Jamie Hebron's Softball Student-Athlete Blog #1

Hello everyone! My name is Jamie Hebron and I play softball for Greenville College. I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself since you will be hearing about my life as a Greenville student-athlete. I am 21 years old and have attended Greenville College for 3 1/2 years now, and I have been playing softball all of them. I come from a small town about 45 minutes from Greenville. I have two younger sisters, Katelyn and Frances and I love them both very much. Katelyn is the middle sister and is attending SIUE, so she is not too far. I am a senior and will graduate in May with a degree in Biology. I recently received my acceptance letter from the University of Missouri Columbia School of Veterinary Medicine. I am waiting to hear back from the University of Illinois as well. I am super excited that I will be attending vet school in the spring. It has been my life long dream!

I am starting my blog a little later than I was supposed to I think. We are three weeks into the season and our first game is this Friday. So far things are looking good; the team and myself are pumped about playing on Friday. We have not been outside much and we haven't been on dirt at all. I guess I should tell you I’m an infielder. I played third base all throughout high school and came to college to learn a completely different position, a couple different positions actually. I am now pretty versatile which I have learned to enjoy very much. My favorite position, and the place I most often play, is second. I love being able to turn double plays and stretch my range for balls hit to my left or right.

So far I have been doing a fairly decent job balancing my classes and softball. My course load isn't as hard as it has been in the past so I have time to get things done. I feel that way now at least, it may be different once the stress of games and missing classes for games begins. The excitement of our first game hasn't exactly hit me yet, I imagine it's because I haven't played on dirt. Just the feeling of being outside and feeling my cleats on the dirt will definitely get my blood pumping. Our first game is against Missouri Baptist on Friday. Many of us are bummed because what was supposed to be a home game was turned into an away game, because our field is not ready for action yet.

Today was an exciting day for some of us. It was team picture day! Our first team pictures were a fancy, dressed-up picture with equipment. It is amazing how different people looking with fixed hair and dress slacks. Afterwards we changed into our uniforms and headed to the field. It was a cold 30 minutes as we posed for the camera without Underarmour sleeves or jackets. I was glad when it was over with! I'm also very excited about Thursday! It has been a GC tradition to have a "special" team time the night before our first game. The other senior on the team, Cristi, and I, have a fun, memorable night planned. We are designing posters with all the girls’ nicknames on them and throughout the night each girl will write on all her teammate’s posters something positive she likes about that girl. We call them "Put-up Posters" then we are going to laminate them and hang them in our dugout during games. We are excited about the night! I hope none of the girls read this before Thursday; it's supposed to be a surprise! HAHA

Well, this is quite a lot so I will end with a quote...
"Never under-estimate the opponent that appears weaker than you, and never fear the opponent that appears stronger than you."
-Unknown

Have a good week everyone and God Bless.
-J