Girls need to believe that they can do anything they want. They need to believe that they are super heros, they need to believe that they are the winners, and the warriors in their life.

Girls need to believe in their abilities and capacities more than anything in the world. Girls need to know they can rely on themselves, girls need to know that they have final say, girls need to know that they are meant for strength and speed and endurance.

Girls need to know that they have wild abilities within them. The power of their form, their mind, their attitude, is primal, it’s natural. Girls need to know how to harness it, or it will be instead caged by the world. But a girl who knows this, who learns this, will become the most powerful being alive.

Where does a girl learn these things?

She learns them in her pursuit for greatness.

Sport is a most perilous battlefield chosen by few. It is often thankless and highly competitive. Yet it is the exact place where she will be tested well in order to learn who she truly is.

I trained on a track meant to lead to professional dancing from the age of 3 until I graduated high school and chose to go play softball in college. Mysteriously, aka divinely, softball came into my life at age 9 and most definitely shifted the trajectory of my experience this lifetime. I am constantly learning and remembering how limitless I truly am, how brave, capable and resilient I truly am. Nothing else has tested me or strengthened me like softball has.

That is my true purpose here, through the game of softball. To bring this message of power to our girls.

I represent what the majority of your daughters will be, and that is someone who doesn’t make it into the .1% of softball players in the world. Who of course said they wanted to go D1 without knowing at all what it would take to get there, or the person they would have to become.

Who one day may face a heartbreaking end to the game they love so much. Who will be lost after stopping, wondering what they will now do with all the knowledge they spent years gathering and integrating. Who will have to relearn everything about themselves, once their identities and bodies change to not being a softball player.

In my eyes, softball is your daughters chosen arena, where she will learn to become a warrior. I am her teacher and her guide, I will sharpen her sword and lead her toward victory. When defeats come I will help her from the battlefield to the training grounds and we will train again.

Though my perspective and my experience may not be traditional, they are assuredly aligned to produce excellent and elite athletes, who can then choose to pursue top level softball as top level young women. They will be no doubt ready for the world and life after softball, as they are continuously made aware of how they can use the skills they learn as helpful tools during their life.