Kenci Faith '20 Recruiting Profile

By having a mother as an active duty soldier I've accepted the fact that I won't have the "typical" life growing up as a teenager. Though there are things about the life as an Army Brat I hate, there are also advantages. The lessons about sacrifice and hard work will benefit me for the rest of not only high school but the rest of my life. Then there is high school softball. My family and I have been stationed at Fort Knox for the last 3 years with 2017 being our last before we move to our next duty station in Hawaii where I will eventually graduate. Since Fort Knox High School is so small they allow girls as young as 7th graders to play Varsity softball. I started school at Fort Knox Middle School in 2015 and was fortunate for the opportunity to try-out at such a high level early on. I had only played two seasons of rec-league softball prior to coming here but was lucky to be around the game all my life with a father that owned a batting cage and coached travel ball.  I tried out and made the varsity team as just a 7th grader. With the help from my dad and my head coach I was able to not only make the team but I started at 3rd base for the varsity team before moving to short stop half way through that season. My first two years I was either the starting short stop or for a short period the starting 3rd baseman for every game. Because I attend a school that has only Army kids our turn over rate for our athletic programs are very high. Normally families spend only 3 years here before they move again. Plus our teams purely have to get lucky that families that move in even have kids old enough to play. It's hard to develop any consistency which makes it hard to even compete some years. On top of that I play in the state of Kentucky which does not separate high schools into classifications. Fort Knox is the size of a 2A school in most other states and plays in a district with only 4A and 5A size schools. That makes competing even harder. It becomes frustrating when, because you are run ruled more often than other programs we would receive fewer at bats per game and season. My head coach before retiring last year had been the head coach here for over 20 years so he understood the limitations and also knew how to develop young players and do it quickly better than most. I was also very lucky to have had my dad join the coaching staff and had him there with me throughout my first years playing high school ball. My first two years our team was more than competitive and actually won more those first 2 years of mine than they had in over 20. After my first 2 years my coach retired and my dad also left to spend more time attending my brothers baseball games. This year was my 3rd and final year at Fort Knox and the program began with an entire new coaching staff that included a new head coach for the first time in over 20 years. That new coach lasted only 4 games and was fired because of concerns parents and players had over how he was treating us and represented the the team as our leader. We ended up with the assistant coach being asked to finish the season with a couple of volunteer dads.  Our coaching staff even though I loved them had no experience coaching at this level. On top of that we returned only 5 players from the entire roster from a season ago. Only 2 of us were starters. We had 7 new starters and started a 7th grader, two 8th graders, me being the only freshman, one sophomore and 2 seniors with only one with varsity experience. The 7th grader and one 8th grader had no softball experience at all, plus our bench was only 4 deep and 3 of those had no experience as well.  It was tough for not only new coaches but ones that had no experience in developing players. We also lost our pitcher of the last three seasons due to graduating but returned our JV pitcher. She was the only pitcher with any game experience and was also a senior.  She was injured after our third game this season and wound up missing the rest of the year. I was the only player on the team that had at least a couple of lessons on how to pitch. I had never pitched in a game though, not even in rec ball. My dad taught me how to play the infield and because I loved it so much pitching was never something I wanted to try.  This is were being an Army brat and learning the importance of sacrifice helped me out so much. I didn't want to spend an entire season losing game experience at short, but sacrificed and was willing to do it for the team. My dad however spent time with me and continued hitting me grounders in our spare time. Two games into my final year here as the new starting pitcher and with 20 games left on the schedule I began having back pain. I didn't want to tell my parents because I thought they may hold me out of games. So I kept it from them. I eventually told my dad because I didn't want it to be something that I was worsening the injury even further. I went to a specialist and was diagnosed with an upper back strain and was told that rest is what was needed. At that point I still had 15 games remaining so even though my dad would have rather me not play anymore the doctor said that she would clear me since she believed it couldn't worsen and that my pain tolerance would be the deciding factor on whether I could continue or not. I pitched 8 games in a row after that and the coaches did everything they could to teach one of our players how to pitch during those 8 games.  After those 8 games because of the pain they sat me and started the other girl. I tried pitching a couple of times again but because of the motion in my delivery it made the pain worse. So I ended up missing 4 games this year for rest but finished out the season back at short stop.  It was a tough season for myself as well as my teammates and we ended the year with a 3-23 record. Being as young as we were as a team and losing so many plus having to play injured the entire season it limited my at bats from 81 as a 7th grader and a team leading 101 as an 8th grader to just 37 total at bats this year. My first two years at Fort Knox taught me many things about the game like how to hit to all parts of the field, how to hit for power and also small ball. I learned how to play short stop against much older and much more experienced softball players. I learned the importance of the mental side of the game and how to control my emotions and how to compete in close games. My dad never stops teaching new things about the game and my mother is the one who taught me the most about sacrifice, which made a huge impact, not necessarily on the beginning of this final season but how I finished it. My conclusion is that the sacrifices my family has made being apart of the military has taught me so many lessons outside of the game of softball but wound up helping anyhow in every aspect of the game. Being apart of that type of family you must always do things for your own positive growth, for example of how important it is to develop my personal game as an infielder this season.  But ultimately the only goal of playing on a team is and always will be the development and progress of the team. Though chasing state championships would have been great for me (especially my dad) here at Fort Knox the one thing I would not sacrifice that opportunity for would be the lessons learned that will make me a better person and teammate some day for whatever school wants me.  The opportunity to attend a school that not only allows girls as young as 7th graders to play varsity ball, and too often relies on them, has been a huge blessing not only because of every aspect of the game I've learned just being apart of it but I also have already played in roughly 90 extra games and have had roughly 250  more plate appearances than a large majority of soon to be sophomore high school softball players.  This year because of missing games for the first time while on varsity and because of injury and due to the lack of  team experience we had that led to the amount of games that were shortened because of run rule, all of my numbers went down with the plate appearances as the biggest drop.  Also having to move back to lead off because of the number of players we lost from last year my runs batted in fell dramatically.  I plan on my production being back at the same or higher as my first two years at Fort Knox, next season. I hate to sound if as I am full of myself and I bring up my productivity and numbers and what I have been able to accomplish at such a young age and do so very successfully, for only one purpose only, and that's to be able to be noticed in order to have a chance at a scholarship. I hope that I sound more teammate goal oriented than I have seemed to be to high on my self. I dream of one day playing college softball and have the dedication and drive to improve my game in order to  get to that level. Most importantly I understand the sacrifices I must make to become good enough. In high school you want to be lucky enough to join a team good enough already to win a state championship without having two work very hard to get it and then in college you want to be lucky enough to be recruited and attend a school already good enough to win a national title. Moving to my next high school in Hawaii, as a sophomore I will bring the experience, work ethic, drive and leadership to wherever it may be to help accomplish the goals of winning championships, regardless of if they are already good enough or not.  After high school, if fortunate enough to play in college, I will work even harder in my progression as a teammate and player.