This summer was going to be the best summer ever. I had it all planned out. We were leaving for Chattanooga, Tennessee in two weeks, to play softball. I was excited because my birthday was on the championship game day of the softball tournament. I thought this was meant to be, we were supposed to win this. Winning this tournament would be the best birthday present ever.

I was about to turn fourteen. My parents asked me every day, what I wanted for my birthday. I told them I wanted to win the tournament. I really wanted to win. My parents wanted us to win, too, because we were playing at a show case tournament. That’s where all the college scouts go to watch girls play softball and maybe even offer a scholarship to players they are interested in.

The summer was going along just great, but that was before I learned something I should’ve never found out. It all started when I walked outside and my mom pointed at the door and said, “go back inside I must make an important phone call!”

I listened to my mom and left. I was about to go back outside when I heard my mom say, “Thanks Robin she will love this!” I wondered why my mom was talking to the softball team mom. I knew something was going on and I wanted to find out, but I wish I never did.

After she was done with the phone call I walked outside and said, “Did that have anything to do with my birthday?” She had a huge grin on her face. I knew something was going on and it had to do with my birthday.
Later, I needed to get my notebook out of the car. I found my notebook but James, my brother, and I have the same notebook so I opened it to make sure it was mine. When I opened the notebook, I saw all the plans for my surprise party. I wanted my mom to know that I knew about the party, but I didn’t want to tell her because she would be upset that I found out.

A week went by and a girl on my team called me and asked if she could stay in our cabin with us for the tournament. I asked my mom and she said yes.  I told Saylor, the girl that plays on my team, that she could stay with us.

The week went by so fast that it was already the day before we were leaving for Tennessee. Saylor came over the night before we left because we were waking up at 6AM. The car ride took ten hours. Saylor and I sat in the back seat of my dad’s truck. My dad drove and my brother was in the front seat. We got there on Monday night. My Mom would be driving up the next day because she had to work.

We unpacked all our things in the cabin we rented. The team had rented cabins on a hill. The cabins were separated into big cabins and little cabins. My family was in the big cabins, but we had the least number of bedrooms then any of the other cabins. Half the team was in the big cabins and the other half in the little cabins. The walk to get to the cabins was over three hills and took seven minutes, but it took a lot of work going up those steep hills. To get to the other cabins you had to go through a trail in the back of a person’s backyard, but she person was friendly. After we went through her backyard you had to go up three hills and you made it to the other cabins. The drive was longer than the walk. The drive took about 15 minutes.

The walk took a lot of work so the team decided that we would make a trail so we wouldn’t have to go up any hills. We made a trail that took us an hour to make. After we were done we all checked for tics. No one had any. After we were done checking for tics we all went back to our cabins to go to bed. To get to my cabin you had to walk past a hot tub and climb up stairs. When you walked in the cabin door the kitchen was on the left. The bedroom and the bathroom were straight and stairs on the right. The stairs lead to Saylor and my room. We had our own loft upstairs. A king bed a half bathroom, and a table we could eat at. We were basically separate from down stairs. 

The next day we had a game at eight. We always have to be at the fields 1 hour and 15 minutes early, which meant we had to be at the fields at 6:45am. The fields were an hour away from the cabins. So, we had to wake up at five o’clock. We got up, got dressed went down stairs to eat breakfast and left for the game.  We won our first game and we were off to a great start. We had a game straight after that and we  lost. Our record for the first day was 1-1. Not so bad. My mom arrived later that night.

The next day we went to a waterfall. It was a tourist attraction for Tennessee. The waterfall was pretty. Saylor and I took a lot of pictures. Half way through the path we ran into Racheal another girl on my team. We went to the café after we finished looking at everything and got Dipping Dots. We left the waterfall and went back to the cabins to play cornhole. The sun was starting to go down so we went back into our cabins.

We had a game at ten am and five pm the next day. We played the first game and left to go out to eat before our second game and got lunch. We played the second game and won. We won both the games for the day, are record for the week so far was 3-1. The next day we had one game the game was at 7pm. We made plans to go down to a cliff and jump off it. We drove down to the bottom of a hill and there was a cliff that said No jumping, but jumped anyways. It was so much fun. The players, including me, weren’t allowed to jump of the fifty-foot cliff. We were only allowed to jump of the 30-foot cliff.  One of the Dad’s jumped of a fifty-foot cliff.  He didn’t get hurt or cut himself because the water was thirty feet deep. We were having so much fun. We went up to the cabins to get  ready for the game. We  won that game. Our record was 4-1 for the seating part of the tournament. We were placed in the highest bracket you could be put in.

We had the next day off so we went white water rafting. I went with three other girls on my team, this was my favorite thing in Chattanooga. I was in the back of the raft with a girl on my team name Charlotte. The parents sat in the middle of the raft. Our group had my Dad and Coach Sean who’s the head coach, Charlotte’s dad. In the very front was Makenna and Hayley. We went over a lot of rapids. At the end of the white water rafting, we switched spots Charlotte and I went in the front. Makenna and Hayley in the back. I had a lot of fun this was my favorite thing we did in Tennessee. We dried ourselves of and headed back for the cabins.

After we got back to the cabins it was time for my surprise birthday party, but it really wasn’t a surprise I had figured out my mom was planning it. When we got to the cabins there were balloons everywhere and a big cake that had my name written on it. When I got out of the car all the girls on my team were waiting for me, and all of them said surprise. My mom asked me if I was surprised and I told her the story of how I found out. She was upset that I found out. Then she told me how the party was going to proceed.

The party was an Amazing Race party, it’s from the TV show. It’s were you are paired up with one person you have no idea who it is. You race around the world doing activities. The game is divided up into legs. The last team to finish a leg gets eliminated except if it’s a non-eliminating leg. My mom and I watched the show together a lot. That’s why she threw a party like this.

We were getting ready to start the race. We put everyone’s name in a bowl and picked two names out at once and they were partners. I got partnered with Kaylin. After all the teams were picked we went to the starting line. The first activity your partner had to put on a diaper and run around a pole five times with a binky in their mouth. The next one we had to  find a bag that had our names on it. Kaylin found hers, but I couldn’t find mine so my dad threw the bag at me. He was sitting on it. The bags had puzzle pieces in them. Both puzzles were dinosaurs. There was a letter in the bag, that stated after you complete this activity run to Olivia’s cabin then go upstairs. So, Kaylin and I did just that. When we got to the top of the stairs, there was one team ahead of us. There was a table with two drinks on it one was filled with pickle juice and the other with olive oil. I got the olive oil, and Kaylin got the pickle juice. The team before us one of them had spit there drink out and got a two-minute penalty. We got ahead of them and were in first place. The next one we had to make five baskets in a row. Kaylin and I finished that activity fast. We had a big lead and it was the last activity. You had to run down the hill and back. Kaylin isn’t one of the fastest on the team, but we managed to beat all the other girls. We got first place.

After all the girls sang Happy Birthday to me and then they went back to their cabins. We had a game the next day and it was the day before the championship game day. If we won that game we would’ve stayed another day, but sadly we lost and got kicked out of the tournament. I had a great time in Tennessee, but I would’ve liked it more if I had never found out about my party.