Taylor McQuillin is one of the top pitchers in the 2015 class and has committed to the Univ. of Arizona. She plays for one of the premier club teams in the nation, the OC Batbusters-Haning, and is also a standout student with a 4.2 GPA at Mission Viejo (Calif.) High School where she earned 1st 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 playing in tournaments far from home can make it difficult to balance school work and success on the field…
Be sure to check out Taylor’s previous blogs and those of our other standout bloggers!
*****
Every athlete, especially those on club or travel teams, will experience the long days of traveling. When you go to other states or far-away places that involve staying in hotels, it can be extremely fun as well as tiring too.
Whether you drive or fly to where you need to go, the “travel day” can be overwhelming, long, and exhausting but every athlete also knows that all of those “travel days” are all worth it in the end because once you get to where you need to go, you get to play the game that you love—the game that shows everyone who you are.
When people talk about sports, they tend to say things like, “Oh we are playing close to home this weekend.” For some people that means driving 15-30 minutes to get to the field they play at. For others being “close to home” means an hour or maybe longer depending on where they live.
In the game of softball, there are many major tournaments you’ll play in before you get to Nationals like we play at PGF. Some are during the school year and the rest are during the summer.
For the ones during the school year, not only do you have to miss school and play softball, but you also have to make up all the class work and do homework as well. Time management is key during this time of the year.
This year my team is going back to Florida next week and I am already preparing for the work I am going to miss when I leave. It is not easy to miss school during the middle of the week and then go play across the country but I do it for the game that I am passionate about.
Not everything in life is going to be easy, but the hard things are the ones that are worth it in the end. That is how I see it now.
Everything that I do with juggling softball and school at the same time, I know it will be worth it. Sometimes it can be stressful and you have game times that are in the dead center of the day so you have to get up and do some work, leave to play games, and then come back and do homework again but that happens sometimes.
One of the hard things when you travel is that you feel like it is a “vacation” in a way because you aren’t in school and you are with your team and want to spend time together so school is just there in the shadow. A lot of times, people would rather go out with their team and hang out instead of doing school work or study for tests they have to make up when they get back.
In this case you have to remember what your priorities are and learn how to manage everything to where you can play games, do school work, and spend time with the team.
That is not easy, but once again, it will all be worth it.
For the most part, athletes enjoy traveling to play and it is more of their parents that do not enjoy it so much because it is also a stress on them whether or not they go because they have to make sure their child has everything they need and that they stay safe. It can be stressful on the athlete as well but that is the price you pay to play the game.
Learning how to effectively manage the time that you have is an essential key to being a student-athlete and making sure that your game play and grades are staying up to par.
Don’t let the stress of everything set the tone for the time you are away, though. Let yourself enjoy it and have a good time but also remember why you are there and what you need to accomplish and just remember: every other person on your team goes through the same thing—it is not just you dealing with all of it.
— Taylor McQuillin