Coping with Change

There was a big change between high school baseball and college baseball. High school baseball I was a starter as a freshman and always excelled. I was a all-city and all-state player during my high school years. During practices all we would do is play catch, take ground balls, catch fly balls, and hit. We barely did any running, if we ran at all we would only run a couple laps around the field. Our season was only 22 games at the most, including the playoffs and state. I was always a better player than everyone else on my team and always was the one that helped our team win. The pitchers in our league usually were not to good so I was able to get hits whenever I wanted. I had a rude awakening when I got to college and everyone on the team was just as good as me or better. The first practice we had to do 60 yard agility's. I had never done something so hard in my life. I had never puked off running long distance or doing sprints in my life. That day was a different story, I was one of many people on the team that puked from doing this running drill. When it came to the games I put so much pressure on myself that I was struggling with my swing. It was so hard for me to adapt to not being able to hit the ball. I had always been able to hit the ball whenever I wanted to. I went into the biggest hitting slump I ever had been in. I did hitting drill after hitting drill to get out of the slump, but nothing helped. I finally just told myself to relax and hit the ball like I know how to. Towards the end of the fall I came out of my slump and started getting base hits and driving in base runners.