TATAY'S TEAM, SELECT BALL TROUBLES

In Book One of The Kindness Krew series, JoAhn Reyes and her three best friends made the travel softball team together. That was the goal. That was the whole plan.

Nobody told them what came after.

Select Ball Troubles opens on the first day of practice with Coach Anderson, whose clipboard and whistle come without explanations, patience, or chalk quotes on the fence. JoAhn is the team's slapper, which means she hits left-handed, runs before she finishes her swing, and is supposed to reach any pitch on the outside corner. She cannot. Her crossover step has been wrong for the whole season, her toes pointing toward the pitcher, her shoulders closing off the outside part of the plate. She trained the wrong thing in without knowing it. Ten thousand reps of the wrong thing.

Nobody fixes ten thousand wrong reps in a single practice. Nobody fixes them in a week. Arnold, the hitting coach who has seen this before, gives her a borrowed batting tee and sends her home with an instruction: ten reps tonight, ten tomorrow, toes toward third base, outside corner, every night until the tournament. Not a hundred reps. Ten. Done slowly enough that the body might start to remember.

Around her, the Krew navigates a roster full of girls who have known each other longer, a team dynamic that doesn't automatically include newcomers, and the specific difficulty of staying kind when kindness isn't what anyone is evaluating. Avery faces FUD on the mound. Madisyn learns when to speak and when to stay back. Brenna discovers what it means to hold a position under pressure. They don't always do it right. They don't always do it wrong.

JoAhn's grandfather sends her a word from home: tiyaga. Filipino for the patience that works while it waits. Not the patience of sitting still. The patience of planting ten reps tonight, ten tomorrow, in ground you cannot see yet, and with a harvest you cannot name.

The Kindness Krew goes wherever kindness goes. This time, that's a travel ball tournament, a borrowed tee, and two hours until the final.

She is exactly where she is supposed to be.