Knock your Sox off! LORAN'S MESSAGE FROM THE HEART

THE SOFTBALL STAR IS PITCHING IN TO STOP A KILLER DISEASE

- Rebekah Hebenton

When it comes to living your dream, success is more about perseverance and hard work than natural-born talent, reckons White Sox pitcher Loran Parker.

“You talk to anyone in the New Zealand White Sox and they’re like, ‘Yeah, I was probably not the most naturally talented player’, but they had the most drive and they wanted to succeed the most,” she tells the Weekly from her Auckland home.

The 24-year-old had her first taste of softball when she was watching her brother Callum playing in his school T-Ball team. With only one year between them, Loran was determined to outdo him.

“That’s how I got into softball,” she grins. “Because my brother did it, I was doing it too – but I was going to do it better!”

Hence, a young Loran assumed that you went to school to play T-Ball, so came home furious after her first day when it didn’t happen. But her interest in the sport didn’t wane and her resolve deepened – despite not being very good at it, as her mother later pointed out.

“Every year, she was like, ‘Are you sure you want to keep playing?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s really fun.’ She’d be like, ‘Okay, you could actually do something on the field.’”

But nothing could dissuade Loran and when she left high school, she bravely travelled to the US, where she played softball at Eastern Arizona College for two years. After returning to NZ for a couple of years, she was then asked to join a team in Holland, which she did for two months. And then, in 2017, her dream came true and she became a member of the New Zealand women’s softball team. But her success has been far from easy.