Santa Clara Sparks – 1st Travel Ball Tournament

At the end of the softball regular season, Ellie tried out for the Santa Clara Sparks U8 travel team. She didn’t make the main team, which for some reason is known as the B team. However, there was such a turnout of quality players that they decided to form a second team, a more developmental team, the C team.

Getting serious (kind of) before the game

I volunteered to help coach, which has been a great experience. It reminds me of coaching the All Star teams in little league. All the players love the sport, they are so excited for everything about it, practice, games, we even have an optional day to come out and hit and all the girls are there, early. So it’s fun.

Santa Clara Sparks Blue Celebrate a 2nd place finish

We participated in our first tournament this past weekend, and learned a lot. Like, the amount of talent playing on under-8 teams is amazing. There were pitchers who were dominant. We faced a pitcher who struck out our first 6 batters, and I think only missed the strike zone once. Because this was a mixed tournament of B and C teams, we got our lunch handed to us pretty good by a few of the B teams. But after pool play on Saturday, we were seeded with mostly C teams for the Sunday elimination day. And the girls won their first two elimination games and got to the Championship Game. Although they ended up losing, it was a close game. Final score was 7-4.

How do softball players get psyched up? Like this. 

Making new BFFs

Overall it was a great experience. One of our pitchers, Sophia, had tears of joy when she struck out the last batter to put us into the Championship game. There were tears of sadness when we lost the Championship game.

Ellie, the youngest player on the team by far, held her own. She played some 2^nd base and some leftfield and picked up her first ever triple with a line drive that went passed the outfielders.

And let me tell you, travel softball is a whole new world. Not just in terms of competition, but with everything that comes with it. Each team had 4-6 coaches, and each team set up their own “tent city” with pop ups, umbrellas, chairs, etc down one of the outfield lines, or behind the center field fence. And when your first game is at 8:00 a.m. and your last one is at 4:30 p.m. you better have good accommodations, which we did!

5 games he can handle, but 6 was just too many

And through it all, there was one Super Trooper, Lukas. Up early, out in the sun all day, no nap on Saturday, and he only had one minor meltdown. However, come late Sunday afternoon he just pooped out. He ended up passed out in a little folding chair. Such a trooper!

That's a big trophy!

Occupy Softball. Santa Clara Sparks Style