Care Bears and team building help Houston County softball breeze by Northside

WARNER ROBINS — If someone told you that they had a Care Bear, you might assume they had a plushie from the 1980s television show. It means something a little different for Houston County softball.

Madi Banks, an assistant coach who recently graduated from Georgia Southwestern University and former Bear herself, offered an idea to head coach April Collins — accountability partners.

“We’ve been needing to get people to help each other, stay up, bounce back, hold each other accountable,” Collins said. “Just cheering for that individual and having somebody you can always count on, so I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s try it.’”

They instituted the idea during Sunday’s practice after a couple of tough region losses at Lee County last week. Collins said 30 to 45 minutes of it was just team building, including assigning each player an accountability partner.

“On Sunday after our loss, we had a practice to reset things. We did some little team building,” Collins said. “We set up our varsity players with an accountability partner, and they’re called Care Bears. So the last couple days you hear them talking about, ‘Where’s my Care Bear? Yeah, Care Bear.’”

If you’ve been close enough to the home dugout to hear the Lady Bears, you know they’re a bunch that likes to joke around and have fun. Collins said she was bouncing ideas around with her family, and somebody suggested calling them, “Care Bears.” From the moment she heard it, Collins knew it would fit her group.

The girls ran with it on Tuesday against Northside, an 18-1 drubbing. Every at-bat or defensive play someone was cheering on their “Care Bear.” Even for a team that’s been known to have fun and has a coach that emphasizes it, the game felt that much more energized.

“I feel like that little part of holding somebody to the standard, holding each other to have high energy and just keeping each other accountable, cheering each other on, that kind of sparked tonight’s win,” Collins said.

Hearing the accountability message from coaches is one thing, but it’s entirely different when it’s your peer, especially when it’s someone you’re friends with.

“They hear from [coaches] all the time, and to hear it from your peer like, ‘Hey, my peer is looking out for me. My peer is making sure I’m doing things right, I don’t want to let them down.’ It’s important,” Collins said. “Kids at this age, they also want to make sure … their friends are proud, so that’s a huge part of it. I just think they bought into it and were like, ‘My Care Bear is about to cheer for me, or my Care Bear is gonna pick me up, or I can cheer for them.’ They just like feeling that “bestie” feeling.”

It helps further the familial aspect of the team, too.

“I mean we love each other, we’ve been saying that. We like to do team bonding and things like that,” Collins said. “That’s the important part of softball. You want to play hard for the people that you love. That’s one of the biggest things that we want to make sure that we, as a family and as a team, we go together, but you want to have fun at the same time. That’s the biggest piece.”