Taylor McQuillin is a 16-year-old junior softball player at Mission Viejo (Calif.) High who recently committed to the Univ. of Arizona.  One of the top pitchers in the 2015 class, she’s a standout student with a 4.2 GPA at Mission Viejo (Calif.) High School where she earned 1^st team All-Orange County honors this past spring.

Perhaps Taylor’s greatest accomplishment is she has done all this despite having to overcome birth defects making her completely blind in the left eye and with only partial hearing on the left side.

Here is her latest blog for Student Sports Softball… today, she writes about how she became a pitcher and how she approaches a game both physically and mentally…

Be sure to check out Taylor’s previous blogs here

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Pitching has not always been something that I saw myself doing.

When I was younger I was not as into it the way I am now. I tended to see myself as the average kid playing just about any sport a kid could ask their parents to play.

Once my parents put me into softball, I felt that it was something I could improve at and strived to get better. Tell a seven-year-old that they get to swing a bat and that is pretty much asking for trouble! I can honestly say that when I first started I was probably the last kid you wanted to put on the field but I didn’t stop there.

I played for two years after that before I decided that I wanted to become a pitcher and as you can probably guess, I was not so great with that at first either. Time passed and I kept working on showing people what I was capable of achieving.

Being almost seventeen now, I have been pitching for eight years and each year is just another chance to get better and work harder than before.

At first I only started out with a fastball and a change up but over the years I have been taught a screw, curve, rise, drop, and drop-curve. My favorite pitches I would say is my drop or drop-curve because I feel that at most times I am most successful with those two pitches.

Each pitcher is different in many ways. Each pitcher has a different wind-up, a different mind set, a different spin, a different pitch, and so many more. In my opinion, a pitcher’s success doesn’t come from just what they do physically but also what they are able to do mentally.

To me, a great pitcher has confidence in themselves and in their team. Being strong mentally is something that I value because, in reality, softball is just a game even if it is a game that you love.

Everyone will have their good days and their bad days, but what matters most is how they can handle each day no matter how well or bad they did. Every game is a chance to get better so I take every game as a way to improve and to learn from.

When I get on the mound, everything outside gets shut out and I zone in on what is important: the game.

I do what I can to work towards outs. There are 21 outs in a seven inning game and the goal is to get all 21 outs without a single hit. A perfect game is always the goal for me.

I feel that with that as my goal, it helps me stay focused on what I need to do and keeps me strong mentally throughout the entire game. But like I have said, every pitcher is different and every pitcher has a different mindset.

This is just mine but this is how I work toward the road of success.

 

— Taylor McQuillin