The Gift of Community

Some of my earliest memories are on a field. First tee ball, then softball. I grew up in a small town in the US. The same people that I stood beside playing tee ball were the same people standing beside me on our high school senior night fourteen years later. We were there for each other through the miserable summer workouts, sweat burning our eyes. We won together, we lost together, and then we graduated. While we still remain friends, that sense of community was gone. Most athletes don’t have a chance to go on to play college ball, which was true for me. Instead I found myself playing in a co-ed slow pitch recreation league with people twice my age. It filled the gaping hole in my heart where softball used to be, but only just.

Several years later I moved to Germany. I brought my softball glove—the same glove that fit my ten year old hand and then my twenty four year old hand—with me and kept it tucked away in a drawer with a softball in it, hoping I’d find someone who wanted to play catch. I did, but it was few and far between. Then I got married and a couple of years later I had twins and the thought of playing catch was not a priority anymore.

Last year we decided to move from Germany to Helsinki. We packed a few boxes and my softball glove found its home in my suitcase. Not needed, but entirely too important to send by mail. It found its new home in a different drawer, hidden, but never forgotten.

I found myself sitting on the sofa last year and I still don’t know what possessed me to google Helsinki softball, but imagine my surprise and delight, when I saw that they were having softball tryouts two weeks later. I reached out, sent in my info, and spent the next three days trying to find a softball in this city because mine had gotten lost in the move. The best I could was a children’s baseball and I spent hours tossing the ball to myself, trying to get back in the groove.

On the day of tryouts, I slipped my glove onto my now thirty three year old hand and met the people who would become my teammates. Some of us had played before, some of us had never touched a softball. But that didn’t matter. We practiced indoors until the weather allowed us to practice outdoors. And over the course of the next few months we became a team. But perhaps more importantly, we became friends. We support each other, we cheer each other on, and that sense of community I had been missing for over a decade, I found again. We’re all in different phases of life. There is a ten year age gap between me and some of my teammates. Some of us are moms, some of us are still studying, but we are all there for the same reason. To be a team. To win, yes, that is ideal, but we are there to help each other get better every single time we are on the field.

Our season is over now. We went 3-4 this year, which is something I am so proud of. We will spend the off season working on our strength, agility, and all the other things that come with improvement on the field. We hope that next year we will have a new face or five join our team. Cause in my honest opinion? There’s truly no place I’d rather be.

-Written by Haley