We made the drive from Moab to Denver in one day, and then spent the next five days living the softball life! This is a big college-exposure tournament, and there are actually two big tournaments in Denver that week. Last year, we played in the bigger tournament; this year, our coach got the team into the smaller, more elite tournament. This was great for exposure, but the teams you play are the toughest teams in the nation, so it's hard fought games. As a team, they didn't do well, but individually, they made some outstanding plays and had some good hits. We wish Alyssa had pitched a bit more than she did (as I may have mentioned, with 3 other pitchers on the team, her play time in that position is diminished), but Darcie got a fair amount of time in as catcher.
The heat in Denver was incredible -- playing softball (or even just watching it!) in 104-degrees is challenging. Then add in the elevation of the Mile-High City, and throw in some haze from the wildfires burning around the state, and it's pretty brutal. I took a ton of pictures, and here are just a few random ones.....
As a catcher, Darcie got pretty dirty at every game. She's pretty good at blocking those low-in-the-dirt pitches. (And she saw quite a few of those from the other pitchers that week)
I tried to get a few more action shots. The above photo is Alyssa crashing in to field a bunt. She has no fear! The next is a shot of Darcie with a "quick transfer" to get a throwdown to second base:
On one play, Alyssa dove back to 2nd base a couple of times, and each time she did, she knocked the base off. (Breakaway bases help prevent injuries) The other catcher thought she could throw her out, but Alyssa is 6-feet tall, plus arm-length, and she knows how far off a base she can be, and still be able to dive back under a tag -- she was safe every time.
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Darcie was also pretty excited to get some new catching gear. While at the tournament, you can get some good deals on equipment, and her old stuff is wearing out. We also picked up some training balls, as well as t-shirts, a hat for Todd, and some athlete's cooling towels that worked great in that weather.
While we were there, we also took an afternoon to drive to the other side of the city and see the house where Todd's family lived when he was just a tiny kid. Besides having a ton of softball fields -- hundreds of teams have to play on dozens of fields! -- Denver has a lot of outdoor, public art displays. I didn't get pictures of very many, but here's one we saw in passing:
So, this little brick house is where Todd's parents lived for a couple of years back in the '60's:
We called them to get the address, and then Google-mapped it to find it. Todd has almost no memories of the house, but he does remember the "huge" hill behind the house. Can you see it, behind the backyard lawn?
(I hope these people didn't think we were crazy stalkers for driving by real slow and taking pictures!!) Here's a closer shot of the hill.
He remembers riding down that hill with his brother, Clynn, sitting on his Tonka dump truck. Remember those?? I'm sure to a two- and three-year-old, this hill was enormous! The property goes through the narrow part of the block to the street behind, so this is a shot of the back, looking down the hill toward the house:
We didn't do all we'd wanted to in Denver, and left town at the end of the week for .....
Cody, Wyoming. I'm sure right now, you're thinking,
Where the heck is Cody, Wyoming??
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