Today's game has us feeling SUPER🔥
Come out and support your Oswego Varsity Softball team as they look to punch their ticket to STATE!
🆚Barrington
📍Northern Illinois University (Dekalb)
🕓4pm Game Time
Tickets MUST be purchased through GoFan
Let's Go Panthers!!!🧡🐾💙
My 2026 high school softball season ended this week in a humbling way. Still it was a year of learning and I leave inspired by my teammates and grateful for my coaches, who put a lot of faith in me. I know what I need to work on, including care for my knee condition (OS). Excited to get right back into @SballStrikes softball season. This week was also finals week. I am proud of my hard work paying off and ending my freshmen year with a 4.0 unweighted GPA including 5 out of 7 honors classes and two at the sophomore level. Good bye freshmen year, hello summer! @OPRFSoftball@jillienwaldron@ChicagoSoftball@SwatSoftball_@carletonsoftba1@DenisonSoftball@DePauwSoftball
What a beautiful day to be playing for a Sectional Championship☀️
🆚 Plainfield East
📍 Yorkville High School
🕓 4pm Game Time
Tickets can be purchased for $8.35 on GoFan (https://t.co/7WnyYcAx5O) or $9 cash at the game
Show up and show out!! Go Panthers🧡🐾💙
Sectional Semi-Final Secured✅
Thank you to EVERYONE who came out to the game yesterday! Your support means the world to this team and we are so grateful for our Panther Nation🧡🐾💙
Next up, SECTIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP on Friday🔥😎
My town had coed baseball until 3rd grade. By 2nd grade I was the shortstop for my local team. The dads running the summer travel team that was selected at the end of the spring season came to my dad and asked that I play shortstop for the little league summer squad. My dad told me - and asked me if I wanted to do it. I said a resounding NO. He was stunned.
I loved ball, even at that age. I had been playing since before I could remember with my 3 brothers, amongst all other physical/competitive activities. I had no problem competing with boys. It was actually fun for me. But I had a barrier at that age with attention. Sports gave me an outlet to have a big personality (be super aggressive, passionate, communicate, celebrate people) but in life I was a shy, observant, quiet, and internal kid. I loved the effort, risk, and competition (just like I had in the backyard with my brothers) but hated when I made great plays in sports and everyone, stopped, cheered and focused on me.
When the travel opportunity first came my way, I knew what would come. I was already a spectacle locally as a petite, fierce, lefty shortstop, dominating most boys my age. Especially because I had such a quiet/serious demeanor. I was tapped out from the season of that novelty being pointed out to me and a lot of the razzing I got from my boy classmates (hated getting beat by a girl 😂) and just wanted to go to the pool with my friends that summer. My dad reminded me that people had recognized something in me and that it was an honor that I may not be offered again in the future. I said I understood. He respected that, as much as he loved ball and our family’s life revolved around it.
As an adult he will remind me how unsure he was about what to do there - and how often a sports parent has that feeling. It would come countless more times when I would turn down opportunities to play with softball super teams or play up age groups or go to a private school instead of my local high school. All things he trusted I had thought through. But it started simple in 2nd grade: Should he force me to play? Was he letting me waste a gift? Could he trust I knew what was best for me? Was he raising a kid that was going to be paralyzed by this attention barrier despite her clear natural gifting?
A year later, I was in girls’ softball and was asked as a 3rd grader to play on the 4th grade travel team. This time I felt excited. I wanted more. I didn’t play much in games but I learned the daily regimen of summer softball and to wait and work. Life took off from there. Ironically, I never stopped competing with the boys, all the way through senior year of high school. I recognized I was getting to that higher end of high school athletics where you start to get comfortable and risk complacency/ego dulling your potential. I had committed to play 2 D1 sports, I was also pursuing two state championships as a senior. I had lost 3. I knew how hard my dreams were to achieve so I chose that winter to workout with our baseball team. They had a former professional athlete running plyometric workouts. There was nothing for female athletes at that time.
I had the respect of my peers in high school because they saw how I worked, and never backed down from a challenge, right next to them. And they made me better. My hidden hard work allowed me to break that attention barrier. When attention came, I had a feeling I had earned it and I learned to channel it as a part of the competitive process, not fight it.
The mind is fascinating. Every person comes with developed or built-in barriers to their potential. Coaches, parents, friends/teammates do a delicate dance of both pushing and showing patience. Something we all have to remember about sports is no one can want it for you. No one can do it for you. One of the hardest things is to step back as a parent and allow your child to own their journey. I’m thankful my dad did. He modeled being a secure adult - perhaps his greatest impact.