Each new year, when I hear that softball teams are forming, I think of our daughter’s remarkable life journey propelled by the Peninsula Youth Softball Association (PYSA). A journey that shaped her in numerous positive ways that continue to show up in all areas of her life to this day.

This is the story of why I hope other local parents will encourage and support their daughter’s interest in team sports by joining the PYSA “family.” It’s also a thank you to past and present volunteer board members, coaches, team managers, team moms, sponsors, players and their families who help create some of the most memorable childhood experiences a girl could want.

My daughter, Katie Austin, is now 22 years old. She was 5 when she first stepped on a softball diamond at Robb Field. A diamond in the rough, she started like all the little girls, dropping and chasing balls with newfound friends.

Year after year, Katie kept asking to play. Spring ball, followed by summer all-stars, followed by fall and even winter ball. Each season, she eagerly awaited the announcement of team rosters, meeting her coaches, and her teammates, seeing her new team colors, and thinking of a fun team name with the other girls.

They worked with dedicated coaches once or twice a week to practice essential skills, scrimmage as a team, learn how to slide on cardboard, and even make up clever cheers to shout from the dugout on game days. Katie and her PYSA teammates socialized off the field, too. Going to the beach, to each others’ birthday parties, and even riding on a float in the annual Ocean Beach Holiday Parade in their PYSA softball uniforms.

Parents also take part if they are able. Some take on a specific leadership role, others chalk the fields before games or volunteer a shift at the snack shack (now, Breakers Café), as well as hang out together on the bleachers while cheering on the girls.

Katie’s softball journey provided enriching personal challenges, one of the most significant was becoming a pitcher. She practiced week in and week out with her team and also on her own time. Sometimes working with a pitching coach, often with a parent seated on a bucket as if behind home plate with Katie on the pitching mound. She threw thousands of pitches, honing her fastball, curve, rise, drop, screwball, and changeup. She knew her team was counting on her, so she kept practicing and practicing.

When Katie was 14 and in eighth grade, she saw a need at Robb Field and came up with a plan to do something about it. She wanted to get bats off the ground and out of the chain link fences where they were often jeopardizing the safety of both home and visiting players. She searched for a design and asked the PYSA board for approval. She rallied her then coach, Point Loma resident and former High Tech High softball coach, Whitney Wilkinson, as well as a few family members to make and then install bat holders in both dugouts on all eight diamonds.

When she got older, she played on her middle school and high school teams and joined a travel team in the off-season. Still loving the challenge and camaraderie of the game, she took part in a college showcase. With three offers of interest, she chose historic Oberlin College (founded in 1833), for a well-rounded Div. III athletic and academic college experience.

She took all she had learned and all she had become and pitched all four years on the Oberlin softball team, served as a team captain and was routinely named an NCAC All-America Scholar-Athlete. She completed majors in chemistry and biochemistry, graduating with high honors in May of 2024. This past fall, Katie started a Ph.D. program in chemistry at Michigan State University. She now attends graduate classes and works at the Facility for Rare Isotopes, pursuing a career in nuclear chemistry.

Katie is just one example of how girls benefit from team sports. All of her still close softball peers have transitioned into adulthood well, generating their path to a great future.

Like these longtime friends and many other lucky and involved girls, Katie’s early life journey has been influenced, inspired, and impacted by many wonderful people and experiences, including family, teammates and other friends, coaches, schoolteachers, Girl Scouts, and MADCAPS.

But more than anything, she is a product of those important formative years that played out on PYSA softball fields for a decade and set the stage for all that followed. Turns out that a healthy lifestyle, listening and communication skills, social and leadership skills, coachability, accountability, teamsmanship, time management, confidence, discipline, a strong work ethic, and more, can become intrinsic with play and practice.

Take it from Katie: “I credit the many years I spent playing PYSA softball as having been instrumental in my life. At the time, I was just having fun with my friends, but now I realize how much that prepared me for the years that followed and helped shape who I am.”

After 16 years of softball, Katie ceremonially retired her cleats on the Oberlin pitching mound, but all of her PYSA softball experiences, friendships, and wonderful memories are still with her… and she’ll continue to benefit from them wherever she goes in life.

OPENING DAY

PYSA Opening Day is at Robb Field at 9 a.m. on Feb. 2. Check out the PYSA softball league at peninsulasoftball.com.