It’s been an exciting season of softball … and last weekend’s Barry Garrison Memorial Tournament at Playfields Park proved the point. Congratulations to all the division winners.

The weekend turned out many successful displays of amazing softball. It was great to see the girls’ growth from the beginning of the season through this weekend.

This improvement is obviously, for the most part, a reflection of the coaching staff.

A huge thank you goes out to every coach, assistant coach, manager and team parent. DYSA could not exist without the wonderful volunteers.

Although I did not participate as a coach this season, I have in the past — and although it can be time-consuming, it is one of the most rewarding experiences I know. To have an impact on a young person’s life is indescribable. It is always great to see the smiles on all the girls’ faces when they have done something they have been practicing, then execute it in a game. Those smiles say it all. Way to go!

Thank you to all who helped outside the coaching arena…

From field prep, to scorekeeping, to handing in recap sheets (I had to put a plug in for you folks, too, since that’s one of the most important jobs), Davis Youth Softball Association thanks you, too. Everyone who plays a role in keeping the teams running smoothly is important.

And to the sponsors… The league appreciates your support. We urge anyone in the community to recognize the business that sponsor events or youth athletics like ours by being loyal to those folks — give them your business and be sure to say thank you while you’re at their stores or using their services.

Between the sponsors and the support of the DYSA parents, there would be no youth softball in town.

Speaking of the parents, we appreciate all the time and effort it takes to get your children to and from practice and games. We hope you enjoyed the season as much as your kids did.

Thanks to the city of Davis personnel for keeping the fields in such tip-top shape. It is nice knowing the girls can play without fear of twisting an ankle in the outfield or scraping a knee sliding into third base.

Last, but not least, thanks to the entire Enterprise staff. It is so wonderful to have a newspaper that supports youth in our community like this. The weekly softball page dedicated to the girls is awesome. For the softball players — from U6 to traveling teams — to see their names in the paper because of something they accomplished in a game is so special. DYSA thanks The Enterprise for reporting the information and coming out to games to take pictures. It even sponsored a team.

Again, this has been a very rewarding season and it could not have happened without the support of a wide variety of people. Thank you to all of you for giving your time to a deserving group of young ladies, who got to play a fun game. We hope to see you all again next spring.

However, if your daughter loves softball — and wants to play more than this past spring season — registration is open for fall ball now. Visit http://www.davisyouthsoftballassociation.com for additional information and registration forms.

These softball cheers are a big part of the game of softball for the players. It’s not something you see in baseball. In fact, it seems there is a negative image associated with these kinds of cheers in baseball, especially as boys get older.

So, this started me thinking, “Why do the girls cheer?”

With my daughter having played softball for many seasons, every year I figure I have heard all the cheers there could possibly be. However, each spring I am surprised to hear new chants.

Doing a little research, I found there are so many cheers that I haven’t even heard most of them yet. Many I wasn’t familiar with were “negative” cheers, which says a lot for my daughter’s coaches.

All of the teams  my daughter has played for did not allow the girls to put the other team down. Negative cheers were always discouraged. I believe that is commonplace with the volunteer coaches involved with Davis Youth Softball Aossciation.

But, I have gotten off track … Back to my original question, “Why do softball girls cheer?”

Rumor has it that the reason the cheers came to be is two-fold: 1) the game is played at a slower pace than many other sports, and therefore, there needed to be a distraction; and 2) the cheers act as a pressure-reliever for the pitcher and batter.

The amount of pressure that a pitcher must feel on the mound — to throw three strikes without giving the batter a chance to hit the ball — is immense.

In turn, the amount of pressure on a batter, to get a hit every time up, is equally stressful.

The cheers were meant to take some of the pressure off. The pitcher and batter do not have dead silence when they have all that pressure. The chants came out of a desire to support a team’s players. And, once one team starts chanting, the other team feels the need to respond with its own unique cheers.

There are other reasons that cheers may have come to be …

Team unity is the first reason for cheers. Learning sayings as a team can bind the team together. Some teams have individual cheers that they make up for individual players. They find words that rhyme with the player’s name or number and say that particular cheer for that particular player. Teams also make up cheers for their team name.

Second, chanting can psych-out the other team. By putting thoughts such as, “we can’t be beat” or “we’re number one” into the other team’s head, you might impact playing ability to a small degree and any little advantage can give your team a victory.

Most importantly, cheering is just plain fun. Any softball player will tell you that the cheers are some of the best part of the games.

I have found that you either love the cheers or you don’t. There is no in-between. As a parent, I find it humorous, and at times, I have found myself humming a cheer after leaving the softball field.

The cheers get stuck in your head (think music and how songs can just get stuck there). I’ve even been known to spout one off in front of family or friends, if something someone says reminds me of a cheer.

For instance, the other day, my family and I went out to a Mexican restaurant.

One of my kids asked what I was going to have. “Nachos,” came my reply — which I promptly followed with, “Nacho, nacho pitch, nacho, nacho pitch, but if you swing, swing for me and I will give you chips and cheese, nacho, nacho pitch.”

This cheer is used to encourage a batter who has just let a strike go by them without swinging. Get it? “Not your pitch?”

As any parent of a softball player will attest, it just happens.

A word here or there can prompt a cheer at any time. The funniest thing, though, is when my son, who is three years older than his sister, spouts off a cheer out of the blue.

That is the best. We were driving in the car a couple of weeks ago and I asked him to help me to look for a street sign. When we came up to the street, he read the sign from a fair distance and I said, “Good eye, Matthew.” With that, he followed with, “G-O-O…G-O-O-D…E-Y-E-Y-E…” (it translates into good eye). This is a cheer intended for a batter who doesn’t swing at a called ball.

I know any softball parent reading this article knows exactly what I am talking about. These cheers get stuck in your head, and, as parents and siblings of softball players, we probably will remember them well into our retirement years.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to hear these cheers, come out to any softball field and experience it for yourself. It’s a unique part of the game.

— Cathy Price is a DYSA board member and player parent. She is in charge of publc relations and coordinating submissions for The Davis Enterprise weekly DYSA page.

The ball is anything but soft. Actually, the ball is extremely hard. Take it from me, the mom of a daughter who loves pitching.

My daughter was about 7 years old when she told me that she wanted to start pitching. Her coach at the time gave her a chance, and she pitched on her own until she really got serious about it and decided she would like to try to take a lesson with a pitching coach at about age 9. From that day on, she was hooked.

However, it was mom who had to catch for her. In the beginning, she was fairly wild and I never knew where the ball was going to go at any given time. Think Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn from Major League or Nuke Laloosh from Bull Durham (“I wouldn’t dig in. I don’t know where it’s going. I really don’t.”).

She threw some good pitches, but they were few and far between. You’d think I would have learned my lesson after being hit in the shins so many times, but I guess I just had faith that, at some point, the accuracy would come. And, it did, but not before my shins had taken a beating.

So trust me, those softballs are HARD.

This got me thinking, why are softballs called softballs, when they are so darned hard?

I did some research and I found that there are a variety of reasons floating around for why the game of softball is called just that. The first reason that I found is that the core of the ball is made of either long fiber kapok, a mixture of cork and rubber, a polyurethane mixture or another approved material. In essence, the core of the ball is made of soft material, though you could have fooled me.

Another story of how softball got its name came from Thanksgiving Day, 1887. In Chicago, a group of about 20 young men had gathered in the gymnasium of the Farragut Boat Club in order to hear the outcome of the Harvard/Yale football game. After Yale’s victory was announced, and bets were paid off, a man picked up a stray boxing glove and threw it at someone who hit it with a pole.

At that point, a gentleman by the name of George Hancock, who is widely considered the inventor of softball, shouted, “Let’s play ball!” He tied the boxing glove so that it resembled a ball, chalked out a diamond on the floor (with smaller dimensions than those of a baseball field in order to fit the gym) and broke off a broom handle to serve as a bat. Now, 111 years later, that event is known as the first softball game.

A third possibility for the origin of the sport’s name is that at the time of its invention, in 1887, baseball was often called hardball. So it’s conceivable that this game that was similar to hardball, but is played with a larger ball and no grass on the infield, was given a similar sounding name: softball.

Though I wasn’t able to find out a concrete reason for the name of the game, I can tell you from a mom/catcher’s point of view that the ball is not soft by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe if the ball lived up to its name a little bit more, I wouldn’t have all the pretty marks on my legs.

Why do you think the game of softball got its name? Send me your feedback at the email address below.

— Cathy Price is the communications director of DYSA and can be reached at rossprice91@att.net