Softball Camp!

 One of my colleagues in Moldova used to coach a girls softball team. Her team sent her a bag full of equipment recently, and she is traveling all around Moldova with it this summer--spreading love of the game one village at a time!

This week I traveled down south to Gagauzia and a neighboring raion to help out with a three-day softball camp. Waking up at 06:30 to go play ball before the heat melted us away was amazing. Three perfect summer days.

 On the first day we managed work in two sessions. One in the morning which Vanea (the boy squatting in the center of this photo) attended, and one in the evening, when Vanea came back with the rest of the boys pictured.

I have to say, I did pick favorites, the two small boys standing next to me (Dima and Vanea) came to the field with a soccer ball and quickly joined our game. They were quick learners and generally enthusiastic. Dima even took the opportunity to practice his Romanian with me. See the previous link for Gagauzia and you'll understand why Romanian is not his first language.

 The second day, the Peace Corps Moldova Volunteers headed to a neighboring district to teach another group of youth about the game. Most of the participants there are part of a sports club run by Coach Mihail (pictured in red). Here is where my colleague who's traveling around Moldova is really making a difference. Not only were the kids learning the game, but this educator took the time to understand the rules, wrote them down, and even kept score. Transfer of skills and knowledge? I think so!


The sports club boys are natural athletes and picked up the easily, but there were still a few reoccurring phenomena of note:




1) Moldovans often "squat" in a very low position when they are tired of standing. All too often this meant that the person playing second base, by which I mean ON second base, was seen squatting on his perch.

2) Lots of football/soccer experience creates certain habits. Catchers and shortstops alike were stopping grounders with their feet, then reaching for dead balls. One time a second baseman stopped a grounder on his shin, realized with sincere discomfort that he was not wearing shin-guards, and that he had a perfectly good piece of leather in his hand that might do the trick!

3) We had a particularly difficult time getting across that only one player can be on a base at a time. So, when a batter would round first, sometimes he's smash into a teammate still standing on second. Mass confusion would ensure as to which direction everyone was supposed to be going to avoid force-outs.

Finally, on the third day, we brought the kids from the first village, to the second village, and fielded a game between the two. Even though one village's team dominated the other, we still went on to mix the teams and play a few more innings before the day was done.

Big thanks to the organizers of this camp who let me be a part of it. I had a fantastic time! Multumesc! Spaseeba! Merci! Thank you!