Florida-commit Layla Lamar, #3 in the 2024 Extra Elite 100, has been rehabbing a knee injury this fall, but that hasn’t stopped her from being with her Lady Dukes-Lamar teammates … and from blogging for Extra Inning Softball.
Layla will blog about all her adventures with the Lady Dukes this fall and share them with us.
You can also read a profile on her we did titled: Layla Lamar… Great Bloodlines For One of the Best Talents In the Nation.
Here’s the latest with Layla including a successful trip to South Carolina and an encounter with a TV star…
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LADY DUKES RECAP: WEEKEND 2
This weekend looked a little bit different for me, but still it was so much fun as always!
On Friday afternoon, the team arrived in Spartanburg, SC, to practice and prepare for the PGF Diamond Directional Invitational.
For me, my role as a “student-athlete” really became a reality this weekend. This past week was the end of my quarter in my first year of high school, so on Friday I got my first taste of high school “End of Unit” finals and tests!
Fun right?
Therefore, I wasn’t able to be at practice on Friday and I got to South Carolina on Saturday just in time to catch the last game! The whole ride up to SC my mom and I had Athletes Go Live on our iPad and we were yelling and cheering the whole way! It was nice to see some live action once we finally got there.
When I got out of the car, I felt so good and ready to get on the field, it was almost like I forgot about my injury. I have been rehabbing my knee very hard every day of the week and I definitely cannot wait to get back on the field.
But my role this weekend was once again the “Concession Stands Girl” and the “Ball Girl.”
I walked up to the field as fast as I could, and immediately connected the speaker before the last game of the day on Saturday. The team looked a little tired, so I had to pump them up. Honestly, once we got the music going and started joking around, I’m pretty sure the whole park knew the Lady Dukes were there!
In the middle of our warm-ups, one of my friends, Kennedy Powell, walked up to me and asked me if I watched a popular Netflix series called “The Outer Banks.” I was a little confused why she was asking me this, but I responded by saying, “Yes.” I mean, who didn’t watch the show during quarantine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC68w9tvv6I
She sort of paused and looked at me with a big smile and at this point I had no idea where this was going … but then she asked me if the team and I wanted to meet Jonathan Daviss (“Pope”), a main character in the series who was played by her cousin!
I looked at her with the biggest eyes and immediately ran over to the team, who were hitting off the tees and told them that we could meet Pope from The Outer Banks.
If you could have seen how fast everyone dropped their bats, it was like the flip of a light switch! It was such a cool experience to meet a celebrity at a softball tournament!
Unfortunately, we did not get a team picture with him, but here is The Outer Banks star and me!
Here are some of the girls taking pictures & videos with Jonathan Daviss.
Everyone took all of this great energy and excitement right into our last game of the day . This game meant something special to us as this was the only team who blanked us last season. Like I’ve said before, it’s going to take something special to beat us twice, and we proved that!
We came out of this game with a 6-0 win. I feel like this game everyone felt like we accomplished something. Last season when the team blanked us, Coach Robert (“Pops”) Young told us that some games you just have to “tip your hat to the pitcher,” but make sure they could never blank you again.
That’s exactly what we did and we came into this game with a way better and hungry attitude and I think that set the tone for the games to come on Sunday.
Sunday was a super early morning. Everyone was at the field by 7 a.m. It was 38 degrees when we first got out of the car and it had been a long time since I’ve been at the field while it was that cold, so it took me a while to get used to it!
The girls were fine after they got through warming up and everyone had their jackets off ready to play. Sunday was a pretty long day, we played three back-to-back games. It was elimination day, so there was no room to afford a loss. Everyone played very hard and I think the highlight of this weekend was definitely the offense.
The team hit nine home runs in two days (Aminah Vegah: 4, Ana Gold: 2, Jada Baker: 2, Kairi Rodriguez: 1). It was unreal and a super cool experience to be a part of and be able to watch!
The last game on Sunday we played the Carolina Cardinals. At the end of this game, we didn’t have enough fresh arms to keep us in the game. I think that we learned from this and realized that we have to capitalize on every opportunity we get to score on offense, so that it can make up for any errors or shortcomings we may have on defense.
After this loss, our time in South Carolina came to an end.
Overall we had a great weekend, we learned a lot, we finished up 4-2 and I cannot wait to see everyone back in North Carolina in a few weeks to practice and prepare for our next tournament, Champions!
— Layla Lamar, Lady Dukes 18U – Lamar
