Lexi Parish is usually focused and having fun in the circle. But on this particular day, something was off. Her sister—who also happens to be her catcher, Samantha—saw this, called time and approached the circle.
“I went up to her and asked straight-up, ‘Can you pitch?’” Samantha said. “She was shocked. She talked to me with an attitude. I told her if she wasn’t going to focus, I was going to get another pitcher to replace her right there and then. She was so sassy after that, and started pitching a lot better.”
The Parish sisters—Samantha is a Sobrato High junior and Lexi a sophomore—are not afraid to get to the point with each other, and it works because neither player will take it as unwarranted criticism. In fact, the two thrive on tension in small doses, just the way it should be.
“She can tell me what to do, what I need to correct and I’ll be fine,” said Lexi, who also is one of the team’s top hitters and plays the field when she’s not pitching. “It’s great knowing I have someone I can trust behind the plate, not only to block all of my pitches (in the dirt), but to help me get strikes. Pitching to her helps us create a stronger bond.”
It’s been a rewarding season for the Parish sisters, who were rarely on the same softball teams growing up because of their age difference. However, Lexi and Sam have been training and playing together since they started the sport at a young age. In the front yard of their parents’ Morgan Hill home, the Parishes have a batting cage decked out with all the bells and whistles of any top-notch facility.
The sisters often have to be told to come inside before it gets too late, with late in this case meaning before midnight.
“My sister and I pitch and hit there almost every night,” Lexi said. “I feel like softball never ends—it’s our life. We’ve put in the work to have the success of where we are today.”
The Parish sisters have both made verbal commitments to play college softball at Santa Clara University, and they’re beyond thrilled they’ll be playing together at the next level. They love each other through their differences, admire the other with their similarities and their bond is seemingly inseparable.
“What I admire about Lexi is on and off the field, she makes me laugh,” Samantha said. “Even when I’m down, she always brings me back up. She has a big heart, and always picks me back up. I enjoy having a sister like her.”
“The thing I most admire about Sam is I feel like she makes me work harder because I want to be just like her in softball,” Lexi said. “I want to be as tough as her, and she inspires me to be a better person on the field. She puts so much hard work in, and I admire how much she loves the game. She makes me do better just by her being a loving person, even though she doesn’t like to show it as much to me.”
Of course, like any close sisters, arguments are bound to happen. The two make sure if they’re ever not getting along at home or school, it doesn’t spill out to the softball field.
“We have a lot of arguments as sisters—the basic stuff,” Lexi said. “Every little thing from clothes to who gets the shower first—that’s the big one. But once we step on the field, we put that aside.”
Lexi takes a tumbling class once a week, which involves some serious athleticism, strength and agility.
“I’ll do complicated tumbling passes, and I feel like it helps me get stronger,” she said.
Lexi has the ability to hit the ball in the gaps, slap and bunt. She also possesses speed on the basepaths. In the circle, Lexi mixes speeds well and utilizes a curveball and changeup to baffle opposing hitters. Samantha has been a stalwart behind the plate, possessing a rifle for an arm to deny would-be base stealers time and again. Samantha also communicates well with her pitchers and infielders when it comes to defensive coverage and is potent with the bat.
Lexi and Samantha both play their travel ball for Central Coast Athletics, and their competitiveness rubs off on each other. Growing up, they challenged each other in just about everything—not just sports—and gotten have stronger because of it. For Lexi, her most memorable moment playing sports with Samantha came in an extra inning game last season.
In the bottom of the 12th inning, Lexi had a walkoff hit with two outs, which prompted Samantha to rush out of the dugout with jubilation.
“I have video of my sister doing this little spin move before she ran up and carried me,” Lexi said. “It was so nice for her to show so much love for me at that moment.”
The sisters credit their parents, Mia and Greg, for pushing them just hard enough to get them out of their comfort zone, but not with such force that it would’ve soured them on the sport. Lexi and Samantha’s grandparents, Penny and Jerry, are the sisters’ most rabid fans.
With such great support, Lexi and Samantha have plenty of reasons for wanting to do well. They joke with each other, rib each other and make sacrifices for each other. They’ve spent their entire lives together, not just in the house but outside on the softball field, building an unbreakable bond in the process.
