Softball poem by one of my students

Thought I would share this with everyone here. It’s a poem written by one of my students, who is currently a 14U player who will enter high school in the fall. It does a great job of explaining the “striving” aspect of our sport from a player’s point of view. 

As has been said numerous times before, kids are not just short adults. It’s good for us coaches to see the game from their perspective now and then to remind us of why we do what we do. 
The Feeling of Success
Time after time, 
Pouring heart and soul into the game.
Giving everything, but it always ends the same.
Time after time, 
Admiring the other team as they celebrate with cheer.
We shake their hands, glancing at their smiling faces;
But as they shake our hands, only sadness will appear.
Time and time again, 
Trudging away, noticing the team taking pictures in the background.
The trophies in their hands are a token of their victory,
As we proceed to the car without a single sound.
And time continues to go on,
Shaking off the loss and trying some more.
Motivated by victory, motivated by determination. 
Triumph is what we look for. 
And one day, there is that time. 
The time we worked so hard to get, 
And the feeling is like no other, 
Because we know we’ve truly earned it!
— Carly Manshum (reprinted with permission)
Advertisement

About Ken Krause

Ken Krause has been coaching girls fastpitch softball for nearly 20 years. Some may know him as a contributing columnist to Softball Magazine, where he writes Krause's Korner -- a regular column sponsored by Louisville Slugger. Ken is also the Administrator of the Discuss Fastpitch Forum, the most popular fastpitch discussion forum on the Internet. He is currently a Three Star Master Coach with the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA), and is certified by both the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) and American Sports Education Program (ASEP). Ken is a private instructor specializing in pitchers, hitters, and catchers. He teaches at North Shore Baseball Academy in Libertyville, IL and Pro-Player Consultants in McHenry, IL.

Posted on June 2, 2014, in General Thoughts. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.

  1. I am a mom of a Softball player, she is now in U18. I loved this poem and reposting it on our Player website. Excellent! Well done.

    Like

  2. Lucy, glad you liked the poem and reposted it. I have passed that along to Carly as well. I’m sure she will be glad to know you found it meaningful.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: