"Wally" (3/3)

 

I must relay one more high school softball story that I’ve always thought was pretty cool. During Tara’s senior season, our rival, in all sports was the “Little Dutch” from nearby Pella High School. Pella had assembled quite the softball program and had wrestled the league title away from Grinnell during the regular season, beating us twice in the process.

As the playoffs began, our bracket showed that in order to make the State Tournament, we would have to beat Pella in the regional final... assuming both teams made it that far and... both teams made it that far. We were pitted against our arch rivals... a game that would decide if Tara was to make it to state... one more time. 

Pella rode the arm of their pitching ace, Julia Nurse, all season. She was clearly one of the best pitchers in the state. Grinnell had Shelley Davis on the mound and she was an accomplished hurler herself. The stage was set.

The regional final was to be played at the friendly confines of Grinnell’s home softball diamond... but Pella was designated the “home team” based on their higher seeding. The stadium was absolutely packed! I had never seen that large of a crowd at a Grinnell softball game. I was seated comfortably in the press box, behind the backstop... as I did the color commentary for the softball games for the local radio station, KGRN 1410 on your A.M. radio dial.

Pella was certainly favored but I knew it was tough to beat a good team 3 times in the same season. I knew we had a shot.

The battle that followed was one for the ages. Both pitchers were locked in a dual of epic proportions. Neither team could crack the code of the opposing pitcher and we entered the 7th and final inning, deadlocked in a scoreless tie.

Daughter number 3, Aubree... only a freshman but playing some varsity during the season was dressed for this playoff game. Aubree was thrust into the spotlight as she was asked to pinch hit in the top of the 7th, in the 9 slot. Talk about pressure!

Aubree, a lefty with good speed, laid down a well placed bunt and she was off to the races. Knowing it was going to be a close play, the Pella infielder rushed her throw and bounced it past the first baseman. Aubree ended up on second. Lead-off hitter, Denea Breeden, another speedster, laid down a perfect bunt and beat it out easily... with Aubree moving to third. Now due up... Tara Munson. Denea stole second on the first pitch and now we had 2 runners in scoring position.

Tara strides up to the plate.

What was to follow was the single most intense battle I have ever seen in a softball game. The crowd was on its feet, agonizing over every pitch. The count went 3 and 2 and that’s when the fun really began. Tara fouled off the next pitch... and the next one... and the next one... and the next one. She fouled off 6 or 7 straight pitches with the crowd’s collective emotions rising and falling with every swing of the bat. Finally, Tara got a pitch she could handle and she lined a shot up the middle, scoring Aubree from third and giving Grinnell a 1-0 lead that held up through the bottom of the 7th... thus sending the Tigers to their third State Tournament appearance in the last 5 years.

Mike Baker, who was Tara’s varsity basketball coach, and a mentor she had the greatest respect for, was at that game and penned Tara a note a few days after that exciting game. It said, in part, “When you came up to bat, I told those sitting around us, ‘We just won.’ I know that was exactly the situation you’ve always wanted to be in. Great to see hard work get rewarded.”

Now that was an awesome gesture from Coach Baker!

Toward the end of Tara’s junior year, her perfect attendance was surprisingly still intact. She was closing in on 12 straight years without having ever missed a school day. I don’t recall the circumstances but I had an occasion to communicate this information with one of the local Des Moines news stations, KCCI Channel 8. The next thing we know, channel 8 reporter, Erin Kiernan made her way to Grinnell to interview Tara for a piece on the 10 o’clock news that night.

I wasn’t home during the interview but was excited to watch it on television later that night. Toward the end of the interview, Ms. Kiernan asked Tara what motivated her to keep this streak alive. Tara replied, “When I was in the sixth grade, my dad promised me a new car if I were able to graduate with 13 years of perfect attendance.”

Having completely forgotten about that throwaway promise from 5 years previous, my blood ran cold and I shot a look at the wife. She was glaring at me while nodding her head with a “what are you going to do now, big boy?” Look in her eye. And the fact was... I knew what I had to do. I had to apologize profusely to my daughter and admit to her that we couldn’t afford to purchase her a new car.

Tara was so cool about it and said it was perfectly fine but I felt absolutely horrible. What made me make that stupid promise anyway? The guilt metastasized in my brain and I struggled with it for the next year.

As Tara’s graduation drew near, it became apparent that she was going to... indeed... complete her 13th year of school and graduate without having EVER missed a single day. The accomplishment still boggles my mind. I had to reward her... in a significant way.

I came home from work one day and told the wife, “We’re going to buy Tara a new car. I’ll take full responsibility for adjusting our budget and making it happen.” Jeana, always the cautious one, gave me some push back but ultimately signed off on the purchase.

I went to the local car dealership and purchased a silver, 2001 Pontiac Sunfire. With graduation about a month away, I bought a car cover and parked it the house of a friend. We didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone... except Erin Kiernan, the reporter from KCCI.

Graduation day finally arrived and Tara did it. Perfect attendance. It was a beautiful day and the stands of the football field were filled with the friends and families of Grinnell High School’s graduating class of 2001.

Right as the ceremony started, a film crew emerged and began filming the festivities as the graduating students watched them with great curiosity. Why is channel 8 filming our graduation? Nobody had a clue. Tara, and others, surmised that they were there for a couple of graduating twins who were the school’s football stars and who had received football scholarships.

At the conclusion of the ceremonies, Ms. Kiernan made her way over to Tara and asked her if she could talk to her as a follow-up to the interview that aired a year earlier. That ended the mystery as to why the film crew was there.

The reporter led Tara over near the parking lot... allegedly to move away from the crowd on the football field but in reality, she staged the interview with Tara unknowingly standing right next to her new car.

With family and friends gathered around the interview, the reporter began asking Tara the obvious questions about her attendance and how she felt now that the accomplishment was complete. Eventually, Ms. Kiernan reminded Tara about her statement from a year earlier... about a new car being the reward for this amazing feat.

Tara smiled and looked down as she explained the legitimate reasons why that was not really possible with her older sister in college and the recent birth of her baby brother. At this point, the reporter pulled a set of keys from her pocket and dangled them about a foot in front of Tara’s ever widening eyes. “Well, your dad came through for you anyway. Your standing next to your new car.”

Tara immediately burst into tears and ran over to me for a tight embrace. I was so glad that we decided to go through with the purchase. She drove that car for many, many years.

As a final story related to perfect attendance... when Tara had been in college for a very short period of time, I had an occasion to talk with her on the phone. She was quick to tell me that she had already missed a day of classes because she didn’t want the pressure of trying to make it 4 more years with perfect attendance. “That’s a real shame,” I told her. “I was just calling to tell you that if you made it through 4 years of college with perfect attendance, that I was planning to buy you a new house!” 😉

As we contemplated college for Tara, playing softball at school was a given. We had two factors working against us, 1) Of course we didn’t realize this then, but the online recruiting tools were not readily available like they are today, and 2) The fact that Iowa played their high school softball season in the summer, college scouts didn’t have much occasion to watch them play. As the softball coach at Liberty University explained to me, the scouts wouldn’t waste their time at high school games in the summer when they could attend the ASA Gold softball tournaments around the country where most of the players participating were college caliber players. Made sense.

I was pretty sure that Tara wasn’t a D1 talent but was very confident that she could play at a NAIA school where she could get some athletic scholarship money. So I put together a notebook with 5 years of newspaper clippings, all conference, all state, state tournament all tournament team awards, etc. and sent a copy to 5 different NAIA schools. All 5 promptly responded with an invitation to come check out the school and to work out for the softball coach. We chose to visit two schools, initially. MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas and Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio near Dayton. Both coaches were impressed. Both coaches immediately offered Tara a scholarship.

Tara chose Cedarville.

Tara was planted at the second base position from day 1 and played there throughout her career. The Cedarville Yellowjackets played 161 games in Tara’s 4 years there and Tara played in all 161, starting in 160 of them.

Tara had 23 sacrifice bunts in her freshman year alone, which set the single season record and the CAREER mark at Cedarville for sac bunts. Tara also served as the team captain her senior year. Speaking of her senior year... Aubree was a freshman on the Cedarville team that year and it was cool to see the sisters play together again... just as they had in high school during their 2001 season.

Switching to Tara’s social life, she made friends with a group of fellow freshmen... guys and girls... who would tighten their bond together over the next 4 years. A group that remains close friends to this day, some 20 years later.

One of those “friends” was a kid named Jason Culpepper. Tara talked about him A LOT! But she insisted that they were “just friends.” She did concede that they “tried” to date a bit their sophomore year but had concluded that they were better off as friends.

As Tara’s college graduation loomed, she had planned to move back to Grinnell. She had already been offered and had accepted the position of assistant varsity softball and head JV softball coach at Grinnell High School. I was so excited because I always thought her destiny was to coach softball.

About a month before graduation, her “friend,” Jason, called and asked her to dinner. Nothing unusual about that. They had been pretty close friends, mostly platonic, for 4 years. So they went.

As the story was relayed to me... this is what happened, as I paraphrase my way through their dialogue. Jason said something to the effect, “It just struck me that we graduate in a month and I may never see you again. And I just cannot imagine my life without you. Will you marry me?” Spoiler alert... Tara said, “Yes!”

Well, that was the gist of it.

Tara's 1 year of coaching

When Tara came home and shared the news with us... I was both elated and devastated at the same time. We knew Jason and we knew he came from a great family... but we also knew that Tara would be moving to Ohio, as Jason would be going home to work in his father’s business.

It was some consolidation that they planned their wedding for December 31st of that year, 2005. That meant Tara would live at home for the next 7 months and would have the opportunity to coach for one season. So, I greatly cherished those days.

Holding back the tears, I gave her away at her wedding. After the wedding, I could see the empathy in Jason’s eyes as we said good-byes to daughter number 2. He was genuinely moved. Jeana wept openly as I saved my tears for the next day as I sat alone on my back deck.

Today, Tara and Jason, with their son and daughter, are living the dream in Jackson Township, Ohio. And because of a job opportunity, we have lived a few miles away from them since 2008.

A great life and nobody is more deserving.

I love you Wally!