The sun is slowly being swallowed by the tree line beyond the fence, dragging a pastel spread of spring watercolor in its wake across the Texas Friday night sky.

It’s barely March, but the smell of freshly cut grass permeates everything in the dugout.

The George Ranch varsity girls’ softball team is getting hyped on field about the game, only a handful of minutes away now, with the 92.2 radio station and impossibly loud chants.

“YOU AND ME?” junior Stephanie Money shouts, arms around her teammates.

“EVERY DAY,” the rest of the team replies, a chorus of exuberant determination.

Sophomore Kate Anderson sits on a bucket of softballs in the dugout watching, listening, preparing for the game by typing the night’s lineup into the iPad.

The girls are focused on their goal: a win for the night.

Their determination, their focus is familiar to her; but after four years of playing the game, Anderson hung up her jersey for a stat sheet.

“Because of an injury that did not allow me to play softball, [I couldn’t try-out],” Anderson says. “But I still wanted to be with the team, so I became a manager.”

It’s harder than it looks; keeping up with the team’s rigorous game and tournament schedule on top of her three pre-AP classes and two AP classes demands more stress than before.

Anderson has to focus; she makes time to study for all of her classes while balancing the demands of managing the team.

“I [also] go to church regularly and attend Bible studies,” Anderson says. “I also watch “Parks and Recreation” and “New Girl” on Netflix, [but] most of my time is taken up by studying for my classes.”

In between recording the different pitches of junior Natasha Cabucio and freshman Alexis Tovar,  Anderson keeps track of the plays on the iPad, enjoying the environment the varsity girls produce in the dugout.

“It’s very upbeat and cheery and it’s impossible to upset in the dugout because of how positive they are,” Anderson says. “The other team is always really negative when we’re cheering and it’s a really good feeling.”

The good feelings that Anderson revels in does’t end outside of the dugout. Her life is centered around the idea of a Christ-like nature, a positivity and optimistic outlook on life that she’s gained since her revelation calling as a freshman.

“In ninth grade, I felt called,” Anderson says. “I would like to go to Texas Tech and receive my nurse practitioner’s degree. Then I’d like to go international with my abilities and help people who cannot get medical help on a daily basis.”

Specifically, Peru and Russia, two places Anderson’s father has traveled before.

“Most people outside of the United States don’t get the [medical] help we do,” Anderson says. “In the beginning, I’d like to start [working] with a group of missionaries who have the same goal as me. As I get more advanced, I’d like to start my own company.”

To get there, she knows she has “to stay focused, stay on the path God leads [her] on and not be pulled away by the things of this world” a daunting task achievable with the support of her youth group and her walk with Christ.

The innate ability to focus isn’t a foreign concept to Anderson. She knows how to keep her goal in sight, keeping the most important things in mind.

She knows how to accomplish the things on her horizon.

She knows how to stay focused.

In the batter’s box.

In the dugout.

In the mission field.

In the classroom.

But for now, Anderson sits on a bucket of softballs, inhaling spring air and the aura of the Lady Longhorns’ concentration, the spectacle of field lights warming up to a blinding glare.