Inside Pitch: 2025 Extra Elite 100 C/IF Emma Knight… Looking Back at 2020, Ahead to 2021

Texas Bombers Gold-Crabtree’s Emma Knight, #15 in the 2025 Extra Elite 100, will be blogging about her softball adventures for Extra Inning Softball this season.

She helped Impact Gold National 07-Smith to a 3^rd place finish at the 2017 PGF 10U Premier Nationals and to the 2018 PGF 10U Premier national title in 2018. Her consistently exceptional play in big-game situations is a big reason why the C/1B/3B is considered one of the top 2025 prospects in the nation.

Click HERE to see Emma Knight’s Extra Star Power feature!

Emma took time out to talk about what a wild ride 2020 has been.

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I wasn’t sure what to write about in my first blog, but because it’s the end of the year I thought I would just kind of recap what has been a very different year.

Going into last spring, my team was super pumped. We had a great group and were so excited to go hard into our last run at 12U. We were entered in the Colorado Sparkler, PGF and a lot of other big events.

We were sure it was going to be our year.

Needless to say, by March all those plans changed. Everyone’s school shut down, all the tournaments were canceled or postponed and the whole world was different. We couldn’t even use our fields to practice. It was just like all of a sudden everything we had done for so long was not allowed anymore. It was so disappointing.

We weren’t able to stay bummed for too long, though. Our coach, Cassie Crabtree, is just amazing. She is the most positive, enthusiastic, energetic person I’ve ever known. The week that all our schools and everything shut down, she started a daily Zoom workout for us every morning. And then would have a hitting or defense workout every afternoon.

We did this five days a week! It was so great to see almost our entire team show up to these workouts every day, even if you could only see them over Zoom. I think it really brought all of us closer as a team. I know there’s not many coaches that put that kind of time into their team.

Cassie loves coaching and loves helping us get better. She never says no to extra work or helping us in any way. I love her being my coach and I know she only wants the best for me.

When tournaments were finally able to start up again, we played a lot. It was pretty clear that we weren’t going to be able to do all the traveling we had planned, so we tried to play as many big tournaments around our area as we could.

We still went to Oklahoma, Austin, Houston and a lot of other places, but nowhere you had to fly. It was a bummer having to miss Colorado and Cali, but we were just glad to get to play!

We mainly played 14U and 16U this summer. We definitely had some bumps along the way, but we also definitely got better. We finished up this fall and did really good for our first year in 14U.

We are all super excited and can’t wait to start up again for spring. We are planning on going to Colorado and a bunch of other big tournaments next summer, so I’m definitely keeping my fingers crossed!!

We’re taking some time off now from tournaments, and a lot of us are playing basketball for our schools. While softball will always be my #1, I love playing basketball too. My basketball team has had a great start this year and I’m super excited to see how we do the rest of the season. This is my last year of Junior High and I absolutely can’t wait to get to play sports for my high school next year!

As far as softball goes, Cassie has set up some workouts for us over the winter and we will get together for some team workouts over the winter as well. Like I said, she LOVES softball, and if you play for her you better LOVE it too!

I’m still working out and hitting on my own several times every week. I always try to get in around 500 swings a week. I really love hitting so it’s not like it’s really “work” to me.

I was lucky enough to be selected for the Team USA program, and we have our first games right after New Year’s, so I definitely want to stay ready.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year! I’m really looking forward to 2021! *fingers crossed*❤️

— Emma Knight #14