By softball sophomore Jerrin Faasau

6 a.m. came too early Saturday morning when we had to report to the softball field to leave for our long and anticipated week. All week the coaches had planted in our minds that we would be camping in Idaho or Utah or anywhere else we would have to travel. Though none of us were familiar with camping, our anticipation of the nine-day trip would leave some of us in dismay and confusion. We were extremely surprised when we arrived in Heber City, Utah that the coaches had tricked us and rented out a luxurious eight bedroom house for four days. Each room came with a couple of bunk beds and queen or king sized beds to fit 3-4 girls per room (Fitz and I lucked out and shared a king size bed to ourselves). The house included a home theater, pool table, and ping pong table (where Tui, Hooch, Bry, and Coach Glasoe dominated everybody) downstairs while outside it also came with a sandy volleyball court and a basketball hoop. While living in the Utah mansion, every morning a group of us would take turns waking up to make breakfast before 9 a.m. rolled around. Luckily for us (especially me since I can't cook to save my life), our group had outside help from Coach Tarr and Morgan Littlefield. Coach Tarr and Kimi worked on their delicious Dutch Babies (which is just flour, eggs, and milk) and Morgan instructed Baily and Bry to cook sausage and bacon while I cut up the watermelon. Our morning breakfasts usually consisted of this plus occasional pancakes and French toast.

Living in an extraordinary home like this, we could not lose focus of why we were even out there in the first place. Every day we worked out; whether it would be a team practice at a local park or high school or just Jillian Michaels workouts off of Coach Tarr's iphone. We did something every day to keep us in shape and ready to go when game time rolled around. Monday afternoon we took on Utah Valley at BYU's softball stadium. We beat them 6-2 with Bryana Walker, a rookie pitcher, pitching her first college game. Both she and the other rookies on our team showed no first game jitters as they played along the side of us veterans. They would continue to play this well as we also took on Utah and BYU the following days. Though we fell to both of them, our team deemed relentless as we continued to keep fighting to score runs inning after inning. Our game against Utah was definitely a battle and grind for our team to stay on top. We had previously scheduled to play them for a length of 10 innings rather than seven and so it put our team in an uncomfortable spot with our small amount of healthy pitchers. Fitz had pitched five great innings following with Jenna and Bry sharing the last five. With a well pitched game by all three of them, the game would not truly end until the bottom of the 10^th when Utah's No. 5 hitter came up and hit a grand slam over the fence propelling them to outscore us. The following day we also dropped a game to BYU in a very close game 8-6. Our runs would not come until later in the game with Morgan blasting a solo homerun and Hooch hitting a 3-run homer but it would not be enough to surpass them.

After playing in Utah, we drove all day Thursday and Friday until we arrived in Selah, Washington. Once there, we were welcomed by many people of the community for the weekend. Saturday morning we played Central Washington at a city park. We beat them 10-1 with Maggie hitting her first home run of her collegiate career. Many of our team's family and friends came to support our game as well as much of the community. After the game we all lined up along the side of the fence to sign autographs and take pictures with the little girls and other fans. Many of us were able to join our families after signing and pictures to spend time with them and go out for lunch before we had to report back to the hotel to leave for an auction. This auction dinner in Selah was able to raise a lot of money for our softball program with a big help from Bill Harris who put our trip to Selah together. One of our biggest sales of the night was four on-the-field passes to the UW vs. Stanford game bought by a man for about $1400. The auction was a success for everybody. The next morning we did a big softball camp for all the girls around the local area to come out and learn and have fun. The camp lasted for five hours where we split the girls into age groups with the morning half of the camp was the young girls doing all-skills part of camp and having the high school girls doing the pitching part of camp. Then we switched halfway through the camp. While the girls got something out of our Selah trip, so did the team. It was our way of giving back to the community and being there for the little girls. Bill Harris, the man who put together the trip, spoke to me about this. He told me that he was so happy that we were able to come to Selah and spend time with the girls because it means so much to them and that they look up to us as role models. After the clinic, our team packed up the bus and traveled back to Seattle. Once we had arrived at the school, we all were in relief that we made it home safely and happy to sleep in our own beds again.