For many students that play sports in high school and college, it is just a hobby that is a form of recreation, or to simply hang out with friends. But for others, it is a chance to excel and give it their all. Baylee Elms was able to do both. She enjoyed playing sports such as volleyball, basketball, and even cross country, but the sport that stole her heart was playing softball.
Elms started playing recreational softball when she was seven years old and fell in love with the sport. As a seven-year-old, she was playing with the ten to twelve-year-old girls because her parents decided to keep her with her older sister. Elms became a catcher when she was playing All Stars at the age of nine. When she was ten years old, Elms started playing travel softball. It was quite an adjustment to playing on a team and having her summer weekends taken by traveling and playing five to seven games in a weekend.
In the seventh grade, she switched over to Laurence Manning Academy and tried out for the Junior Varsity team. Elms was the Junior Varsity catcher for three years and ended up moving up to the varsity team at the end of her freshman year of high school. Her main position was always catching until she made it to varsity. In her sophomore year of high school, Elms played left field because of the needs of the team. During her junior and senior year of high school, she went back to playing in the catcher position. Her team won back to back State Championships during those two years.
“Winning State is a feeling that I will never forget and doing it twice in a row made it all that much better,” said Elms. As a result of the state championship, Elms was awarded 3A SCISA Player of the Year. She committed to play college softball at Florence Darlington Technical College, and graduated from high school in May of 2017. Elms had found the adjustment going to college softball a difficult adjustment. Individually, she did not feel that she performed to her full potential, but played center field for her team because of the low numbers of players participating. At one point, she and her softball team were ranked number nine in the nation.
During sophomore year, Elms finally settled down into her role as a leader and became the starting third baseman for Florence Darlington Technical College. She was still utilized as the catcher on occasion, but knew she was needed to play third base. Her team failed to make it to the world series, but Elms still feels that she had a successful two years at Florence Darlington Technical College.
“If there is one thing I learned from these years of softball it is that you can not control certain things like a call from an umpire or the rain canceling a game,” said Elms. “So we need to make it count when it comes to things we can control like how much we give and how good of an attitude we keep when things are not going our way.”
