Softball Team Failure

In any sport, whether it’s football or softball or tennis, failure is bound to happen. Every athlete, at some point in his or her career, will deal with defeat. Although no one, especially competitors, enjoy failure, it is an essential to reaching success. I recently faced defeat on the softball field that still haunts me to this day, but the lessons I learned and the development in my character made the experience worth it.
This past softball season, my high school softball team was lucky enough to earn a first seed bid at the regional tournament. This was a big deal for me and my team since we struggled to even make an appearance in the regional tournament the previous two seasons. It was great to know that all of our hard work had finally paid off. We

After a good week of practice, the day had finally arrived: game day. Being the top seed, we got the first game of the day at ten o'clock in the morning. We got to the field an hour early to do our usual warm ups, but the nervousness was obvious, even among the veteran players like myself. Once the game finally started, my jitters started to ease and my muscle memory took over. The first six innings were a back and forth battle; they would score, then we would score. At the top of the seventh, the score was tied at five apiece. I quickly realized this last inning was going to be duel between bats. My nerves that had calmed since the beginning of the game were quickly coming back. On defense, we didn’t play the clean and errorless inning we desperately needed. Instead, Lamar was able to capitalize on a few base hits and score a run. The score was now six to five with Lamar leading. Although this was not the ideal situation, the heart of our batting order was due up to the plate. The lead off batter started the inning with a base hit single up the middle. The next batter successfully laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runner to second base. With a runner in