#i had many contenders for heart lol. unfortunately many were in the very embarrassing ones. but im glad i had something good to show | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crbrickey · 5 years

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Casey’s Kids...

5 years ago I started on a journey that I had no idea I needed or how it would end. It was 2014 and the Poker boom was ending. This is important because the previous 8 years of my life was consumed with poker. Some weeks I would play it 5 different nights, now I was lucky to find a place with good people to play it once a week. So to say the least, my calendar was wide open. With nothing to do, I was starting to fall into a rut.

Thankfully, Cory Rush and Kyle Willis started talking about playing softball. Having been involved in sports all my life, I was interested. This is one of the life lessons. Even though I was physically unable to play sports, I had spent my life being involved in them none the less. In middle and in high school I was manager of both football and basketball teams, upon graduating high school, afterwards I spent 3 summers coaching AAU and MAYB basketball before interning at Wichita State athletics and 3 different departments. But since graduating college, I had done nothing in sports. Definitely a void in my life. So I ran with the idea and volunteered to put a team together.

This took a lot of work and a little luck. I scoured facebooks and other softball sites for people looking to join a team. I even posted an ad on Craigslist. I was determined to make a team. Yaaayyy I did it! Then upon signing up, I was told the league was full but they had room in co-ed. Well crap! There is no way I know enough females that would be interested in softball. Thankfully, one of the guys that I found-Leon, offered to find us girls. And like that, 3 days later we were entered into co-ed rec softball.

This is just the beginning of the journey. Our first season- summer of 2014, was a disaster. Many a Fridays I spent all afternoon trying to find enough replacements to fill up a team for the night. Thankfully, Candice and Leon had enough connections that we never had to forfeit. But we were bad! Somehow we did manage 2 wins that season but I knew I couldn’t sustain a team like this. This is when I decided to start using my new connections and made a team that I felt would be more competitive and more likely to show up. At this point, I had to not invite Leon back to the team. This sounds bad, but we’ll circle around.

Fall ball that year was starting to get better. Were we competitive? Not really-but at least I only had to find usually one sub a week as opposed to 3. But during these 2 seasons, I really started to make connections and people were starting to ask to be part of my team.

2015 all year (spring, summer and fall) was the same. We started doing some tournaments and networking more. 2015 was a fun year but I still had to be honest with myself, I wasn’t happy. It’s not an insult to anybody, everybody was great. I loved that team. But I'm competitive but not crazy competitive. What I mean by this, if I was going to play softball, I wanted to play softball. If I wanted to drink, I would go to a bar. I had fun hanging out with everybody but the competitive side of me hated losing because half my team would rather drink than play. So I started internal discussions with myself on what I could do.

Thanks to all of my network, by the time 2016 came around, I was able to put out a competitiveish co-ed team. I had a couple girls--Angie and Sandy who were absolute beasts. And my guy pool was getting deep. I had to start turning away guys who wanted to play. Finally, it dawned on me, do 2 leagues. Men’s and co-ed. Before I knew it, I was running 2 teams. Now we’re going to take s quick break to teach a very valuable business lesson.

Prior to 2016, my team had been the Grand Salamis. But after a discussion Sarah Kennedy suggested we rebrand the team Casey’s Kids. At he time it wasn’t thrilled, but everybody loved it so it was sold. Anyways, the business lesson.. with the new branding, we needed new jerseys. So I went my shirt guy. He had made 2 other jerseys for us previously and I felt good about his business. I made a big order as I needed jerseys for co-ed’s and men’s. Made the order and decided like an idiot-- to pay the whole bill instead of the half that was required. Needless to say, he went out of business and I never got our jerseys or the money back. My naiveness cost me $450. But I always admit my mistakes so I still refunded all my players. They trusted me with their money so I had to come thru. Since I couldn’t get jerseys I knew I had to repay them and I did. So important lesson, never pay the whole bill until delivery of the product. I knew that but I trusted the dude. Lesson learned now though.

By the end of 2016, I was really starting to get burned out. Honestly, I knew whaat I had to do. I had to drop co-ed. 2 reasons-- 1. every week I had to find replacements. I sleep in late so my window to find subs was smaller than it would be for most. I couldn’t spend 4 hours every Friday on Facebook looking for subs. B. Competitiveness. I’m not trying to bad talk anybody, I enjoyed our parking lot gatherings, but the competitor in me wanted a team who wanted to win as bad as I did. Now, I’m not saying I have too win in order to be happy. I grew up in Ark City, I got use to losing, so I’m alright with that. But what I am not alright with is laughing and drinking while we get beat by double digits.

After some soul searching and talking to some of my more connected players--Cory Skov, Braylan Nussbaum and Kelly Webster, I was convinced I could make a men’s league team that had the same principals as I did. But before I would go all in, I was willing to give co-ed one more chance. But the end of spring ball, I was finally washing my hands of co-ed. It just wasn’t making me happy. So that summer I put together a team with a lot of help from the 3 before mentioned players. I finally felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Even though it was my team, others like the mentioned, would help me find subs if we needed. I finally had guys who wanted to win. Now 2017 was a year to get my footing. Wichita softball does a real bad job of separating rec and competitive. You might think you're rec, which we were, but due to no separation-- you get to play competitive teams. We could beat and hang with half the league, but the other half would embarrass us.

Now we enter 2018. I am now determined to build a true contender. Spring ball was a disaster, I was still trying to recover from my sickness in March, and we had so many rainouts. We played all the way into summer. With all this going on, I able to take care of myself because I knew my players would take care of themselves, and they did. Whenever you have as many rainouts as we did, you can expect quite a few players missing make up games. With this came the opportunity to find new players. These new players would mesh right away and were asking if they could play summer ball with us. For the first time in Men’s I had too many players. It is a nice problem to have. Not only did I have too many, I now had great players. Now summer league we finished 14-2, with only 2 losses coming to the team that won the league. Unfortunately, both times we played them, we were severely undermanned as I was still having health issues and missed quite a bit of the season. When I miss, Rush has to miss as well. I was finally happy with my softball product. But then I had to make the toughest decision I have made when dealing with softball. I knew I had to take fall ball off so I could focus on my health and more importantly Spinraza treatments. It was hard to do this because I didn't want to lose my team.

This brings me to today. By the time January rolled around, I had both Braylan and Stewart asking me if I was going to do softball again. I was really starting to get my strength back so I said if we can get enough guys--heck yeah! And just like that-- everybody that had played with me sometime the year before, was back again. We even added a couple of guys. It really touches my heart that this team and all these great players --who I'm sure were asked by others-- wanted to wait and play for me. This team is special, let me introduce you to everybody.

Left to right. Cody Knuth, Braylan Nussbaum, Sean Zuniga, Tane Murphy, Stewart Jordan Hoover, Cory Rush, Josh Tucker, Alex Cavender, Kelly Webster, Lyle Powers and Brandon McBeth. Not pictured is Cory Skov and Vincent DeLaurentis. We will also be picking up Andrew Tapia, Ryan Westmoreland, Danny Rodriguez, Zac Villalpando and Brad Perkins for Summer Ball. With this group we are going back to 2 leagues. Friday and Sundays. To say the least my weekend starting in June will be booked. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now the jerseys I have had a lot of comments on how good they look. The credit goes to Braylan all the way. After my dealings back in 2016, I haven’t had the courage to try and order jerseys again. Thankfully, Braylan stepped up. He knew a guy who could do it and Braylan designed them and got them made. I know people not even on the team have asked about them. If you want to order one, let Braylan or I know and I’ll see what we can do.

Now, another circle back, the team name. When Sarah came up with it, I know it was out of respect and I really do appreciate it but being a disabled individual, sometimes I get unwanted attention or respect. What I mean by this- I want to be just one of the guys. Not necessarily the inspiration. For those of you not in this position will think that sounds like a jerk thing to say, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I totally understand the respect and I appreciate that. Its just sometimes how I feel. Now that I got that off my chest, I am so thankful for this name now. I truly feel this is my team. We are now a family. We all get along with each other. In between games we are all together hanging out, not going our separate ways. This makes me so proud to call this group my kids lol. I don’t know how that works for Lyle since he’s way older than me, sorry-- I had to.

Before I end this, I want to reiterate the 3 life lessons. 1. The simple one, don’t make payment until you receive the goods. B. Don’t be afraid of chasing your happiness. I knew I wasn't happy when it started so I made the right moves to get me there. Along the way I might have made a few people upset and for that I am truly sorry. Now I'm not saying forget everyone else, do you-- no, you should always be nice to others but sometimes you have to worry about your own feelings too and make adjustments. Just try to do it in a honorable way and be sure to apologize if feelings are hurt. III. Family. Its the greatest thing we have. They’re the ones that will be there the most when you need them. Don’t be afraid to have multiple families. I do. I have 3 and I love them all. Thank you guys for becoming part of my family. I can’t wait to win our first championship this summer. No pressure lol.

I’ll be back next with who knows. Hopefully my Avs can bounce back and win the next 3 games. Everyone have a good first weekend of May and don't forget to watch the Kentucky Derby.

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