Better Than They Could Be — By Tommy Purser

The good wife didn’t make it to a Jeff Davis High School softball game this year. I urged her to go. “They are really, really good,” I told her. “You don’t know what your’re missing.”
Well, it’s too late now. She will never know what she missed. The girls won the state championship over the weekend and they are the pride of Jeff Davis County.
Obviously, this was a talented group of young ladies. They were good hitters, they had excellent pitching, their defense was superb, and they ran the bases with speed and smarts.
They were so enjoyable to watch. Not simply because of their talents, but moreso because of the intensity with which they played. The fervor, to put it a different way. The determination and their refusing to lose.
To say they played with heart is an understatement.
But that’s what it takes to be champions. You can’t just rely on talent. You’ve got to be committed to the task at hand.
Former Jeff Davis football coach, the late Buddy Bennett, had a favorite expression. He’d say about a player, “He jumped higher than he could jump,” or “He ran faster than he could run.”
Oh, Buddy would have loved this bunch of young ladies who gave meaning to his favorite expression.
Because of their hearts, they were “better than they could be.”