Helped Me Get Here by Tanner

Helped Me Get Here by Tanner - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

When I was eleven, I played for the hometown baseball team. It was your typical team that was coached by the dads of three of the players. In my second year of competitive ball I was not as good as the rest of the players. This is why I was cut from the team. I was devastated. I was crying to my mom, "why did this happened." My mom then replied, "You were not good enough Tanner." I looked at my mom and realized that it was true. I asked my parents to buy me a tee and a net. They agreed and bought me one. So at the age of twelve, my dad and another man made a team for their sons. During this time I worked everyday in my backyard by myself on drill after drill. During on of our last games, we lost by a lot. The other team’s coach came up to me and said, “I want you on our team. Even when you guys were down my twenty runs, you kept you intensity up and never showed a sign of quitting.”
I was able to go with that team and play in the world series. When we played the team that cut me one year ago, they thought, “Oh Tanner is on this team, they must not be that good.” We ended up spreading them by the third inning.
The look on their face when we beat them is something that still to this day drives me to be the best I can be. It helped me in high school. My junior year there was a senior catcher and a senior in the fourth batting position. Which if you do not know, the fourth batter has the most power on the team. I remember that time when someone said I was not good enough and during tryouts I played my heart out. That year I caught every single game except the first game of the season and batted fourth all year. This drive that the coaches gave me when I was eleven has pushed me to the point where everyday I am working on the game. Now I am a college baseball player making over a 3.0