hey new girls! Meet your team leaders...um...yeah...don't listen to a thing they tell you.

No need to worry, though. While we were in line for shaved ice after the game (because it's not summer until you've had a shaved ice) the mom of one of the younger girls told me how sweet it was that the older girls went up and down the bench and introduced themselves to the new ones and spoke to each younger player. She said she had been a little concerned that her daughter would be playing with high school students.

Had she seen them on the playground earlier she might have packed her daughter up and driven away for good....