This document is an application essay about the author's lifelong involvement with softball. It describes how the author began playing softball at age 10 instead of baseball. As a young, inexperienced player on their first team, the author struggled to understand coaching instructions. Over the years, the author's skills and their high school team improved, including winning their first games in 3 years during the author's freshman season. Softball has become the central focus of the author's life, teaching valuable lessons about attitude, effort, leadership, and communication, both on and off the field.

1. Application Essay
My life has been surrounded by softball since I was in 4th grade. I started playing softball
when I was ten years old. I had played baseball up until then, but baseball is big difference from
softball. I imagine myself at ten trying to throw a twelve-inch ball with very tiny hands, and
seeing the softball be pitched instead of sitting on tee. When I played on my first team, I did not
know what to do – besides tie my cleats. My coaches were Beth and Alan Akard. They tried to
teach me where I needed to throw the ball. I remember Alan stood in the middle of the field and
tried to teach me where to go when a certain situation that was in play. I was thinking to myself,
“I have no clue what he is saying to me.” It was like trying to understand someone speaking
Spanish. I soon learned some about the game, but since I was one of the inexperienced ones I
played catcher. All a catcher has to do in catch the ball and throw the ball – which I still was not
very good at.
When my team started to get better, my coaches decided to enter us into a recreation
league in Gray, Tennessee. All of the girls we played against have been playing for years, and
they also played at a higher level, therefore making them better. My team did not win a game
that season. Those girls I played against previously, I now play in High School softball. My high
school team won against some of those girls, but we have also lost against them too. That same
little girl who fell in love with the game at the age of ten, is the same 17-year-old that loves the
game just as much as she did. I have succeeded and I have failed in softball. Sullivan Central’s
High School softball team was not a good team up until my freshman year came. Before my
freshman year the softball team did not win a game in 3 years. We won 14 games my freshman
year. Then, my sophomore year we finished 6th out of 7 in the conference. Which was not a very
big jump but it was to us. The next year – my junior year – we finished 5th in the conference. We

2. had 20 wins, 21 losses, and one tie. We made a statement by beating some of the biggest teams
in our conference. We have lost some big games and definitely won some big games too. My
coach, Eddie Spriggs, always told us, “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
My application essay would be incomplete without the game of softball, because softball
is literally my life. My whole life has revolved around travel tournaments, playing 9 games every
Saturday, travel softball practices, hitting lessons, conditioning, several strawberries and severe
bruises, and having to vacuum your room from the dirt that falls off of you after a 17-hour day at
the softball field. Some people call my mother and father crazy for having our “family time” at
the softball field, but I would not want it any other way. Softball has taught me many lessons.
Such as, learning to go to Atlanta, Georgia for a softball camp and making new friends, and
leading a team. Also, I have learned that diving for a ball is like going to college and giving your
all for a college education. Softball has taught me, “Attitude, Effort, Leadership, and
Communication,” my travel coach stresses as we are going on our 7th game of the day. A.E.L.C.,
does not just go for softball. To succeed, I have to have the right attitude, I have to give effort, I
have to be a leader, and I have to communicate.