Have you ever thought about who influenced your life? Like, what made you wanna do something such as a sport, or even the person you are? Well, I have a person who has influenced my life is “ Dot Richardson.” She is a great role model, she has done so much with her life. A couple ways she has influenced my life is she has so many people knock her down but she gets back up,she has accomplished all the goals i want to accomplish, and she turns negatives words or actions into positive words or actions. Dot Richardson is a well known name in the softball community. She has had people tell her that she will never make it in the big league for softball, that she will never become a doctor. But, she never gave up in fact it made her work harder. She studied harder, she practice harder. She did everything A hundred and ten percent, never taking shortcuts. …show more content…
At the age of thirteen she was named “Youngest player in ASA history to play in a Women's Major Fast Pitch National Championship.” Crazy to believe, she was also named seven-time Erv Lind Award winner and three-time MVP. Was also, two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, three-time World Champion, four-time Pan American Gold Medalist, member of the National Softball Hall of Fame. All by the time she was in her mid twenties. Dot Richardson has influenced my life in many ways but, one reason I find most important is she turns the most negative actions and words into the most positive words or actions. She has been pushed around saying she was never good enough but she took it as a complement and started working harder. You could tell she fell in love with the game as soon as she stepped foot on the
Over the past fifteen to twenty years women's fastpitch softball popularity has continued to grow and spread internationally. By the mid-1990s it was played in more than 85 countries under the eye of the International Softball Federation (ISF). It has become increasingly popular among women at the youth and collegiate levels. More than 630 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) member institutions sponsor women's softball programs, and national championships for women are held in all three NCAA sports divisions (Encarta, 1998). In 1991 women's fastpitch softball was selected to debut as a medal sport in the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Columbia, Georgia. The U.S. won the gold medal in the 1996 Olympic Games due to a good defense and great hitters on the team. Even though defense and pitching are critical and vital parts of the game, a successful team must have an effective offense to win the game. Among all the standout hitters on the U.S. Olympic team, two of the best are Dot Richardson and Lisa Fernadez. Both Lisa and Dot have picture-perfect swings, which have made them very productive throughout their careers. Today there is a women's professional fastpitch softball league. Interest in the Women's Professional Softball League (WPSL) has been increasing for the last three years and continues to grow each year.
Women don’t receive the spotlight in sports very often. Usually, the men in baseball, football, basketball, and soccer have higher salaries and are paid attention to more. This wasn’t the case with a special league of female baseball players. These ladies sparked a thought in peoples’ heads in the mid 20th-century. Could women really play a professional sport instead of staying home to do the housework? From 1943-1954, women in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League helped to change the rights women were believed to have in society and in the workplace as they began playing a professional sport as a form of entertainment. Men, who would usually fulfill this role, were drafted into the military with the responsibility to serve during the war. The AAGPBL quickly became a world-winning group of women athletes and kept baseball and peoples' hopes alive during a time of weakness in American history.
The importance of softball in my life goes unnoticed by others, but I owe everything I am to this sport. I am an organized, cooperative woman who does not let failures affect my work ethic. Although my friends and family do not give my softball career much credit, I am confident that the lessons I’ve taken away from this sport have proficiently prepared me to step up to the plate and score a successful
Most girls that attain success of competing at the professional level of Fastpitch softball get drafted from the university they attend, and then compete in the National Pro Fastpitch League against other professional teams around the world. The Slowpitch professional league is known as the American Professional Slowpitch Softball League, and most players achieve professional status in Slowpitch through competing in tournaments instead of playing for a university. In all sports, playing at a professional level is considered strenuous, but for the sport of softball to have a professional league in both Slowpitch and Fastpitch divisions is consider a prodigious accomplishment for the sport of softball. The achievement of playing at a professional level is one thing a player can cherish for the rest of their
Mrs. Bertha Flowers taught Angelou reading material, to have pride in who she is, and to speak up. She turned into the amazing woman we all learn about and know of today. I identify in my personal life having someone I looked up to myself so, I can relate. For my future I could see myself doing the same from all the professors I come to meet that I can take with me as time goes by. In reading such I've pondered about how much of an impact one person can make on your
Gloria Richardson was born May 6, 1922 to a very wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland to the parents of John and Mabel Hayes. At age 6 her family moved to the city Cambridge where they owned a very successful hardware store. Gloria attended Howard University in Washington, D.C at age 16 and graduated in 1942 with a B.A in Sociology. She attempted to become a social worker but she was banned from all positions because of her race. Gloria married a local school teacher, Harry Richardson and raised a family with no job so she just became a housewife.
She achieved a career high in doubles. Also she threw her first no-hitter, during the NCAA tournament on May 21st, 1999 vs. the Texas State Bobcats as a freshman in college. As a sophomore, she was named a 2000 National Fastpitch Coaches Association First Team All-American and First Team All-Pac-10. She also threw three no-hitters and led the University Of Arizona Wildcats in home runs and slugging percentage that made a career best for her. After her only losses in back-to-back games, she finished the year 8-0 starting a new streak with an April 29th victory vs. the Oregon Ducks that would span the nest two seasons. As a junior, in 2001 she won the pitcher of the year
They are the fastball, four seam, screwball, curveball, riseball, dropball, and changeup. She left Los Angeles County after she graduated and went on to play for Tucson, Arizona on a scholarship chosen over the 23 other scholarships offered to her. It was for going to Arizona that she was offered a major spot to become the captain of the Arizona softball team during her period of softball. This is where she became a dominant player for a known softball program. That is one of the main reasons why she was well known throughout her college years. She became well known while she was in high school at La Mirada High School. In the 2004 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, Finch helped the US team dominate the competition and get a gold medal. This international performance made her beginning fame farther than just with the Arizona Wildcats. Afterwards, she began to appear on television shows promoting softball and having interviews on how she began her
For this Women of Diversity Group Project, my group chose to write about female pioneers in sport. Within that category I chose female pioneers of softball. During this paper I will discuss the history of the sport and female participation in the sport. I will also give some statistics and make comparisons between females and males involved in softball and baseball.
People called her “lesbian” and “a male”, but she never backed down, instead she accepted who she was. “Didrikson became the first woman to play against men in a PGA Tour event” (Natta). She showed the world what women were capable of when she was a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (“Babe”). She was critical to the female’s sports world, and opened a door to female athletes everywhere.
My days began with going to the gym early in the mornings and going to the park to practice my batting swings and catches in the evening. I even managed to save up some allowance money to spend on the high school’s softball summer camps. However, my time fell short, and the day of the infamous tryouts had begun. My rambling thoughts were running bases through my head. How will I try out in front of hundreds of other girls? Will they laugh at me? Would I even make it? Will my friends make it? While my anxiety got the better of me, the head coach yelled out my name, and I slowly and steadily walked up to the batting box, and got ready for the pitcher to toss a fastball at me. Time slowed down as I anticipated the pitch; my fingers almost lost the grip on my bat waiting, but then, I saw the softball coming my way. I took a deep breath, and I hit it as hard and as fast as I could; it made it all the way to the outfield. I stood there shocked that I could do that, grinned ear to ear, and did a little happy dance on my way back to the line. My friends were celebrating and came up to high-five me when I got to the end of the line, and the varsity first basemen, a celebrity in my eyes, came up and complimented me on how far I hit the softball. A varsity member had spoken to me.
I encountered a “bump in the road” at a young age. I began playing softball at age six when Kylie, my elementary school friend, came to show and tell with her first place T-ball trophy. At the time, I had only played soccer, but the thought of swinging a bat as hard as I could and having people in the stands cheer for me, inspired me to ask my mother to register me for the local recreational league. Before I knew it, I was lacing up last year’s soccer cleats and stepping up to bat in my first coach-pitch softball game. My father, being the coach, stood on the mound and lobbed in the fattest meatball every hitter dreams of. With the ding of my second-hand garage sale bat, the ball sailed over the shortstop. Some may have called it beginner's luck, but I called it a sign.
Blackall, Bernie Softball Des Plaines, IL: Reed Educational & Professional Publishing, 1998. 17 May 2014. Print
growing up and the many times she’s comforted me through tough times has formed me into the
Many of us have role models in our lives and to most people role models are athletes and movie stars, but to me a role model is much more. To me a role model is a person who has positively influenced someone in life, and is not a person filled with selfishness and greed. They help shape someone’s personality, and characteristics. They are people who someone can look up to for advice in a hard situation, and know that they will give those words of wisdom. They will never judge our past actions, instead only look to help because they really care. A role model is someone who we should never feel awkward talking to about our problems. A perfect role model for me is my mother. She is a wonderful human being. She’s smart, wise, ambitious, patient and such a loving person. There are no words that can describe my gratitude towards her, but through this essay I will describe some of her characteristics that makes her my role model.