A Baseball Player

This Spring, Riley just melted my heart when he discovered baseball, well T-ball to be exact.  He has been asking for 2 seasons to play baseball, but we honestly figured that he would get bored and be off task.  Plus he was so good at soccer, I hated to take a season off.  Eventually I gave in, because he had to figure out what he thought before he was 12.  After much deliberation, we signed him up in Haslet.  I was secretely looking forward to him playing and practicing close to home.  He had such a great season.  His team was the Athletics, so I had to go buy Alex & I matching team shirts to wear to all of the games.  I was amazed at how focused Riley was during practice, and even more amazed at how excited I was to go to each and every practice.  We made the decision to sign him up for t-ball which he was still technically young enough to play based on age with a summer birthday, based on grade he would have been in coach pitch.  That was also a good decision.  He was one of the better players on the team, but probably would have been really behind in coach pitch.

His team was made up of lots of young players, with not a whole lot of motivation.  That led to our 5th place finish out of 10 teams, but we still finished with 3 wins, 3 losses, and 3 ties.

But most importantly was how much he learned and how much fun he had.  He even chose baseball practice over a birthday party one Saturday.  That really made me proud.

My dad even became a 3rd coach throughout most of the season.  He LOVED this.  I really think he enjoyed this season even more than Riley & I put together, if that is possible.  It was too bad that they missed 4 games because of scheduled vacations.

Riley learned alot and showed great promise of skills for the future.  That made me feel good after such a trying basketball season.  Right after school was out I even signed him up for Fossil Ridge's baseball camp.  This accomplished two things: 1) it gave him something to do instead of being in the church's nursery while I prepared & decorated for VBS 2)It gave him 3 hours of practice with a high school baseball coach who could really work on his skills.  He had so much fun during camp and my dad watched all 3 hours of camp every day.  Again he loves being a part of watching Riley learn and play his personal sport.