The Illinois State Camp was in Bloomington, Illinois. (For those who don't know where that is, its in the middle of a corn field next too all of these ginormous State Farm buildings! ;) ) In the morning we started out with their usual warm-up along with intros from the coaches and players. From there up until lunch we worked on fielding. We completed their normal every day drills working on different throws, footwork, drop steps, and full infield drills. After lunch we moved to hitting. First Coach Fischer explained the way that they teach hitting and the proper mechanics. Her goal was to get us to try something new that we hadn't done before or take something that they taught and add it to your swing to make it better. After we moved to different stations doing tee, soft toss, and front toss drills. For the finish we split up into 4 groups to scrimmage another team while the other two groups were touring the indoor facilities. Illinois was my first outdoor college team camp. I was nervous because of the unknown but knew that I would have a blast because I was getting the chance to play softball. I love hitting so the biggest thing that stood out to me was how their hitters all started. Their stance started open with their negative movement and then finished closed with their positive movement. The reasoning behind it is so that they could have two eyes on the ball instead of one. Which makes a lot of sense because I definitely see better with two eyes instead of one.
Danes Camp was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was three straight days of learning and hard work. On the first morning it was raining, so we held practice in the dome. There we learned all of the plays we will run this year, our throwing warm-up, and completed our first challenge drill. It had finally cleared up so we drove back the the fields in Hudson to work on bunting and slapping. I had never slapped before so that was very interesting. I learned so many new types of bunts besides for the normal sacrifice that I had been taught before. It opened my eyes to how many more tools I can learn and add to my game to make me that much better of a player. To finish the night we did the Big 300. The Big 300 is a very simple drill, field 300 ground balls as a team without everyone getting out on an error. We only got to 298 when our last girl and team captain had an error. The Big 300 isn't just a drill, but a tool to teach life lessons, use strategy, and where your true leaders stand out. Over the next two days we continued to learn all of the information in our style sheet...(by the way, it is 130 pages, thank you Tim!!) Although it is a lot to process, it is the greatest learning tool someone has ever given me. This way if I have questions some of them I can answer them and learn the why even if I am not around my coaches. On Thursday night we had a double header which was very encouraging in showing us how well we were coming together. Friday was mostly batting practice and then starting the journey over to Mankato for our first tournament! Even though I was exhausted from it, I learned so much and feel I improved a lot over the course of the three days.
The Badger camp started out with the usual introductions and check ins for camp. But then we went right into my favorite part, hitting. To begin Coach Schneider had us spread out and close our eyes. During this he talked about mechanics and had us feel with our bodies what the correct form was (after watching him with our eyes open). Then we broke up into our hitting groups of about 6 girls to do different tee stations, baserunning, live front toss, and bunting. After hitting we had a chalk talk. During the season, Coach said they try to have at least one chalk talk a week. A talk would contain anything from proper mechanics, strategies, plays, or even inspirational speakers. One of the biggest things that stood out to me during the talk was how they talked about plussing your plusses. Focus on the things that you do well and be positive while working on the things that you can't do as well. They also talked about how much they love their kids and that by being positive they give so much more back to them. After the talk it was finally lunchtime. I love lunch! The second half of the day was throwing, their everyday drills, and diving practice. They worked a ton on picking shorthops and making sure you had good diving form to make great plays. Coach said that if a girl doesn't dive for a foul ball, that the Softball Gods will come back to get her by letting the hitter get a hit or her making an error. So the lesson is, dive for that ball!! Lastly we did several drills to try and recreate how you have to be able to think and react at the same time. To do this we started out very simple by doing a simple pattern through a ladder. Next we added that you had to juggle two softballs as you went through the ladder. Each round we built up how much you had to do at once until we were sitting on the ground facing backwards, then get up, juggle the balls, go through the ladder, all while counting down from 50. I was amazed at how much slower my brain worked after adding all of these things and simply how hard it was to count backwards! The next day was all scrimmaging. You were assigned to a team, went through warm-ups, an evaluation, and then got to show your skills at the scrimmage.
During these camps I learned a lot about myself. The combination of driving to Illinois, getting home at 1 AM, leaving for Danes at 7:30 AM, then having camp all week, and based on weather cancellations, two tournaments in one weekend taught me how far I can push myself. You hit the wall of how much you think you can do, and if you can break that, you find you can do so much more. I learned to fight through fatigue and how mentally strong I need to be to stay focused and be on top of my game.
Besides for cramming all of these camps into the past two weeks I have played in three tournaments one the first weekend and because of weather cancellations two after the week of Danes camp. Most kids would complain that they don't have enough free time and want to be with their friends, but my friends are my teammates and wouldn't trade the opportunities I have been given to learn more about softball and show my skills for anything.
The most important thing I learned was to recognize and be thankful for how blessed I am to be able to play this sport. Many other players have the talent but their families don't have the money to give them the opportunity. Also others may have the money and the talent but, like one of my former teammates, not be able to play anymore because of injuries. I am incredibly blessed to be able to physically and mentally play the game that I love.
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