Jylene Paredes
Literacy Narrative Draft

Surrounded by my teammates, other friends and coaches, hearing my name being called as the MVP (most valuable player) for my team for this season at the annual sports dinner was something out of a movie. MVP is something that I would have never thought of, yet my coach gave me that opportunity to live out. The excited uproar that sprung out of my team and friends nearby was a feeling that gave me goosebumps, not the nervous kind but one that was engulfed of emotion and my body just naturally reacted that way. Senior year of high school was THAT year, that year that brought me closer to so many more people, that year that took me out of my comfort zone, but it was that year that set my softball team to an all time high and we set out to breaks all the barriers in our way. Senior year was the end of the beginning for me, but like every other student, freshman year was a time that occurred and that year changed everything for me.

I always knew that I wanted to be apart of a team, being that I have impressed many people before then on my athleticism and what I was capable of and yet, I’ve never had any sport background. Never played on a team against other teams or schools, and the sport I wanted to play is softball. If you are not aware of what softball is , it’s baseballs sister. The are some differences though, including the ball being used is bigger, the innings are shorter , the way the pitcher pitches the ball , and most importantly, it’s played by girls. This sport requires a lot of skill, whether someone is playing offense or defense. Offensively, a player wants to make sure that they’re able to connect the ball with the bat and hit it as far as they can. But the job isn’t done there, one has to know knowledge in running the bases, knowing when is the right time to steal a base , sliding into a base and trying not to get hurt while doing it. Defensively, a player takes a certain position and plays accordingly but if and when that ball is hit by the opposing team, the defense have to retrieve the ball as fast as they can to try and get the ‘runner’ out, and here I was, a lower class man with no background in this sport. However, I knew my may around the sport and how to play because of a little help from my dad and family.

With many families having their own traditions and cultures that they follow, my family follows the sport of baseball. Now, I know that they’re a lot of families out there that are probably the same way, but the way my family follows baseball is why I fell in love with it. Growing up, I couldn’t escape the sight of baseball, whether it was on the television or we going to see it live. It also helped that my dad and sister had a background in baseball/softball. Going to my dads games and seeing the passion he endured as he played was what I strived for, and wanted to know how it felt to catch a game winning ball or doing an amazing play on the field. Hearing the stories my sister had when she played gave my imagination a new purpose, always envisioning myself playing and the cheering the went on behind me on the plate while I stood up to bat. I guess you can say it ran in my family, and I wanted to continue that legacy, if you wish to call it that. Did I mention that I am Dominican? We as Dominicans eat, breath and sleep baseball. Well, it might not be that excessive but we love our baseball. The stereotype is that Dominicans are baseball, that it is our sport and it’s the only sport we seem to be the best at, and this hackneyed idea couldn’t be more right. You don’t really see a Dominican playing soccer or tennis because we don’t excel in those areas , or that I’ve seen , nowadays people surprise you. Without the love and support that my family gave to the sport, on top of giving me the knowledge on how to play it, I would have not been as “confident” as I thought I was going into the tryouts.

As a timid freshman who had only made friends during her regular high school day, I did not know how I was going to be around intimidating upper class men with a lot more experience than me. Spoiler alert, I made it work. I had spoken to my teammates, surprisingly more to those who were older than me, and I didn’t feel anything wrong with that. No one should feel wrong for wanting to talk to those out of their grade, but it just felt normal and made me feel comfortable. But, like every other senior, they graduated and left whoever was left on the team the best of luck for the next season. As another year came by, it felt like a weight was let go off my shoulders being that I surpassed my first year of high school and tried out for a varsity sport and managed to make the team! Weirdly enough, my communication skills also seemed to grow intensely between the summer that divided freshman year and sophomore year. I say weirdly enough because I would have never pictured my shy self having made more friends that I could have imagined. Going into the new season of softball, I had grown more individually as a player in the game but also grew more friendships that I was sure going to keep moving forward. Fast forward to junior year, and it was almost like I was reborn into this social butterfly that quite didn’t know when to not stop meeting new people. I was taken aback by how social I was becoming; being the first person to initiate a conversation, not being nervous to approach students I’ve never met. This translated into softball; where being that I was more social, I was encouraging players and helping them out of their comfort zone like senior year stepped me out of mine. I could not tell you how many friends I made during my senior year of high school. This is not me bragging on how many friends I have, because someone doesn’t need to have so many friends to be happy, it just so happened that making more friends drove me to happiness. It also brought some of my teammates and I closer, and saying goodbye to them to carry on a new journey into college was difficult. But those friendships are the ones that will last, and I will for sure be back to my team to continue the laughs that were left on pause.

Communication is a very essential life skill that everyone should acquire, because softball brought out the talkative, friendly person in me. But it was also my family who first gave me the insight of what baseball was, and how its sister, softball, was a sport that I could play one day. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today without the love of sports and joining that softball team, opened a new door for me, and had me let go of certain walls and just talk to people.