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| My team after winning the Colorado tourney |
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| Placed 3rd at nationals!! |
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| I'm proud to say I'm a Leatherneck |
Its January 11, 2012 and for some reason I’ve decided I wanted to do something, something that will keep my time but later let me reflect on my experiences throughout the day. My hopes in this is to be able to write, or in this case type, about things I’ve seen, heard, or learned about. It may be funny, serious, write about a game I might have had that game, or basically anything on my mind. But first let me introduce myself. My name is Samantha Marshall but everyone calls me Sammy. Currently I am a student at Western Illinois University and come from a loving family with my mom, dad, and 20-year-old brother… also known as “the boy”. There’s a little background info on me but now back to the blog. 2011 brought me a lot of success and happiness and I’ve been contemplating if anything will ever compare to any of the experiences I’ve had, even remotely. To focus on some of the highlights of 2011, I played on my school’s varsity softball team and although I didn’t have the year people (including myself) hoped I would have, my team was still able to churn out a regional championship, first time in a 15-year dry spell. Also, a huge rite of passage in my life, simply graduating high school with many friends and experiences that is priceless to me. Continuing on to summer, without exaggeration, I played on the BEST travel ball team in the nation, the Beverly Bandits. We won the tournament set in Boulder, CO which is where the 80 top travel ball teams in the nation come together in one tournament and play over the course of the week and we managed to come out on top. It was one of the best weeks of my life, not just because we won the tourney but because during that week I managed to gain 11 sisters that would be by my side for the rest of my life and who I all love dearly. Unfortunately, with a little bump in the road, during a friendly game I got spiked sliding into second and had to get 7 stitches in my thumb; which had my take a back seat for a while on playing. Then nationals came around in Huntington Beach, CA and while kicking some major California a** we ended up getting 3rd place. Now for those of you reading this that don’t know much about travel softball, the game is dominated by California due to the fact that they can play all year round with limited weather complications. Continuing on to quite possibly the biggest transition in my life is going to college at the one and only Western Illinois University. Luckily for me I was blessed to be given the chance of a scholarship to become one of the ____ student-athletes nation wide. Not realizing it at the time, becoming a student-athlete at a D1 school is a FULL time job. Waking up at 5:20 a.m. for weight lifting, going to school from 8 – 12, practice from 3-5, study tables from 6-8, and somehow finding time in between for eating, sleeping, and showering. September 17th marked the day of my first collegiate softball game. We played Kirkwood Community College and even though they are considered a Community College they were one hell of a team. We ended up splitting the series. During the two games I went 8-9 at the plate which I ended up paying for later but because I don’t know who is going to read this I wont go into details on what the night entailed ;) but if I was going to wrap up the night with 2 words it would be Sammy Smirnoff. Whoops. The rest of the semester went on just as well. School went great, met some amazing people that I hope will stay in my life continuing past these 4 years of college, ended with a 3.7 GPA my first semester of college, and concluded a spectacular year at U of I with #thenecks and #thebros. Now maybe that was a bit extensive but when you’re writing about how much you enjoyed an entire year its hard to leave out many details… and believe me I could have written much more. So that brings me 2012. So far in the year 2012 the highlight of these 17 days has been seeing some friends that I haven’t since August when I left for college. Hopefully through all of this you haven’t gotten bored and left the page and gone off to facebook or twitter to continue your life, but my hopes is that I will continue writing this to share with everyone my life one day or week at a time. Like I said being a student-athlete is a full time job so I can’t promise I will update this everyday but when I have the time to sit down and have some me time I will write about some of the things that have taken place. So there it is my first blog post! Here’s to the future of 2012!
