The CT Softball Blog

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

— Semisonic

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JACKSON, N.J.—It was time to say goodbye.

The last out of the 2024-25 travel softball season had been recorded, the girls were on the wrong side of the score, the coaches had waxed poetic one last time and it was time to go home.

A nearly three-hour drive awaited them and their families in the wake of a 5-1 loss that included four errors that very morning.

It was an abrupt and sudden end that stung a little too much. Most endings are like that.

With less than 10 minutes to play in Sunday’s opening elimination-round game here at “War at the Shore” tournament, umpires claimed the rules stated it the game would be going into an international tiebreaker since the game was tied.

Read that again: The game wasn’t even over, based on the rules the tournament set up, yet those in power decided to go with an international tiebreaker before the end of the game.

It wasn’t the first time the tournament rules changed on the fly here in Jersey, in which a 1-1 Friday was followed by a 2-0 Saturday and given the team a 3-1 record in pool play.

Somehow, though, this team of nine girls who had played their under-manned hearts out all weekend was put into the silver bracket instead of the gold bracket, just another crazy twist in the final weekend of the travel ball season.

A 5-1 loss with four unearned runs would prove to be the house of cards that came crumbling down upon them in a moment.

And then it was over.

Dating back to September 1, these girls had played 60 games together. They had 33 wins, 24 losses and two ties.

They won a tournament. They finished second in two others.

They made friends. They made memories. They became a team.

So, when the coaches were done with their final post-game analysis and it was time to go home, the girls sat together, brushing aside the inevitable as they embraced every final second they had as a team.

Some of the players will be moving up to 18U in another month. Some will stay for another year of 16U play. Others might go in a different direction, to other programs in search for a perfect fit.

For one of the kids who played on this team, a great kid named Maddie, this was the end of the line, and her goodbyes were undoubtedly the most difficult.

A rising senior at a high school in the FCIAC, Maddie is everything youth sports should be about.

Travel softball, plain and simple, is a goulash of the best and worst of things that can happen in the youth sports world.

It can be a cesspool, or it can be a dynamite ride.

It can get a player into college or make them a better high school player.

Or, it can be a place to be a part of a team and get everything you can out of the life lessons learned between the base lines and in the dugout.

Maddie is one of those players. She does not play varsity softball, but it’s not because she doesn’t have the talent to. She has her reasons not to play, and that is her story to tell.

But she loves the game. She loves being around a team atmosphere. She’s a great teammate. (And she makes great cookies.)

The game and being a part of the team means so much to her that last year, she was the manager for the JV softball team at her school. Imagine that: Varsity-level talent being a manager for younger and more inexperienced players.

It was her tear-filled eyes that broke the hearts of the parents who stood around waiting for the conclave of heartbroken players who had played together for the last time.

“She never cries,” her mother said.

Goodbyes are hard and saying goodbye to the friends you had made is emotional, but saying goodbye to the game for good?

It’s never easy. No matter when it happens. And, somewhere along the line, it always happens.

For most of the girls on the team, even the two who didn’t make the trip to New Jersey, thus missing out on the final tournament and a chance to say goodbye, more seasons await.

For Maddie, it was over.

I’ve seen these goodbyes through multiple eyes. As a former coach, I’ve had to say goodbye to players I would never coach, and maybe never see, again. But, that’s a different kind of hurt.

These nine girls—and the two who were missing—had become one.

But it was over. And it was finally time to say goodbye.

One by one, they stood up and walked away from each other and toward their parents and the journey home, and the next chapter of this game and their lives.

(From The Dugout is a regular column written by CT Softball Blog Publisher John Nash)