I followed Shorty and her team down to El Paso, Texas this past weekend to take in her coaching for the first time ever. She was great. Being an assistant coach, the coach designated her as the first base coach, and she has a lot of leeway to do what she can to help out with the team, defensively, offensively and in base running. She knows a lot about softball, and I mean a lot, coaching is what she was groomed to do. She has played under some of the best coaches in the nation, including 2 years of college ball under the legendary coach Dicus when he was still a softball coach at Seminole State College.
They played a D1 school and lost 2 fairly close games on Saturday, but Sunday they crushed the local Junior College team twice. It was about 90 degrees (32 Celsius) down there, and very enjoyable to sit and watch some fairly solid softball. Obviously, for them, this is only fall ball, so they do have a lot to work on, but like Shorty keeps telling me, and I see, they have a lot of potential, and could possibly be a very big surprise team not only in their conference, but in the nation. The team has only 15 players, and are led by 7 seniors, and interestingly over the past 4 years, the program has had 4 different coaches. I have the feeling the staff they have right now will stick around at least a couple years, I know Shorty will be there for 2 years before getting her masters in sports science.
Anywho, I followed the team on the 5 hour excursion from the little city of Portales, NM down through a little mountain range, and right on into southwest Texas, where El Paso sits. The city lies right on the Rio Grande, the Mexican border. We would have made a little trip across the border just to say I had been to yet another country (Shorty's already been there) but she didn't bring her passport, so maybe next time. We drove along the highway that is literally 100 feet off the border. It was interesting to look across into Mexico, at all the little shanties and shacks they live in, they overall quality of the land and roads compared to what we were driving on and through in El Paso. It was a fun little trip, and shorty was able to drive back with me after the games, so we could check out the malls in El Paso, something I wasn't pumped for obviously (I have a strong hate for malls these days, they always seem to turn into spending time and money), but Shorty didn't get anything, actually I was the one that ended up picking up a shirt and shorts... dangit.
We have pics, and I'll add them to the computer later on tonight and post some on here when I can. Well, we headed home Sunday night, and made a little pit stop for the night which I'll write my next blog about.
Quick Bio
- LB 44
- I am a right handed pitcher, born and raised Canadian with a recently aquired Dutch passport, enabling me to play for the Netherlands national baseball team in all international events such as... Beijing Olympics 2008, 2009 WBC, World Cups in 2007 + 2009. My beautiful wife 'Shorty' and I are following the career wherever it takes us, this year... New Mexico, Vancouver, New Hampshire, Florida, Holland, Italy, Germany, Taiwan, Oklahoma, France and everywhere in between.
1 comment:
Good luck to Shorty and her team! I wish I would have had the smarts to stick around in school.
I was North of El Paso a few years ago for military training. It was the first time I had seen the desert. I was awestruck. We joked that it must be really easy to get your drivers license around there. How could you fail on that stretch of highway 54? Unless maybe it put you to sleep... heh heh.
When we spent some time off in El Paso and Juarez, we were stunned that the Rio Grande was, in fact, reduced to a drainage ditch. We were expecting something more like the Peace Bridge over the Niagara River. You didn't miss much in Juarez. It's scary. But we had some unbelievably good food and we all brought back the smoothest tequila any of us had ever had.
[/nostalgia.]
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