My name is Dawson Fletcher, and I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My father is from here as well and my mother was born in Indiana. I do not remember much of my early childhood, but I started walking at around twelve months old and was very active and communicative. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I lived with my parents and my brother growing up. My brother is about four and a half years older than me. 

I used to have really bad allergies as a kid and that is kind of like the first memory that I have. I had to go get allergy tests regularly because I would throw up everything. I feel like I only remember it because they used to do skin testing on my back and it was painful. I was allergic to eggs, milk and peanuts but I do not have any allergies anymore. 

Other than that I really can’t remember very much before I was five years old. I know that I was happy though. All my immediate family lived together in a big house. We had a big yard and a big driveway that I used to play in. My life was great. 

Then, when I was around seven years old, my parents got divorced. I don’t think I fully realized what was going on at the time but I was still sad because my mom went to stay at my grandma’s house for a while. My brother and I spent time over there and with my dad. My dad could not afford the house on his own so we had to put it up for sale. 

After all of this, my parents tried to make it work between them again. We bought a new house just down the street from our old one, and we all still lived together. I think they tried to stay together for me and my brother’s sake, but they were better off apart because they argued all the time. My mom kept the house and my dad ended up buying a house on the other side of town. Both of them still live in these houses today. 

While all of this was going on, my brother and I were both playing baseball. My dad got me started in tee-ball when I was four. Then I started coach pitch at seven and kid pitch at nine. I got on my first travel team at nine as well. We played in a good amount of tournaments and I had a great year. This is when I started getting serious about baseball. 

The next season, I went up to division 1. Our team was really good and I enjoyed the tournaments but I didn’t get as much playing time. I played fine but I wasn’t near the best player on the team so my confidence definitely went down. It was still fun though because I was really close with the team. I do not talk to any of them today though. 

For the next three years, I played for my dad because we had started a team. It was back in division three so it wasn’t as serious. These were my favorite years of baseball because my teammates were great and I was one of the best players there. Some of my favorite moments in life are from baseball. 

During the middle of my age thirteen season, which was summer 2020, I had to have ankle surgery. I was born with an extra bone around my ankles and it was causing my tendons to tear. I had surgery on the other one in December of 2020. I didn’t get to play sports for a full year. 

Not playing sports or doing anything active for that long kind of made me depressed. I didn’t even go to school that year, so basically all I did was lay down at home. Getting back was tough. It was a lot harder than I imagined it was going to be. I had forgotten how to walk at first. After 3 months of physical therapy for each one, I was able to fully walk again and shortly after that I could run and do physical activities. 

Basketball was the other sport that I played at the time, and when I got back that’s what I opted to play. Baseball season was already about over when I got cleared to play again anyway. So I played freshman basketball season, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. I didn’t get a lot of playing time, which was unusual because I had started in every year previous. All of that time off kind of ruined basketball for me. 

This year, I decided to quit basketball. I’m coming back to baseball instead. I’m enjoying baseball much more so far than basketball, but I will have to see how this season goes. I’ve taken so much time off that I’m just trying to get the basics down again. 

Now on to basketball. I started playing basketball much later than baseball, as I was in 4th grade. I was pretty terrible my first year, but basically everyone was. I was still a starter. In 5th grade I was decent but didn’t shoot very much in games. During 6th grade is when I began to actually get serious about basketball. I was starting to get better at basketball than I was at baseball. 

7th grade basketball was probably my favorite season of any sport I’ve played. I averaged around ten points per game and I was a top three player on the team. We had a pretty solid team that year but we played horribly in the first tournament game and we lost. This was also when I started having bad ankle problems. I could barely walk after every practice and game. 

So, like I stated previously, I had surgery in the middle of baseball season the next year. I missed my 8th grade basketball season which was hard on me. I decided to quit baseball because I didn’t think I could catch up to pitch speeds after so much time off. 

Other than sports, my life has pretty much just been focused on school. I try my hardest to get all A’s in school. 8th grade I had like three B’s if I remember right because it was online school and it was terrible, but other than that I had all A’s up through elementary and middle school. Last year I had a pretty good school year. I finished with all A’s but had one B during the second quarter. 

Last summer I had my first job. I wasn’t actually on schedule or anything, but I helped my uncle do land service work. He just started this business on the side last spring. He still works 2 jobs but plans to make this his full time job in the near future. I helped him build decks and fences. 

I would say sports and family have influenced my life the most so far. I am looking forward to graduating high school and moving on to college. I’m not sure what I will be going for yet though. Whatever it is,  I need to figure it out pretty soon because sophomore year is almost over now.