Takin' it to the field

So here we go again. Same story as before where one of Olivia's "friends" gets jealous
that Liv's a better athlete and cops an attitude about it. Olivia is not an "in your face" type
of girl. I have a hard time getting her to stand up for herself when she is being mistreated. And, physically, she is a very slight girl who nobody expects to play softball as well
as she does, least of all windmill pitch. So now, this friend, who is really competitive, has been being mean to Liv and not speaking to her off and on because Olivia scored better than her in something in gym class.
So cut to last night, they are having an activity night at a field for the 6th graders. I volunteered
to chaperone. This girl suckers Olivia into playing this game(why the moms chose this for this
event is beyond me) but it's a blow-up sparring ring where kids stand on pedestals and wear helmets and bash each other with this 6 foot long padded cylinder and try to knock each other off the pedestal. So I see Olivia on the line with this brat and ask her why she is doing this with Brittany. She says Britt asked her to and I know exactly what is happening here. I said "you sure you want to do this?"
She says, "yes." Well Brittany is taller, weighs quite a bit more and if it were not for the fact
that she saw me stand there and watch, she probably would have bashed the heck out of my
kid. So, they play. Eventually, Brittany knocks Olivia off twice and their turn ends and then
the brat says "That's what I call domination," and stomps away from Olivia, obviously trying to settle the score from what she was still ticked about from gym class a month ago. Olivia realized then that she had just been had. She actually thought the girl was being her friend again. Well, it was a short lived victory. This morning at 9, we had our softball game against Britt's team.
Also on this team is our neighbors' kid who started these same kinds of problems with Olivia
2 years ago. There is a rivalry between these teams now especially since they could not beat the team Tim and I coached last year. I thought we were doomed. Their coach stacked the team with alot of the best hitters back when they did the draft and our other pitcher started the game and they were hitting off her like crazy. We were also short girls and playing with only 2 outfielders.
THEN, my head coach put Olivia in to pitch. She made 2 outs in her first inning, one strike out and one throw to first base and then Brittany came up with 2 outs. I had told Olivia previously, "listen, don't say anything mean(not that she would, just not her nature), but when she gets up, STRIKE her ass out!" So Olivia did just that. It was 3rd out and ended the inning. Next inning, our neighbors' brat gets up and she is usually a good hitter. She hits a hard drive to Olivia on the mound. It was so fast that Olivia went to get down to field it and the ball took a bounce and came right up into her mitt. Liv threw her out at first. Then, she pitched to Brittany again, again with 2 outs. Britt hit a short one right to Liv and Liv threw out the girl coming home, ending the inning. Olivia completely shut down their hitting and scoring. We play short games and Liv pitched the final 2 innings and helped to put our team into
position to win the game with a bases loaded triple in the last inning. Oh and they put Brittany
in to pitch one inning and she can't pitch so they had to pull her out before the inning ended cause she was walking our girls around the bases. So, while I try to always teach Liv to be the bigger person, I also try to teach her to stick up for herself. Our kid definitely took
it to the field today and showed this girl just who DOMINATES what. Again, worth every penny
of these expensive pitching lessons to watch your daughter shine like this and see folks compliment her. She is always so happy to know she helped her team win. She made 5 of the 6 outs in the 2 innings she pitched. At the end of each game,
the girls and the coaches line up and high five each other and say "good game." Brittany pulled her hand back when she got to Olivia and refused to congratulate her. I said, "Liv, if someone is gonna be pissed at ya 'cause they're jealous, well, that's their problem, not yours." After what this girl pulled last night, she got just what she deserved. Got news for ya honey, my kid ROCKS on the softball field!!!!! Oh I know I should not be getting such a kick outta this but when you have to sit back and watch some brat be so mean to your kid, it's hard not to fist pump for just a second when your kid dominates something like that and gives them a little "what for." Sometimes, nice guys do finish first and bullies get what's coming to them.