I feel to adequately understand the world of wiffleball for me in little Centralia, Washington that somebody needs to fully understand all of the years prior to now. Since we started playing when we were 11 and 12 years old, the field has been going for quite a long time! This year will be the 9th annual tournament, even though it feels like yesterday was the first annual! The wiffleball league has been my life and highlight of the summer for the last 8 years; it’s hard to give up something that’s been this important to me over my childhood. I now know how the professional athletes feel when they retire from sports.
Every single picture and video has so many great times and memories that the reader will just never understand. For instance, (to the left) in the middle of the frame is now collegiate wrestler Kellen Pelzel. To the right of the screen is an old soccer net and a bunch of blue panels, which we used to use as a dugout; how funny is that!? Down the middle is a backstop, which has a little story to itself. The backstop belonged to a neighbor of ours who was playing in the tournament; naturally we had to move the backstop to the wiffleball field. Since it was 7am and our parents told us to move it, we had to get a bunch of skateboards under the backstop then roll it half a mile to the field! And… Every single picture has an infinite amount of backstories that I just smile and laugh at every time I see the pictures. So, keep this in mind when looking at the pictures; the joy is in the eyes of the beholder.
Year by year the field changes. One year we take out the garden. The next, we put in bigger and better lights or put in a turf mound. Year by year we get older but one thing has stayed the same: The annual wiffleball tournament, for now.
Here are some of the most iconic @Ctownwiffle pictures and videos from over the years; enjoy:
The picture(on the left) is the picture from the 8th annual tournament. Notice any differences from the first picture? Obviously, we’ve all grown up. But, the amount of people in the tournament has almost doubled, the place where we are standing on was a garden the first year of the wiffleball tournament and that’s just scratching the surface on what has changed!
Understanding Why Athletes Struggle To Move on
This little wiffleball league has been the highlight of my summer and everyone else's summer for whoever has attended. The friends I’ve made through this will last a lifetime! I estimate over the 9 years of the field that 300+ people have came to the field. Do you see why something this is so consuming and fun? When something like this has such an enormous impact on someone, it is very hard to retire and move on from.
Yes, moving on from the storied history of the Centralia Wiffleball League will be really difficult thing for me to do, but I have other things that I devote my life to. Also, the wiffleball season is only 4 months, May through August. Imagine how these athletes who have dedicated their life to the sport feel! Athletes like Dustin Pedroia, Derek Jeter and Stephen Curry are playing their sport year round to make sure they can compete at the highest level possible. They are constantly away from their children, wife and parents, which is a real struggle in itself. Most professional athletes also pick up their sports very young, even at the ages of 4 or 5. By the time some of them are 15, the kids are playing 80–100 games a year, playing year round. There’s no time to make friends outside of the sport, or time for school even; Steph Curry was one year shy of a degree from Davidson College. Retired athletes who don’t move on may be really looked down on. But the struggle is real for them; the connection is deep, just as the wiffleball field is for me.
All in all, if this wiffleball league I have ran 4 months out of the year for the past 9 years means this much to me just imagine how much the sport means to these professional athletes; it’s a real rough life to be forced to give up something so meaningful that an athlete has had since they were 4 or 5.
