HEY Y'ALL!

Welcome to the home page of the Lady Lightning, the best 12-and-under fastpitch softball team in north Alabama (I'm not biased, I just keep the scorebook). I'm Tammy Mahaney, team mom, scorekeeper, snack coordinator, hair-bow supplier, and the mother of Brianne, #12, our shortstop. In real life I'm the office manager at an insurance agency here in Huntsville, which is good practice for keeping up with twelve girls, two coaches, eleven sets of parents and a whole lot of little brothers.

We're a travel team, which means we don't play in a rec league. We play tournaments, most weekends from March to November, all over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi. Our girls were picked at tryouts last fall, and they practice twice a week at the city fields plus pitching and catching lessons on the side. They work HARD. Then on the weekends we load up the vans and the coolers and go see how good we are.

And this weekend we found out! The Lady Lightning went 6-0 and won the Fall Brawl here at home, beating the Tennessee Valley Thunder 4-3 in the championship on Meagan's walk-off double in the bottom of the seventh. I have never screamed so loud in my life. I broke my pencil. You can read every game on the results page.

SUMMER '99 RECAP

State Tournament (June 25-27): We went in seeded fifth and played our hearts out. We went 2-1 in pool play, won our first two bracket games (including a 3-1 quarterfinal win where Stephanie struck out nine), and made it to the final four! We lost the semifinal 4-1 to a team that went on to win the whole thing, and our girls cried, and then they cheered for the championship game from the bleachers, and I was never so proud of them. Third place in the state for a bunch of 11- and 12-year-olds. That's something.

A Week in Georgia (July 17-23): Our big trip of the summer, a national invitational tournament in Columbus, Georgia, with seventy teams from all over the South and the Midwest. Seven families, five vans, one motel with a pool, and four hundred dollars' worth of sunflower seeds. We went 5-3 and finished in the top sixteen, playing teams from places none of our girls had ever been. The best part? On our day off, Coach Mitch took the whole team to see Golden Park, where the U.S. women's team won the very first Olympic softball gold medal in 1996. The girls stood in the outfield and didn't say a word, which if you know these girls is a miracle in itself.

Our summer record: 31 wins, 15 losses, one tournament championship (Memorial Day!), two second places, and a third in the state. Not bad, ladies. Not bad at all.

FALL SCHEDULE

Fall tournaments are usually pool play on Saturday (three games against teams in your pool, which decide your seed) and bracket play on Sunday (lose and go home, win and play again). Come out and cheer!

Our own tournament, October 23-24, is our biggest fundraiser of the fall. We'll have sixteen teams, which means we need every parent, grandparent and willing aunt to sign up for a shift at the gate, the concession stand or the scorer's table. The sign-up sheet will be in the dugout at practice. Brownies for the concession stand are always, always welcome.

FUNDRAISING

Travel ball isn't cheap. Between tournament entry fees ($250 to $400 a weekend), umpires, softballs ($45 a dozen and they disappear over fences), uniforms and the Columbus trip, our team budget this year is about $9,000. Here's how we're doing it:

COACH'S RULES

Our head coach is Mitchell Uchida ("Coach Mitch"), who played college baseball and has coached girls' softball for eight years. Our pitching coach is Bill Shults. Coach Mitch gives every family his rules at the first practice, and he means them. Here they are, the way he explains them to the girls:

	Early is on time. On time is late. Be at the field an hour before the first game, dressed, hair up, cleats on.
	Run on, run off. We hustle everywhere. Nobody walks to her position. Nobody.
	Next pitch. Strike out? Make an error? Bad call? Leave it behind before the next pitch. No pouting, no slamming helmets, no tears on the field (tears in the car are allowed).
	Talk! Call the ball. "I got it! I got it!" A quiet team is a losing team.
	Grades come first. Every girl shows Coach her report card. If a grade drops, she sits until it comes back up.
	Parents cheer. Coaches coach. No coaching from the bleachers, and nobody (NOBODY) yells at an umpire. Most of them are doing it for gas money.
	Have fun. If it stops being fun, come talk to Coach.

SOFTBALL PARENT SURVIVAL KIT

New to travel ball? Bless your heart. A tournament weekend can mean five or six games in a day, in July, on a field with no shade, and the first game starts at 8:00 a.m. and the last one ends at 10:00 p.m. under the lights. Here's what to pack. I learned all of it the hard way.

Tammy's tip: Freeze half your water bottles the night before. They keep the cooler cold in the morning and you'll have cold water by the third game. And bring a towel. Just trust me.

GIRLS' SPORTS, SUMMER '99 & SYDNEY 2000!

On Saturday, July 10, the whole team crammed into Coach Mitch's den between tournaments to watch the Women's World Cup final on TV. U.S.A. against China, 0-0 after two overtimes, and when the U.S. won it on penalty kicks the girls went screaming out into the yard and ran laps. They'd been watching soccer all summer. A friend at work sent me Ninety Thousand at the Rose Bowl: Our 1999 World Cup Team, a coach's tribute to the World Cup champions, the final, and her under-12s, from a lady who played college soccer back when nobody came to watch. This summer ninety thousand did. Read it with your daughter.

And now the girls have a new countdown going: softball at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia, next September! Softball was played at the Olympics for the first time in Atlanta in 1996, and the U.S. women won the gold medal. Our girls were 8 and 9 then. Now they're old enough to know exactly what that means, and they want to see the U.S. do it again. Coach Mitch says if they keep working, one of them might be out there herself someday. They believe him. So do I.

GO LIGHTNING!

You are fan number

since we went online in March 1999

Questions about the team, tryouts or sponsorships? E-mail Tammy at [email protected]

Last updated Sunday night, September 26, 1999 (with my voice still gone)