Sponsored by White River Electric Association
For years, I believed that being a great baseball player meant being perfect. Every strikeout felt like a personal failure, every error proof that I wasn’t good enough. I chased flawless games, thinking that perfection was the only path to success.
That belief started to crumble during my sophomore season. I started the season on varsity. I had been hitting well early on, but ended the season in a slump. I remember slamming my bat into the dirt after every strikeout. I was furious. Even though we were winning, I couldn’t enjoy it, I was too focused on what I was doing wrong. The coach pulled me aside and said, “You can’t play this game if you’re afraid to fail. Baseball’s built on failure, three hits in ten at-bats makes you great.”
At first, I brushed it off. But over the next few weeks, I noticed how often the best players made mistakes. I started to realize that success in baseball isn’t about avoiding failure, it’s about how you respond to it. So I decided to try something different. After every game and practice, instead of replaying my mistakes in my head, I started writing or talking about one thing I learned or did well. Little by little, my mindset started to change.
By the end of the season, my stats weren’t perfect, but my confidence was stronger than ever. I stopped seeing strikeouts as failures and seeing them as part of the game. Challenging my beliefs in perfection taught me that resilience matters more than flawlessness, in baseball and in life.
By AUGIE HALSTEAD
The Senior Spotlight is submitted by MHS teacher Kathleen Kelley and sponsored by White River Electric Association.
