According to FT writer Gillian Tett, this is a team of future CEO's! |
Or like this article I read first from a Tweet, then on the web site itself, and then as I re-read it when I posted it on Facebook. Columnist Gillian Tett writes in the Financial Times about the link between successful women and the sports they played as girls or in college. Oh Yeah!
Maybe because I'm co-authoring a novel right now that's celebrating women's friendships and successes with an athletic backdrop (think "The Help" meets "A League of Their Own") but Tett's story got me thinking—about the impact of sports on my own life. So I offer this short (but long for a blog) essay from my most recent memoir/book, "Woman Overboard: How Passion Saved My Life." Now go thank those coaches!
"Compassion's Call and the Hands I want to Hold" An Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Woman Overboard:
Saints with
day jobs have taught me over and over. Even when I didn’t know it at
the time.
Every June,
July and August of my high school years, I was a proud member of the Callahan
Real Estate girl’s softball team of Wheat Ridge, Colorado. I’d been
playing little league on other teams since I was in second grade and loved
everything about it: the sun on my face, the snacks after games, the laughs with
my friends. There was nothing like standing around a park in the summer,
tossing a ball back and forth or watching a batter connect to a pitch every now
and then, until the game was over and you sat around the bleachers drinking
Pepsi or Mountain Dew, watching the next game. It was my kind of sport.
By teenage
years, however, the watching had turned to serious competition and most of my
friends turned to other fun. I decided to keep playing. Our high school
didn’t yet offer sports like softball or soccer for girls (it was the early
1970s, after all,when Title IX was just born), so suburban recreational
centers filled the gap during the summer months. They offered all kinds of
leagues for all levels of play.
That’s when
I told my parents I wanted to play for Callahan Real Estate. But by joining
this particular team, they reminded me, it wouldn’t be easy. The players were
all older, mostly juniors and seniors, and I was only a sophomore. They’d been
playing together for a few years. I was coming in from another team. And while
they already knew all their positions, I had merely stood wherever the coach
put me. I hadn’t focused long enough to excel at any one spot.
I was ready
to try. So they took a chance and sent me to the recreation center to
register . . .