15 - Grace B. A Taste of Victory

 

There’s a goal for everyone. Whether it be academically, athletically, artistically, or internally there is always something that we want to accomplish in our short lives. Now it may seem small to others but it could be the greatest success to you, and your opinion is the most important one. Now mine was beating our rivals, Vacaville High School, in a softball game.

Back in 2017, Will C Wood used to be the top dog of Solano County in softball. Our school softball team became the MEL league champions and ultimately, the school to beat. Now unfortunately since then the winning came to an end and that champion team wandered off, graduating, and starting their new lives where school softball was only a mere memory, but a story to tell. 

Coming into high school was a confusing time for me. I had hard times and sad moments, but creating a sisterhood with a team who’s only focus is to improve on the game allows me to escape from reality. This season our team had a rough start. Not having many experienced players coming through our school made us work even harder. Everyday we push ourselves to do the best we can to be a better team the day before. Finally our hard work paid off.

Wednesday night, we played Vaca High and we were excited to battle back after losing to them for 5 years. Our energy was high and so were our spirits, and in that moment all of our heads were focused on taking home the win. We played a good game, defensively we were consistent making crucial plays to hold runners. Offensively our bats let us down because we couldn’t make something happen, we couldn’t test them. Even then when we were down runs, our team however acted as if we were winning. Yelling and screaming for joy as someone made a good play or if they made a mistake picking their heads up to help make a change. 

It was the last inning. We were the home team so we had our last at bats and the score was 5-0, Vaca High with the lead. Anyone else in this position would have been down on themselves with no hope for a victory, but that wasn’t us. We had a late start to it, but finally we started hitting. Each hit was extremely crucial allowing us to move runners closer and closer to home plate to score. I’m proud to say that I contributed to these runs bunting one to third and being safe at first. While the girls behind me reeled me around the bases to score with their big hits. We brought the score to 5-5 with 2 outs. If we scored the last runner standing on second base, we win. If not, we go into extra innings and the game could’ve had a different outcome. The batter hit a line drive to right field and the runner ran all the way around the bases scoring the last run leaving the final score 6-5, us. 

We won. After all that hard work trying to change things, we finally did it. We jumped on the field, crying and laughing because we were on top of the world. It started to rain on us as we celebrated our win. It all felt like a sign. That with hard work and dedication we can have a taste of victory and no win is too small to celebrate. 

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