Unexpected

I love when your expectations are exceeded, I think sometimes in order to achieve that I purposely set the bar low in preparation, last night was definitely no exception.

This softball season has gone relatively well, before last night we'd won 3 games and lost 3 and we'd generally felt good about our performance, and then I saw on the schedule which team we'd be playing next. The team had won all 6 of their games and in those 6 had only given up a total of 43 runs (to put it in perspective we've given up 123).

I was very prepared for us to be absolutely clobbered. I made sure I was clear on the mercy rule (if the other team gets 20 runs ahead the score freezes and you just play for fun) and in the weekly email to the team I was very open about how much better this team seemed than us and that we should be prepared to lose but still have a good time.

My team completely surprised me… our defensive fielding was much better than it has been, our runners were aggressive and paying attention so that going into the 7th inning (our last) we were last at bat and only two runs away from winning the game. Sadly it was not to be and the score ended at 14 to 13 for them but we scored 13 runs and nearly won against the best team in our league! I'm so proud of our little team for stepping up.

I think that part of our success came from the lack of pressure. We all knew we were going to lose so we could just play and not really care about the score. It felt good to make the other team sweat and everyone had an awesome time.

I've really enjoyed this season of softball and even though I've been demoted to scorekeeper I'm still loving every week. I'm sad we won't be in Calgary to play next year but heads up Lethbridge, we'll be looking for a team down there come the spring.
L