Personally, I feel that I have a narrative that has shaped my life so far. I feel that the decision to play softball for the majority of my life has completely shaped who I am, my abilities and my ability to work with people. However I know that I am very young and my life is really just starting.  Playing softball will not be the only narrative that shapes my life. I will find another passion that will continue to mold me into the person I am meant to be. Softball is my life story up until this point in my life.

I started playing softball when I was about 9 years old, which is actually pretty late to begin playing. I played on a team that had players who had been playing since they were 4 years old. I was intimidated but I loved the game right off the bat (No pun intended).  I decided to play the summer season, then the fall season and then the winter indoor league. Eventually it just became natural for me to be playing all year long. There was not one season that I wasn’t on at least one softball team. Once I reached high school I was still eligible for my town league, I played on my high school junior varsity team, was a swing hitter/pitcher for my high school varsity team and I was also recruited onto a club softball team that played on tournaments in the summer but practiced all year long. My freshman year of high school I was playing on four softball teams at once. It was stressful, but I loved every minute of it. I aged out of my town league my sophomore year and made my high school varsity team so, for the rest of high school I played on two teams every year. When it came to my senior year, I was elected captain of my high schools varsity team and I was so honored. During tryouts I fell in the gym and landed on my knee, refuting in a complete PCL tear and left me unable to play for the beginning of my season. I was absolutely crushed. But, I wasn’t going to let this injury define my final season of high school softball so, I worked in physical therapy and was cleared to play in late April which meant I still had over a month to make my season memorable. We ended up making it to division 2 district finals that year.

Yes, softball has been my whole life. It’s not just a sport though. It teaches teamwork, cooperation, companionship, respect, leadership and the ability to be humble and resilient. I am so thankful for softball and I still play on UNE’s club softball team. However I know that there are greater opportunities ready for me in the future and I am so excited to see what they are. Softball will always be the foundation that showed me who I was from the very beginning.

For my multimodal essay,  I plan to use my life story about how softball has shaped my identity since I was 9 years old. First, I will obviously use textual mode with my writing.  I will use personal pictures (such as the ones below) and pull quotes in order to use the visual mode of a multimodal essay. I will use the spacial method by placing those pictures and pull quotes in my essay so that it flows nicely and adds more to my essay than only using words. I plan to use Olivia and Tatiana’s Narrative project interviewing Patrick about how firefighting has shaped his identity just as softball has shaped mine.