This last weekend Paityn was asked to play with the Oregon Panther's 12A (second year team).
The team that she normally plays with was not playing this weekend, so that gave her the opportunity to be a "pick-up player". Since her team was not playing they also did not practice last week. This opened up a perfect opportunity to also practice with the Oregon Panthers before the games. This time also gave Paityn a chance to practice and get an idea what other teams look like. Paityn had really good practices, so they asked her to play with them last weekend and of course she said YES!!! Not much playing time was guaranteed, but the experience was well worth it.
The Oregon Panthers are located out of Salem, so instead of us driving North for practices, we drove South. That was about the only difference for me. The Panthers are one of the best 12A teams in the entire state of Oregon. They have a very long-standing well ran organization and admired throughout the state of Oregon.
The tournament that Paityn was going to play in was a 14A 2 day tournament at Sunset Park in Beaverton, Oregon. The Willoughby family woke up early Saturday morning, drove all the way to Beaverton (45 minutes away) to find out that Saturday's games were rained out. The rain overnight was just to much for the already wet softball fields. Paityn, Maddux, and I ended up going down to Salem, Oregon later that day to watch an 18 Gold tournament at Wallace Marie Park. Paityn had never had the opportunity to watch such good girls play in person. She was surprised to find out how many girls she actually knew. She knew them from her hitting instructor Tracy. She watched the slappers especially…We then found out that the 2 day tournament was going to be played all on Sunday. There was an 80% chance of rain on Monday. The Panthers first game on Sunday was at 8:00 AM, which meant we had to arrive at 6:30 AM for warm-ups, since we had a 45 minute drive, that also meant we had to leave the house at 5:45 AM. Easier said than done!!!! We all made it on time though…. Paityn started the first 3 games (pool play) and then just hit the next game. The 5th game of the day she sat, but she didn't mind. She knew that the coaches would only play there best girls. Up to this point the Panthers had won every game. So that meant they made it to the championship game. That also meant that we had to wait one game to decide who we would play for 1st and 2nd place. Just as we finished our 5th game the rain started and did not stop. The fields suddenly turned to mud. The tournament director ended up calling the tournament due to safety reasons and also since we had beaten each of the teams earlier that day.
The Panthers 12A team won 1st place at a 14A tournament!!!
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