Phoenix Crucillo, 12 (Los Angeles, CA) The Early Bird May Catch the Worm, but It’s Never Too Late to Get into the Game Phoenix Crucillo, 12 It was the day our baseball team had worked so hard for—the Little League Championship Game. Over the last four months, twenty teams had competed vigorously to earn one of two coveted spots for the championship game. And I was on one of those teams — the Braves! It was the bottom of the ninth inning, and our team was down by one run with two outs and the bases loaded. It was now my turn to bat. The sun scorched its hot rays down my back. My thick mask itched, and I longed to rub my nose on one of the long sleeves I wore underneath my jersey. Still, none of these irritations came close to the unease I felt as I walked up to the plate. I took a deep breath before crouching into my batting stance. My heart pounded through my chest. After studying the catcher’s signs carefully, the pitcher nodded in acknowledgement of their secret language. Just then, the pitcher adjusted his grip on the seams, lifted his front leg, and released the ball…. … If someone had told me four months earlier that I’d be playing in the championship, I wouldn’t have believed them. I’d never played baseball before. It all started one seemingly ordinary day…. After a long day of school, I waited for my mom to pick me up. All the other kids had already gone. “Um, should I call my mom?” I asked my teacher. “If you feel the need,” he smirked. Just then, she pulled up. I stuffed my belongings in the car, eager to go home and relax with my favorite video game before tackling my homework. Just as I was getting comfortable, she spoke the words that would change my life. “I signed you up for a baseball team,” she said nonchalantly. “Your soccer season doesn’t start until spring, so I thought you might enjoy another sport in the meantime.” “But Mom, I don’t want to go! Kids in that league have been playing their whole lives! It’s not a place for beginners like me! It’s too hard to start playing a new sport like this. Like you always say, ‘the early bird catches the worm,’ so starting baseball at twelve years old will make me the early worm… who’ll get eaten!” She chuckled and just kept driving to the baseball field. I knew it was useless to protest, so I surrendered to my fate. As we pulled up to the field, I saw something that shocked me like a horror movie. The players were warming up on a massively daunting field, talking and laughing as if they’d known each other all their lives. Oh no, they already know each other. Now I’m never going to make friends. And this field is so gigantic! How am I ever going to play on this?! “Alright!” yelled the coach in a southern accent. “Let’s all sit down in a circle and introduce ourselves.” “I’m Phoenix,” I said meekly. No one else needed an introduction. They all knew each other. Just as I thought. Time for fielding practice. I didn’t even know what that was, but I followed along. “Alright. The drill is simple. Get the ground ball I hit to you and throw to first base. Once you’re done, get back in line and wait until it’s your turn again,” Coach instructed. Like a chameleon, I stood in the middle of the line in a feeble attempt not to stand out as a beginner. The first player fielded the ball flawlessly and threw it like a dart to the first baseman. Each of my teammates fielded Coach’s hits with precision. Obviously, they had been playing this game for many years. Now it was my turn. I tried to pick up the ball that Coach hit my way, but I completely failed. “Coach, may I have another one?” I yelled so he could hear. “Sure thing,” he said as he hit a ground ball softer off his wood bat. I picked it up, almost stumbling, and threw it too far to the right of the first baseman. Oh, no! I’ll never make it! “Hey, are you new?” one of the bigger kids asked me. “Yeah, why?” “Oh, that’s why,” he mumbled to himself. My heart sank. “Okay now, next are fly balls. So go into the outfield and wait,” Coach instructed. Within minutes, a fly ball came soaring straight at me. Oh, no! Could this day get any worse? There’s no way I’m going to catch this, I thought as I raised my open glove into the air. Thud! I looked into my glove, where, to my astonishment, I saw the ball tucked away in the supple brown leather. Yeeeessss! Maybe I’m not so terrible after all. “Team, meet our new outfielder!” Coach proclaimed enthusiastically. His words magically erased my teammate’s earlier comment. A few weeks later, it was time for our first game. I felt so unprepared. Mom dropped me off at the batting cages, where I watched each of my teammates hit every ball pitched to them. Now, it was my turn. As hard as I focused, the pitches roared past me. There was something about these pitches that made them impossible to connect with. I felt lucky to hit a couple of balls. “Okay, that’s enough warm-up. It’s game time,” Coach yelled. One by one, we eagerly entered the dugout like a line of army ants ready for duty. Suddenly, Coach called out the batting lineup. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, and I suddenly broke out into a cold sweat when he called my name last. “Why am I last?” I asked. “I put you last because this is your first game. The other kids have more experience.” I listened, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the ground where they
personal narrative
Rubble
In the summer of 2017, a horrific earthquake hit the Greek island of Lesvos. In the summer of 2017, my family’s village, Vrisia, was reduced to a terrifying pile of fractured, falling buildings and rubble. My memories of Vrisia are damaged and seemingly random, like the items salvaged from the catastrophe-torn buildings. I remember the hedgehog we found on the side of the road that we squirreled away to our garden, my six-year-old hands wrapping tightly around its small, odd-looking body. The hedgehog’s spiky parts weren’t pointy enough to prevent me from hugging him close to my chest. When he escaped from our garden, I nearly cried. I remember the local museum and the preserved shell of a Pinta Island turtle inside. The turtle’s ancient shell seemed impossibly large. The majestic relic of the extinct breed of Galapagos island turtles seemed too foreign to comprehend. My only thought then was that I might strap it to my back and become a turtle myself. I can vaguely recall a Playmobil toy set of Antarctica. There were plastic glaciers that came with a basin you could fill with water. My sister and I played with it for hours. I’d attach the polar bear and penguins to the glaciers and she’d attempt to create a waterfall with the cups of water we were supposed to use to hydrate ourselves. By the end of our playing, we had thoroughly drenched each other. I remember our house. The porch and the tree-like vines that crept above it in a canopy, the unassuming blue door wedged between two other buildings that led down to our home, the room we would sleep in, the color of its walls—all of these things feature prominently in my attempts to reconstruct our Vrisia through memory. Five years and one earthquake later, we’ve returned. The house is still damaged even though my grandmother has been rebuilding these past years. She and my aunts live in Athens, an hour’s flight or an overnight boat ride away from Lesvos. My dad took us on a tour of the village yesterday. It’s strange to stare at a place almost totally changed and have your mind confront you with your younger self’s muddled, distorted, and fragmented memories. “This is the mini-market we would send you to buy groceries from,” he says, pointing at a few bricks surrounded by weeds. A memory flickers in its wake—seven-year-old me walking to the market with her twin sister, her younger sister scuttling behind on her four-year-old feet. The rush of happiness felt at the independence. The old grandmas sitting outside that greet us as we pass. “This is the house of a few of our old friends.” He gazes solemnly at a doorframe standing on its own, surrounded by dead grass and covered in dust. I can imagine a younger version of myself rushing past it on her way to the town square. “Here is the church.” The door bears a bright red spray-painted cross, a marker indicating that the building has been destroyed so much that the best course of action is to tear it down. Each place has a spray-painted cross in green, yellow, or red. Green is the most infrequent of the colors, meaning that a building has suffered little or no damage and is safe to inhabit. When a cross is yellow, there is a severe need for repairs. But the church, one of the primary sources of hope and inspiration in this village—destroyed. We continued to walk. One house resembling a Jenga tower before its collapse had us staring in awe. The front wall was missing, and you could see the slanted, falling floor and all the broken furniture covered in dust and debris. A car honked behind us, and we hurried out of the road. The man drove by, warning us to stay away from the houses—most of them could collapse at any moment. The situation is surreal. I feel like a piece of my identity is crumbling under my shaking fingers and before my petrified eyes. The repairs on our house are done, but we overlook a view of rubble. A bustling village that once housed nearly two-thousand now might be occupied by fewer than two-hundred. There are no open restaurants, most of the houses still need to be torn down or require severe repairs, the local school is damaged, so children are being taught in tiny container houses, and the earthquake destroyed the village’s two factories. Around the world, natural disasters are increasing. Scientists may not have found solid connections between climate change and an increase in earthquakes, but they have found that climate change causes an increased amount of other natural disasters. Central and Northern Europe recently suffered from intense flooding. California suffers from an ongoing drought. People are dying. The effects of humanity’s carelessness are manifesting. After witnessing the destruction nature can cause firsthand, I have only been made more aware of the gravity of our situation. Right now, we can save ourselves. It’s up to the youth to try to heal the Earth before it suffers irreparable damage. It’s up to us to stop our homes from turning into rubble.
The Thrilling Race, by Mason Li
I woke up on a hot sunny day, looking up at the ceiling. ”It’s time,” I said to myself, “triathlon time.” I got out of my bed thinking, “triathlon.” I got into the car still thinking, as I s….l….o…w….l…y fell asleep. As I woke up to the sound of the car stopping: ”Are we there yet?” ”Close. Actually… we are there,” Mommy replied. My stomach started aching at those words as I slowly got out of the car, rubbing my eyes as I brought my bike and bag with me. I set up my bike, helmet, shoes, and racing belt. ”Twenty minutes left until the race starts!” I heard the director say. My heart beat faster and faster with every second. After twenty minutes of thinking and wondering, I put my cap and goggles on. My stomach was still aching with pain and nervousness, but my heart was shining with courage. Goooooo! The sound of a horn. And I was off. The freezing water that I was swimming in made me swim faster than I ever could as I accelerated past people. I got out of the water, taking off my cap and goggles as I ran. I put on my helmet. Then I mounted my bike and I started biking. I zoomed downhill and worked hard on the uphill. For a few minutes, I thought I was going the wrong way until I saw a couple older kids zoom past me. As I accelerated my speed to try catching up with them, I saw another pair of older kids ahead. I felt like I had biked past where the little kids should stop until I saw the dismount stop. Because I had too much momentum when I was about to dismount, I fell, but I didn’t feel any pain in the spot I fell, surprisingly. Helping hands shot into view, but I just rolled over and started running towards the transition area until I heard people calling that I forgot my bike. So I ran back to get my bike. Then I put down my bike and helmet and put on my racing belt as I ran. Running and running, hearing cheers from the crowd, I ran through the trail. Running ahead of people, I felt so energetic as I ran. Then I saw the finish line. Excitement awaited me there as I charged to the finish line! ”LET’S GO!” I yelled. Then I felt the pain in my leg, so I went to the medical staff to heal my leg up, but that only took a few minutes. I won first place. When they announced my name, I stepped up to the first place spot on the podium, smiling.
