Winning

Kaylee Riner is the catcher for Brentwood’s State Cham­pi­onship Girls Soft­ball Team. Last year the team had a win­ning sea­son, but did not grab the golden ring until this year. The hours of prac­tice, the trips out of town, the heat and ever-present late Sum­mer bugs — all go into the mix. Add a coach strug­gling with health issues, and you have the for­mula for what it takes to go the extra mile to come out on top.
Kaylee is the heir to a sort of female ath­letic dynasty. There is noth­ing like the sup­port of a ath­lete mom (sit­ting close to fence) and a cheer­ing dad (sit­ting a bit far­ther back in the shade) to help bring out your best. Deep down inside, each gen­er­a­tion feels the urge to best their par­ents. It is a pos­i­tive pres­sure and an invi­ta­tion to test the met­tle of our own DNA.
Every young per­son needs to have the expe­ri­ence of being on an award win­ning team. That has a way of shap­ing you for the rest of your life. I am a big fan of small schools, they offer the most oppor­tu­ni­ties. I have seen rural schools in which it took most of the high school males just to have enough for a foot­ball team. Stud­ies show that there is less gang involve­ment when there are more school sports pos­si­bil­i­ties. Young peo­ple are test­ing their war­rior arche­type. It is a devel­op­men­tal stage. It is far bet­ter for it to come out on the play­ing field than the back alley.
We do not have bod­ies. We are bod­ies. Sports offer a way of inte­grat­ing the mind/body/soul rela­tion­ship. Soft­ball sea­son has made its way into bas­ket­ball sea­son. Kaylee now runs up and down an indoor court. The dynam­ics are dif­fer­ent, but the chal­lenge is the same: to see if she can be bet­ter than she was last year. The game changes for the rest of us too. As we age, the test is more along pro­fes­sional and per­sonal spir­i­tual lines, but the chal­lenge is the same: can we be bet­ter than we were last year?
Kaylee has another year to play. The teams may or may not top what they do this year. The expe­ri­ence of win­ning is sec­ond to the expe­ri­ence of giv­ing it your all. Life is best when expe­ri­enced whole­heart­edly. We are all ath­letes of spirit. Like all ath­letes, our com­pe­ti­tion is ulti­mately a con­test with ourselves.