I don't think I've ever met an individual that enjoys losing. It's inevitable in all games that at its end, one team will be crowned with a victory, and the other sent back to their rooms to think about every single moment of the game. You never hope that your team comes up short, but when it happens you certainly hope to have a team like this.

After driving to the field and witnessing Tennessee doing their very formal hitting drills, we unpacked our vans, and headed casually to our dugout like we always do. We have this tradition, a game in fact, where we hit whiffle balls in the outfield to get our bats going — a game rightfully called "Deny." If a pop up goes into the outfield, the girls have to swat the ball down to the ground and yell "deny" to the hitter as if calling them out. At the end of each hitting session the player gets one chance to hit a taped whiffle ball, "Thumper" as far as they can.

You wouldn't believe how hard these girls try to hit him and sometimes in their quest to do so, they end up either completely missing Thumper, or smashing the ball to another country. The Tennessee fans watching us shared a couple giggles as they watched us all in anticipation when Thumper was "on deck" to be thrown. They actually started quietly cheering when someone hit him far.

It is one thing to lose to a good team, but it is another thing to lose and know you could've done better. Our efforts tonight were well intentioned — our "out of character" errors on the field cost us some runs and as they capitalized on those errors, we struggled at the plate. We left the field knowing that days like this happen, but we weren't satisfied with that.

It was a quiet ride back to the hotel with an occasional comment about the game, or even a tiny vent from a player who was disappointed in their performance, but it was when we got back to the hotel that my senior counterpart, Tyleen Tausaga and I realized what an amazing team we were a part of.

Coach Bob had ordered a whole bunch of Chinese food for dinner and as we all congregated in the lobby to eat, the team brought out their cards and started talking together again and laughing as if nothing had gone wrong. It wasn't that we all weren't upset about the game, it's just that being together was way more important. The van rides had gotten the game out of their system and as Ty and I sat and watched this happening, she pointed out how incredible this team was to be so together after such a disappointing game.

Days like this unfortunately happen in this game and to be consistent is seriously hard to do. The girls' know this and as great of a pitcher as their ace is, our team saw a lot of her today and are excited for another opportunity to face her again.

That's the great thing about this bunch of girls, they never stop trying. They know to linger in something like one loss, will never get us ready for the next day and though the game didn't go the way we wanted it to, the day ended happily together rather than individually dwelled upon about all the things that couldn't be changed.