Softball player Vanessa Gonzalez, 16, isn’t on her high school varsity team. Her school’s softball coaches didn’t take her twice in the three years she’s tried out. She’s never played a full season of high school softball. So why is she our Athlete of the Week?
Even gifted athletes struggle with maintaining the perseverance and dedication it takes to improve. For Gonzalez, her humble dream to play high school softball has hit obstacle after obstacle. Even after years of playing the game, she’s been dismissed by coaches who said she didn’t look like an athlete.
Still, every week she laces up her cleats, thrusts her hand in her glove, and does work on the dirt diamond with her coach, John Welch.
“As a coach, you look for the old cliché—someone who gives 110 percent. Vanessa is one of those kids that would give 150 percent,” Welch said.
Entering high school, Gonzalez tried out for the freshman softball team but didn’t make the cut. She was devastated.
“There was no hope. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know Coach John yet, so I felt like there was nothing. I just wanted to stop playing softball. I thought that was it,” she said.
Her friends convinced her to join a recreational team, where she first met Welch, who was impressed by her determination and took an interest in her.
Welch worked with Gonzalez that summer to improve every aspect of her game. The effort paid off when she made the school’s softball team her sophomore year. She stepped up to the plate that season after the starting pitcher had to exit. Gonzalez won three out of four games starting as pitcher until a leg injury took her out for the rest of the year.
She bounced back in time for tryouts this season, certain that she’d finally proved to coaches that she belonged on the varsity team, but she didn’t make it on the team.
Nothing is going to stop her, she said. Today, Gonzalez is determined to improve more than ever.
In training, she takes anywhere from 800 to 1,000 ground balls a week. She’s also refining her fielding, pitching, and batting.
She said she’s feeling the benefits of being in shape and feels healthier. Her attitude is to never quit and always to look for ways to get better.
Gonzalez has advice to anyone facing similar hurdles: “Just never stop. Someone will tell you that you’re not good enough, but if you believe in yourself that you are good enough, you will be good enough. You just got to keep trying your hardest. It doesn’t matter if it’s softball, but anything in your life, you’ve got to keep trying your hardest.”
Spoken like a true a champion—and an Athlete of the Week.
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2012.