Western softball senior Tatum Dow didn’t start playing the sport until she was in high school.
She also hated softball at first.
Until her first year of high school, Dow had been a baseball player.
Coming from a big baseball family, she started with T-ball, playing with one of her cousins, and just kept going from there.
“I continued to play baseball and continued to keep up with the boys and just rolled with it,” Dow said.
The hardest thing about playing with the boys was also what she enjoyed the most. It brought a need to succeed that both consumed and fueled Dow as it only got harder being the only girl on the team.
“I was constantly trying to prove myself and that I can play with the boys,” Dow said. “It was a constant pressure to succeed, but that also made it that much better when I did succeed.”
Her grandfather founded Dow Baseball Club, a select program in Redmond, so baseball was what she knew.
She was still playing summer league baseball the summer after her freshman year, but it was that summer she realized how much harder it was getting to keep up.
Dow’s sophomore year of high school is when she completely dropped baseball and made the full switch to softball after playing both as a freshman.
“I grew up around the park, I grew up at the games, I just thought it was totally normal,” Dow said of playing baseball. “It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school where I realized I was kind of getting to that age where it’s a little weird and the boys start getting way stronger than the girls.”
Making the transition from baseball to softball was a little difficult. She said overcoming the mental part of a similar, but new, sport was challenging.
“After that tryout, I came home and bawled my eyes out,” she said. “I thought softball was so much harder and was never going to be good at it. It felt so different, but realistically the only thing that’s different is the size of the field.”
Once Dow adjusted to the speed of the game, she said she was fine. She started every single game at shortstop all four years of high school.
“My skills weren’t the issue,” Dow said. “The mentality of the switch was the hardest part.”
Right after high school, Dow attended and played softball at Seattle University, but realized it wasn’t a good fit for her.
She considered quitting softball altogether at that point until the coaches at Bellevue College took a chance on her.
Dow said continuing to play at Bellevue College was the best decision in the world for her and eventually led her to the Western Washington University softball team.
The Vikings started their 2022 campaign in early February, hoping to defend their Great Northwest Athletic Conference title.
Dow said while winning obviously makes the season more fun, she’s really just looking for one last good year.
“It is the last time I’ll be playing sports competitively,” she said. “I’m hoping to grow more relationships with these girls because I know those are the things I’ll take with me after I’m gone, not just the wins and losses.”
The Vikings are off to a 5-11 start to their 2022 season.
Western is in action this Friday at home against Western Oregon University for a doubleheader starting at noon. The Vikings are also hosting Saint Martin’s University in a doubleheader Sunday at noon.
