L’s club coach sent an email to everyone this afternoon before the evening’s practice. One passage really stood out:

Quite a few of our fellow Excell coaches sang the praises of your girls at the tournament this past weekend mentioning how far they have come already, how much better they are getting in skill, game knowledge, teamwork, and in some of the ‘intangibles’ they as athletes have to develop on their own. This is a direct result of how hard they have worked so far and how much they have wanted to learn.

That outsiders (so to speak — they coach for the same club but different teams and often only see our girls playing at tournaments) see the change in our girls’ team is very encouraging.