Since the age of three, baseball has played a significant role in my life. Over the past eleven years, I have learned more about relationships than I have about baseball. When I moved to Utah at age nine, I began playing on a horrendous team. I began regretting my decision to play on this team and started looking for better opportunities. After receiving calls from the coach of a successful team, I decided to switch to a better program. I found myself on a winning, yet camaraderie lacking, team. This was one of many events leading up to the biggest tournament of my life in Cooperstown, New York.

My new coach, Troy, knew an enormous amount about the game. He was a very short-tempered man, initiating countless verbal confrontations with the umpires and parents. He placed an enormous amount of pressure on our team. It seemed as if we weren’t a team, but rather a group of individuals competing against each other. This caused many disputes with him and other parents from my team. However, my coach was very knowledgeable about the game and brought many kids from around the state to build the program he wanted. Considering all the time we spent at baseball, my coach’s family and mine became very close friends.
After a 62-13 season, my team was invited to a tournament in Omaha, Nebraska which consisted of the three top ten ranked teams in North America. Our team was very excited to be invited to such an exclusive tournament. We knew the competition would be challenging, considering we were playing teams from Florida, the Dominican Republic, Arizona, and many teams who have the opportunity to play baseball year-round. My family planned to drive to Omaha along with another family from my team. My team stayed in dorms on the complex. The complex had a waterpark, an arcade, a restaurant and twelve baseball fields. About a week before the biggest baseball tournament of our lives, my coach informed my team that he would be moving to California after this tournament.

This news saddened my teammates and I. We all knew that our team wouldn’t be the same without him as a coach. It was also difficult for my family, considering we had become very close friends. While in Omaha, our team’s chemistry collapsed. Parents were already on the phone getting their kids on new teams. With all of this occurring, it didn’t seem as if my team had a very good chance of staying together after this tournament. Putting all of this aside, this tournament was a great success. We took third out of sixteen teams. This was the end of a great baseball team. I met many new friends and learned a significant life lesson, hard work truly pays off.

When I returned home from Omaha, I was offered a spot on a county team. I really liked the coach of this team. I played the fall season with them and made several new friendships. I planned to play with them in the spring as well. As the fall season was winding down, I received a text from my former coach Troy’s son. It said, “Hey, have your dad call my dad.” My dad called him and talked to him for roughly an hour and a half. When he got off the phone, he told me something, something that shocked me. I didn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He said, “Coach Troy never moved.”

It turns out that his relocation to California fell through and they decided to stay in Utah. They moved up to Morgan, Utah to be near his wife’s family. The property had a large horse pasture that was not being used. It wasn’t long before the horse pasture was occupied with a baseball field. About two months after the first phone call, my dad received another call. Coach Troy was starting up another team. Although my current team was doing quite well and I liked the coach, my loyalties to Coach Troy made me say yes when asked to join. The drive from Draper to Morgan was never fun, but it was worth it. We had some great talent, with players from Pleasant Grove to Morgan. This was going to be the team that would represent Utah in Cooperstown, New York for the Dreams Park Tournament.

We were a tough team to beat all season long. We prepared with rigorous practices and had three players including myself, from the former team with Coach Troy. We were considered the team leaders. My Dad worked tirelessly to plan our family’s trip to Cooperstown and subsequently to Manhattan where we would get to tour the city, shop and dine with some of my family’s best friends. Their son, Carsen, was a teammate of mine, and a regular at my house for sleepovers. We would be staying at the same hotel, the Grand Hyatt Time Square, and were very excited to tour New York City after a long week of playing baseball in Cooperstown.

Coach Troy had been acting out of character, or maybe not. He wasn’t scheduling our daily practices, and was getting into arguments with parents from our team. This resulted in two of our teammates quitting the team. Soon after this dispute, we received an e-mail. He was leaving the team, again. He would be taking his son Devin off the team as well, and would not be traveling to Cooperstown. Our team was devastated. We believed our much awaited chance to play at Dream’s Park and our family’s vacation had vanished.

Four men taught me a valuable lesson, as four of our players’ dads agreed to coach the team in Cooperstown. Despite many challenges, your dreams may still be achieved. Additionally, parents from our team, including my father scouted three new players. These new players, including a friend I had known for years, agreed to join the team in Cooperstown. Thankfully, the new players were very skilled.

The day finally arrived. We were on our way to the airport for our departure to Cooperstown, New York. The excitement was more than I had dreamed of all year. We arrived at Dreams Park and checked in as a team. The dorms were first-class, but it wasn’t because of the dorms itself, it was because of who was occupying the dorms. My team united, both original and new players, and a week of unforgettable memories began.

Our team came together and played great. Although a quarter of our team was brand new, it felt like we had known each other for years. Curfew was at 10:00 p.m., but no one was ever asleep before midnight. We would stay up telling stories and jokes, and talking over the game plan for the following day. On the field, we couldn’t lose, making the baseball part of the trip enjoyable, rather than exhausting. We ended up placing thirty-second out of one hundred and four teams. When we weren’t playing games, we were in the cafeteria asking if there were seconds, or even thirds depending on the teammate. We played countless games of whiffle ball. Our competitiveness caused the requirement of an umpire (usually a player). On and off the field we had the time of our lives, making friendships that would last a lifetime.

Looking back on all of this chaos, I have realized that all of these crazy events weren’t an accident, but rather a gift. A gift in the way of countless life lessons learned. The first thing I learned is that friendship is a gift, and it should be treated as one. Friendships are just as easily destroyed as they are created. Most importantly I learned that events will not always go as planned, but Pauline Kael writes, “Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.”