GOING THE DISTANCE
Passion or Payment ? Thoughts on the Name , Image , Likeness Policy
by LORI CALOIA , MD
As a little girl , I fell in love with softball the first time I stepped foot on a diamond . Watching my older sister play on her T-ball team , I wanted to be part of the action . Her coaches ( one was my dad ) were kind enough to humor me , and even showed me the proper form for throwing , catching and batting . At that time , there were not a lot of options for softball . So I attended a baseball camp every summer where , in addition to other skills , I learned how to run bases and mastered every type of slide ( for those of you who are not familiar , there are many types : head-first slide , pop-up slide and my ultimate favorite and trademark , the slide-by where you run around the player with the ball and sneak your hand onto the base while avoiding the tag ).
My sister , four years older , was relentless . When we played catch , she never let up and threw the ball at me as hard as she could . Looking back , I will never know if she was punishing me for being a forever tag-along or if she saw something in me and was trying to push me to be better . Little did she know that she was creating a future collegiate athlete by putting me through my paces . As young as 8 years old , I knew I wanted to be a pitcher . At that time , it was slow-pitch , so my dad went to task creating a pitcher ’ s mound in the back yard with a home plate and I would spend part of each day pitching into a bucket to try to master this skill . A few years later , I was introduced to fastpitch softball , and my efforts to excel at slow pitch were transferred to a new type of skill — the windmill pitch . I studied the older girls who were already playing fastpitch . I attended a fastpitch camp , where I learned the basics of windmill pitching and set about attacking this new feat .
8 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE