First Home Run

     If I could relive any moment for the first time all over again, it would be hitting my first ever home run. After having played softball since I was nine years old, I finally hit my first out-of-the-park homer about six weeks ago in Olney, Illinois. When I first started playing softball, fielding and pitching came somewhat naturally to me, but I would strike out nearly every time I was up to bat. In seventh grade I started taking hitting lessons along with my weekly pitching lessons, and I worked earnestly on my hitting skills, but my progress felt really slow and I mostly resorted to bunting during middle school. Then, when I transferred to Uni from UMS and gave up having a school team to play with, I joined a travel softball team for the first time and started to gradually improve my hitting. The last few years I’ve become more of a contact hitter, hitting singles to get on base and advance runners, but I was still nowhere near being able to hit a ball out of the park. After Covid shut down my 2020 season, my 2021 travel team was a little problematic to say the least, and I felt like I had plateaued with both my pitching and my hitting. 

    All that changed this fall when I joined a new team, the Fisher Force. After having played with a number of difficult teammates last year, I was excited to get a fresh start with a new team. My new head coach, Chris Stipp, also became my new pitching and hitting coach. At my first hitting lesson with him over the summer, he told me he was certain I’d get a home run after working with him. I nodded, but didn’t really believe it at the time. Under his guidance, I switched to a lighter bat in order to increase my bat speed. As the fall progressed, my on base percentage kept improving and I was getting longer hits, but most of them were still singles and doubles. 

    Flash forward to tournament weekend and I was playing in Olney for the second time this fall on Field 2, my lucky field (the last time I had played in Olney I had pitched one of my best games ever on that same field, allowing only one hit and one run, while throwing zero walks and seven strikeouts). The weather had been slightly chilly and breezy in the morning, but it had turned into a beautiful day by the time the game started. The team we were playing wasn’t especially great, so we were up by several runs by the time I was up to bat for the second time. With two runners on base, I was starting to get nervous with an 0-2 count (meaning zero balls and two strikes; one more strike and I would be out), but I was determined to bring my teammates home and keep the momentum of the game in my team’s favor. 

    The pitch came and I swung hard, making contact with the ball in the “sweet spot” of my bat. Since I’d never before hit a home run, I wasn’t sure how to judge how far my hit was going to go, but I knew the moment it left my bat that I’d hit it perfectly. By the time I had barely rounded first, I checked where the ball was, and to my amazement, I saw it soaring out over the fence in left center. The crowd erupted and I jogged the rest of the way home, pausing at third to give my ecstatic coach a fist bump. “I told you you’d get one!” he shouted. The fence’s distance was probably 200 feet, but Chris thought my hit was at least 20-30 extra feet beyond that. At a later pitching lesson he told me that from his position as third-base coach, he’d heard the opposing team’s head coach mutter “uh-oh” under his breath when he saw the ball leave the bat. 

    All in all, it was a great experience, especially after losing so much time due to Covid. I don’t have any indoor tournaments this year (also due to Covid), but with winter practices I’m hoping to keep improving and hit another home run this spring.

The game ball I hit my home run with


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