(April 2, 2013) — “Hey, you, at two! Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!” shout Hoover’s Junior Varsity Softball team as team member freshman Bianca Lopez runs to second base. The current score engulfed Lopez’s mind as she ran from base to base running passed Crescenta Valley’s Junior Varsity Softball players in the home game on March 28. “I just felt really nervous,” Lopez said.

“I like to pretend that someone is chasing me so I go faster and faster.” For the athlete, having her teammates yelling at her as she ran from base to base became comforting. “The fact that you’re wiggling in the middle of a serious game lowers the pressure and is a good reminder that the game is supposed to be fun,” she said.

Lim’s older sister and teammate, junior Guianina Lim felt a large amount of game pressure as the score board began favoring the opposing team. And after just losing to Burbank High School in their most recent game, Hoover’s JV Softball girls didn’t want to go home with another loss. “We honestly improved a lot and managed to pull ourselves together as a team,” Lim said. However, as the Hoover girls continued making critical errors, they found that the lead CV already had just moved further away and became that much more difficult to beat.

Lim said that she felt bad about contributing to two of the five errors made during the game when she let two balls pass her on the outfield. “That worried me,” she said. “I felt like a horrible player.” But it wasn’t long before the older she was able to redeem herself.

The older sister proved herself to her teammates and the small audience of parents and friends when she caught a pop fly in the foul zone. Unfortunately, Lim’s catch didn’t save them from another loss. Although the girls played hard, the final score of 6–20 motivated them to play even harder when the next opportunity arises. “If our pitching was stronger, we would have really given CV a run for their money,” Lim said.

The first-year softball players agreed that they were disappointed after realizing that the CV girls began going easy on them. According to Lim, the other team began using the “mercy rule,” which is when team does everything they can do to get called out by the umpire in order to end the inning; this was a result of getting constant runs due to Hoover’s pitching.

But eventually, Lim, Lopez and the rest of the team pulled were able to get back on their feet in the middle of the game. “Once they saw that we could hit and that we actually do know how to field and play, they played just as hard as we did,” Lim said.