Summer Post #6: Sports Rant? With some Actual Content? And Original Thought? Longest post ever.

Again, I have nothing to write about. usually someone on the web gives me something to elaborate on, but I can't find anything really useful.

So. I'm just going to rant a bit. haha.

I started thinking about this a while ago, but I'm having issues organizing my thoughts in a way that I could make a decent essay out of. But its my scholarly paper idea. I'll call this a prewrite. =D

And btw, If you've never seen a prewrite of mine, they're the ugliest things ever. No pretty bubbles, or outlines, or webs. Just words. Frigging everywhere. And somehow I make sense of it all. Then I graduate to Prewrite 2.0, which is called Rough Draft #1 for English class's sake. And I don't let a lot of people read those. 'Cause they're a bit scary. They actually sound like these blogs. Just me, talking to me; saying whatever I think, pulling up weird connections and tangents...

Now I'm done talking about writing process.
_____________________________________________________
I MUST SAY SOMETHING FIRST THOUGH:
okay, I'm watching the news while writing this, and I just must say something.
Okay, so there is an actual story about the weather (lame) and this lady from marysville is like, "I don't like the rain. I don't like the feeling of it touching my skin". I just started cracking up and yelled, "Then why the hell do you live in the state of washington?" I thought the entire thing was hilarious.

That reminds me, almost everytime a talk to a long lost friend and tell them I live in Washington, the first question I get is *fangirl voice* "OOOHH!! DO YOU LIVE ANYWHERE NEAR FORKS?!?!" *end fangirl voice* Although please forgive me for saying "fangirl" I should have said "fan girl/boy". Yeah.

That whole vampire thing is a LIE. It's an overrated teen novel. Get over it.
People amuse me.

_____________________________________________________
So, Sports Rant. Full of Little Fact, and a lot of no-no words.

This beginning makes no sense in the realm of what I want to say, but I feel like making fun of select softball for a while. It may get funny. Espically for all who play and understand my sense of humor.

I play softball. Most everyone knows that. Pretty hardcore softball, if I do say so myself. A lot of my best friends play softball. It just comes with all of the time we spend together. We practice together for hours on end, several days a week. We wake up early on weekends and travel to who-knows-where to play a tourney. Sometimes we travel together, often all staying on the same floor of the same hotel at our out-of-area tourneys. (and yes, its tourneys, not tournies. Even though both look weird.) We're away from our homes for the weekend, and we play somewhere between 5 and 8 games in two days. We become completely drained of all will to accomplish anything but to play this sport that we call our life.

We wake up. We dress as one. We get to the field. We warm up. We make our way to the dugout. Two of us walk up with the coach to do the stupid coin flipping ceremony. We shake hands and put on our cutesey fake smiles. We exchange names, though we'll never remember them; Unless one of the other team's girls is someone who, for some reason, we have decided to hate. Or maybe it's an old friend, one who our entire team has known for years. And now we hate them too for an hour and 20 minutes, because that's the way it goes. Mr. Umpire takes out his stupid coin. Which, of course, is never just a simple quater. Its some fancy thing. Oh, and if it's a female umpire, me make a mental note to blame any loss on her. Because we all know that female umpires suck. (okay. that was called sarcasm. Maybe not sarcasm exactly. More towards satire. But almost every girl I've played with has had the presumtion that girl umpires are the worst. And though many are, I refuse to hold that opinion. I'll end this with personal experience: It is not fun to be a 15-year old girl umpire making a close call that goes against the team with the hot head coach who is okay with his team talking about how girls shouldn't play baseball. God, I hate sterotypes.) Well, we get on with the flipping. The winner calls home team, as usual. For some reason, we find it necessary to put on the fake smiles and shake hands again. We all say "Good Luck Ladies" and "Thank you Blue" like good little girls. (Mind you that if our coach takes the chance of taking me to the plate meeting, then this entire process is really unconventional, espically if I know the umpire. =D) The two girls and the coach rejoin their waiting team. For some reason, nobody paid attention to whether we're home team or not. We talk about that for a while. We come into a circle and try to enforce team unity with a generic cheer. Then we do our thing for 7 innings. Pitch. Strike. Throwback. Pitch. Ball. Throwback. Pitch. Ball. Throwback. Pitch. Foul. Throwback. Pitch. Strike Three. Rinse and Repeat with slight variation. Yeah, it's fun and all, but I'm realizing how boring this sport can really be if you're not playing. We're 16 U. We're too cool for cheers. None of the other teams do them. We win as a team. We lose as a team. We go out for ice cream afterwards. We do it all again tomorrow.

^^^^^^What we do for at least half of the weekends in our season.^^^^^^

*cue reflection that begins to connect to topic*
I'm not gonna lie, that was pretty fun to write. Yeah, I have fun and all, but I'm a very "If it's not fun I'll make it fun" kind of person. I'm a rollercoaster. Not your average rollercoaster either. The kind that tends to fly off the tracks at certain times. I like playing. I'm competive. I like hanging out with my friends. I'm good at what I do. Over the last two or so years of playing, I've tried to be the best I could, but focused on the reality of things. It's a game. Yeah, we all mess up, but I tend to get by my mistakes really easily. And that may be why I make less of them. With the help of my teammates, we've figured out that I have a style when it comes to this game. It can't really be explained, but in short, I give it all but don't take the game too seriously. I get hurt, I laugh my ass off. I can't do things the easy way, my body just likes to fall on the ground and embarass itself. I guess I don't take it seriously enough, according to some people. Yeah, people go to college on full rides for this game. I'm freaking glad that my parents don't really care if I do, or I would not be happy playing this sport. If they had, I would have played till I was about 15, then I would have just flat-out dropped it. Actually, before then, I don't think I really enjoyed softball. I've changed way too much over the past 2 years. I'm going to keep playing, and if any post-hs opputunity comes, sure. But there is no way I'm even close to planning on it. It's fun. That's all.

*don't worry, the point of this post is on its way*

The problem I see with the entire thing is that fun has nothing to do with youth sports anymore. Well, obviously, for the fortunate few, it still is about fun. But historically, If you went through SVLL, you have no chance of making it to MLB. Yeah, this is a tad pesimistic. I'm not saying that dreams don't come true. and If you really want something, you can work towards it and maybe you have a shot. All I'm saying is that Ichiro, Jeter, Finch, Kobe, Manning, They're just a few guys (and one girl, for accuracy's sake.) who made it big. Yeah, there are tons of big-name sports guys out there, but how many people are in the world? (I'd really like exact numbers eventually so I could come up with the odds of being big in sports.) The thing is, kids are often being trained way too young to be great at one sport; to become "The next [insert famous athlete name here]".

[this is where I blame parents] Every parent wants their kid to succeed. A lot of children can begin playing two sports, each at a different time of year. But soon after their child begins to excel at the local little league or soccer program, they drop one and focus on the other. Parents dish out huge money to play on a select team with superior coaching [another story], just so their kid has a chance. [I can only speak for softball on this...] Children can begin focusing on one sport at as young as the age of 8. No child has any clue what they would like to focus on at this time in their life. Instead of spending weekends learning to read better or making new friends, they are practicing and playing in tournaments until they are drained of all energy. The parents, in many situations, are caught up in making a dream come true, that they forget what their child might really want and lose sight of what might be best for them.

[This is where I blame coaches....but don't have a lot to say.] No coach wants to share thier kid. They want them at every practice, for the duration of the practice. They don't care if you have basketball at 6, you're here to practice softball from 4-7. And that's the way it goes. Instead of being praised for trying to expand their skills and become a better all-round athlete, they are often punished for missing practice.

There is too much outside pressure on the youth athletes to specialize in one sport at an early age. [<--- I guess that's an early stage thesis?] [oh, that entire thing above was just back story, but I lack quoted fact that can back up reasons why this is whole early specialization thing is bad] [and I'm tired...so Bullet time!]

This is bad because:
-stress (phychological thingies!)
-no time for anything else
-pressure from parents and coaches to succeed.
- things that come from not pleasing the above people
-Physical harm (medical thingies!)
- overworking of certain muscle groups
-strain
-messing up other muscles as a result of building up others
-I forget the name, but like the bicep/tricep relationship
-eventually effing up something bigtime
-hahah, your dream just crashed and burned
-Growing up too fast (hmm. Developmental thingies!?)
- no time for anything else
-no friends from other activities
- being told what they want, not figuring it out
- sad face. =(

haha. now that I just dissed what I've done for the last 5 years of my life...I'll go to bed now.

however, I would like some reassurance that I'm not crazy.