Royally Awesome

A Thursday morning sendoff for our Lady Royals

In a strange way, my worlds – well 3 of them – converged on a softball diamond in Madison last night. And that's as good a place as any.

And that was fun. 

It just happened that in the final session of state semi-finals, Grantsburg (where I was born) was playing, then Iola-Scandinavia (where I commuted to work 12 years) played next, then it was our Assumption Royals (current location) in the last game of the evening.

Grantsburg and Iola are in Division 4. The Pirates will play for the gold ball tomorrow. The T-Birds went home – but I did get to see a few of my Iola peeps! As for my Royals… we are playing for the Division 5 championship at the crack of dawn tomorrow!

It was a very exciting game last night. Didn’t get started until about 9 p.m. Almost my bedtime, right? And even though we got off to a 3-0 lead. Thorp closed the gap and it was a nerve-wracking 3-2. Finally, our sweet and talented catcher just pummeled a shot into left and it ended up being a 2-run inside-the-park homerun. 

She’s got wheels! We ended up winning 5-2. Whoo-hoo!

By the time we got home it was well after midnight. By time and I edited and posted photos, it was well after 3 a.m. Raise your hand if you’re tired today!

Shooting under the lights, I really didn’t think I’d have that many to work with. But enough of them were just good enough to share. 

I’ll just gloss over the part where the game was called to a halt so the umpire could tell me not to use flash in the dugout. For the record, I wasn’t. But there was a little light on my camera that goes off and they must have feared I was either sending secret Houston Astro-like signals or trying to use EMDR to hypnotize Thorp. So I took my very red-faced self out of the dugout and hid in shame under the bleachers.

For about 60 seconds.

Then I resumed my spot OUTSIDE the dugout and they had no issues ever again. Thank God it’s a day game tomorrow. I hope they let me back in. I don’t just hit the road at 5 a.m. for anybody. But these girls are worth it!

Let’s go, Royals!