Long-time readers know I love stories where a fastpitch softball player who is overlooked or dismissed by a coach comes back to have some success. So today I’m sharing one that was in the newspaper recently. It was about a girl who played for me in 2010 and 2011 — Erin Pauly. Thanks to her mom Jan for pointing it out to me.

I don’t know how long the link will stay live, so just in case you can’t read it anymore here’s the short version — plus a little extra background.

First of all understand Erin is a great a kid — sweet, polite and a good teammate to all. She’s also a fierce competitor. She had kind of a rough year in 2010, but experienced a lot of success last year in the summer,

This spring she made varsity at Carmel Catholic High School as a sophomore but couldn’t quite seem to get on track. According to the story her 16U travel team tried to turn her around as a slapper, but she struggled with it when she got a chance to play. She was benched, then eventually she was demoted to the JV team.

The newspaper says she was sent down to rebuild her confidence, but having heard how it was handled — no conversation or explanation, just you’re not on varsity anymore —  I think it’s safe to say she was demoted. She played JV until the end of the season, when she was brought back to varsity with a handful of other call-ups. This time, however, things were different.

Her confidence was back and she started playing like the Erin I know. She started ripping the ball from the right side, and in the last couple of playoff games got some good hits, including a big double in a losing cause in Carmel’s last game.

If you don’t get to see it, the newspaper story I’m referring to the cool thing is she got the headline and was the focus of the story. That’s a pretty cool redemption for someone who was pretty much forgotten and dimissed in mid-season.

In Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle one of the characters says “The universe has a way of working out the way it should.” In this case that was true.

Come back again soon for another story of the triumph of an underdog. In the meantime, what did you think of this story? And if you have your own story of redemption, please share it in the comments.