Alexis Mack is an 2015 grad who’s at the Boulder Independence Day Tournament with her club team, the Beverly Bandits. The South Carolina-signee set the Ohio high school state single season record with 79 steals as well as the career mark with 234.

The infielder hit .682 this season with a fantastic .717 on-base percentage and reached base in 94 of her 120 plate appearances.

A soon-to-be announced FloSoftball All-American, Alexis has offered to share her thoughts and experiences this week in Colorado and today looks back on all the good times she’s had at IDT in previous years and the amazing day she and her teammates enjoyed today which including whitewater rafting and a double rainbow!

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I ended my last blog with saying that I had a feeling that today would be an awesome day, and it didn’t fail to hold up to the expectation I had for it.

Every Tuesday before we start bracket play, our team and coaches plan fun activities and different things to do in Colorado.

Although our team is here for softball, and certainly to win, our coaches understand that it is important to take advantage of all the amazing things there are to do in Colorado.

Some of my favorite memories of being a Beverly Bandit have taken place on this day because you get to make unforgettable memories with your teammates and coaches, doing things that most people never get to do in their entire lifetime.

My first year as a Bandit, we went indoor skydiving and raced real go-carts that went up to 60 mph. I remember being so scared to do the indoor skydiving, but it ended up being really cool flying in a giant tube for a couple of minutes.

Also, the pictures they took of us ended up being really funny because our faces were crazy because of the high amount of air in the tube.

Unfortunately, the go-cart racing didn’t go as well for me. Although I was 16 at the time, I didn’t yet have my license, nor had I driven a car ever before because I had to travel so much for softball.

So one may imagine that a 60 mph go cart, combined with a girl who has no idea how to drive, who is EXTREMELY competitive and has EXTREMELY competitive teammates, may not be the best idea.

After waiting for the older girls and coaches to go in the rounds before me, it was finally my team’s time to go. We had to wear these heavy racing suits and helmets, and I should have taken that as an indicator that this may not be the safest thing for me to do.

The first couple of curves I started to feel pretty confident and laid my foot on the gas and made my cart go as fast as possible. My teammate and I, although instructed not to, began to race each other after the first couple of turns. My teammate got ahead of me and then quickly spun out and it freaked me out so I went to quickly step on the break, but instead of hitting the break I hit the gas peddle and flew over some cones on the track, over the median and into a ditch.

I tried to recover and get back on the track and start driving, but then the instructors started yelling at me that I was driving the wrong way on the track and almost head-on wrecked with one of my teammates. After that, they told me to get out of my cart, and go back, and that was my 30 seconds of go-cart racing!

Last year, my coach, Bill Conroy, planned for us to go paintballing and go-cart racing again. I had never been paintballing and I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was pretty excited to find out.

I walked down to the lobby to meet my teammates and coaches, and was surprised to find them all wearing thick sweatpants and sweatshirts, while I was wearing short athletic shorts and a tank top. I had no idea that for paintballing you needed to wear thick clothing so that the paintballs didn’t hurt you, so all I ended up being able to wear while going was a thin sweatshirt and short athletic shorts.

As you may guess, it didn’t go well for me.

Getting hit by paintballs straight on your bare skin is not a good feeling, and leaves huge welts and bruises on your skin for days. Since I didn’t have long pants on, and had a thin sweatshirt, I was left with A LOT of them. I decided after that, that paintballing wasn’t really my thing, and I was going to stick with softball.

Since go-cart racing didn’t go well for me the previous year, my teammate and I decided to go hit and take ground balls at a local field for a couple of hours instead.

Not only was it a productive practice for us, but also it was probably best for the safety and wellbeing of my teammates and the other go-cart racers at the track that I didn’t go that day!

This morning some of my teammates and I woke up at 7 AM to meet in the lobby for white water rafting. Considering we had to leave at 7:15 and we didn’t get up until 7, it was a little bit of a rough start to the day for my roommates and I, but we managed to get ready quickly in 10 minutes and meet down in the lobby in time.

Piling in the car, my teammates decided that one of the other slappers on the team, Cambry Arnold, and I had to sit the very small area in the back of the car, while they got the very spacious front.

At the time this didn’t really seem like a big deal; however, Cambry and I didn’t realize it was going to be almost a three hour drive to the rafting place!

Once getting there, and finally getting on the rapids, the day really started to get good. The river cut through some absolutely AMAZING mountains and topography.

Although I was scared and mentally had pictured our boat flipping and me flying out and slashing my head on a rock and never being able to play softball again, over and over in my head, I never fell off the raft, nor did any of my teammates.

The rapids we went over were absolutely INSANE. They were class 3 and 4 rapids (the scale is out of 5) and not only was it beautiful but it was really fun.

It took a lot of strength and teamwork to not let anyone fall out of the raft and our boat not to flip, but we managed to do it for the whole four-hour raft trip. Not only was it a successful day of making memories I’ll never forget, we were also successful in not dying/getting injured/slashing our heads on rocks for the entire trip.

Sitting there on the river with my teammates, with the amazing topography, an awesome guide, and a beautiful day made for a great memory. Sometimes when I experience amazing moments like that, I stop and think about how lucky I am that I get to do these kinds of things with such great people.

At the same time though, I usually remind myself that it isn’t luck that my teammates and I get to experience these kind of moments pretty often.

If as players, we didn’t work as hard as we did, and sacrifice all the things that we do, then we wouldn’t get to experience these kind of amazing moments most people never get to experience.

Moments like white water rafting through the Colorado mountains, playing on ESPN and winning a National Championship, watching the sunset on Huntington Beach in California, winning the IDT tournament, going to Disney World, going up on the mountains in California and taking in all the breathe taking views, paintballing, go-cart racing, indoor skydiving, getting to see the St. Louis Arch, ice skating in downtown Chicago under the city lights… the list goes on and on.

It was moments like today where I might say, “I am so lucky I get to do these things”, but in reality moments like today happen because my teammates and I give up things like school dances, football games, parties, a lot of our social lives because we choose softball and working hard over all those things, and I can tell you first hand that it is beyond worth it!

After going white rafting and enduring the long drive home, most of my teammates went to dinner, but some of us decided to get some extra practice in before our games tomorrow.

We found a local field where we hit and did some infield. It was a good warm-up for our two games tomorrow morning, but was even better about the workout was in the middle of it, the most vivid double rainbow I have ever seen appeared.

Again, it was one of those moments where you think to yourself how lucky you were to be in the right place at the right time; however if my teammates and I don’t decide to get the extra practice in we don’t see the rainbows, and therefore don’t get to experience that amazing moment.

Tomorrow the real fun of Colorado begins.

We play our first two games of pool play tomorrow morning and I cannot wait to get on the field. The competition is amazing and the game teaches you so much at this tournament.

I feel that our team is very prepared to play against this high level of competition and I can’t wait to have our first taste of it tomorrow.

Yesterday, I knew today would be an awesome day, but again, I have a feeling that tomorrow will be just as good, if not better!