Third Strike Rule

Hail Mary

Viv slinks behind her family as they weave through the crowd of people outside the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Today was the home opener for the USC Trojans and they're playing University of Oklahoma. It had been talked about of ESPN and just about every sports channel for the past two weeks. Seeing the previous year's Heisman winner go head to head with the years front runner was exciting. For whatever reason everyone was freaking out that USC, the College Football Champions from the last season were playing OU who barely got a bid for the playoffs just to lose to Alabama in the semi-finals. For Viv it was just her brother playing her sisters boyfriend and really just felt like a hyped up Christmas morning.

She sighs and thinks about how anxious CJ had been the night before. He was pacing her room asking her for advice, which was his first problem. Viv really just said smoke and blunt and go to sleep. CJ didn't take it very well...

The twins had always gotten along and were actually a lot closer than anyone expected. But they grew up with the same expectations. They were both expected to be carbon copies of their parents with just as much talent if not more. They would go to Viv's volleyball tournaments on Saturday morning and then to CJ's baseball games at night. Then CJ started playing football and Viv started losing interest in sports probably due to her helicopter parents. She also started getting anxious hearing people compare her to her mom who had literally become the best and most influential volleyball player in the world.

Everyone knew who Kat Bledsoe was and everyone knew who she was when she became Kat Yelich. Viviana first got scared of becoming her mom when someone made a video that had film of her mom playing in college right next to Viv playing in high school. That's when she made the change to beach volleyball and luckily for her CJ became a good enough football and baseball player to take up all of her dad's time so, she only had to deal with her mom.

Kat, had more or less given up on her daughter becoming the next Kat Bledsoe. Kat Yelich had struck out twice with her daughters. Her first, Zana was the perfect child. Never did anything wrong, always showed up early, was kind, smart and made good choices and had dated the perfect boy for years. Zana was basically Kat if Kat had never made bad choices. Except, Zana could barely walk and chew gun. That was a dramatic difference compared to Viviana Yelich who could just a 38 inch vertical in sand, could probably keep up with the track team and had one of the best minds for volleyball that Kat had ever seen. Kat had said in multiple interviews that she had no doubt the Viv was ten times the player she was.

And that's where they ran into problems. Viv knew she was talented enough to not have to try to be good. So she didn't. She often skipped practices and slept through workouts. She partied a lot and used her status on the volleyball team to get her places. Kat feared her daughter actually wanted nothing to do with volleyball and they had forced her to do something the didn't want to do and now Viv resented her parents for that.

Viv didn't resent her parents she loved them, but she did hate that she was never good enough. Especially for her dad who was always saying how proud he was of CJ and Zana, but always said 'you did good, but you could do better' to Viv. Never in her life had she heard her dad say he was proud of her. She had gone through her whole life trying to please her dad who just never seemed pleased.

"Viviana, my second favorite Yelich!" Kathryn Mayfield yells as the Yelich clan files into the suite her mom and dad had bought for the season.

Viv smiles seeing her godmother who had been such an amazing role model in her life. Kathryn Mayfield is part of the reason she never gave up on volleyball. Because while her mom may have been the best player Kathryn was the player who had the most to learn from. Viv had always loved spending time with Baker and Kathryn and even though her and Lena were at odds she still stayed in close contact with the Mayfields. She kinds had to considering Kathryn was her and CJ's godmother and Baker was Zana's godfather and Kat and Christian were godparents to McCoy.