A recent graduate of Valliant High School, Ainsley Trapp played softball and basketball but her start in athletics was a little different than most.
“Right now, I baby sit a couple of little girls and they always want me to play dolls with them and I have to tell them I don’t know how because when I was little, my sister and I played with all kinds of sports balls and those were our toys. We’d play catch or stage a softball game in our bedroom with Nerf bats and foam balls and have a big time,” she laughed.
Trapp grew up in Rattan where coach Paul Watts and the softball program were legendary, and she found out early that she was pretty good at it.
“I started playing travel softball when I was eight and I tried out and made an under-12 team. I did that until I got to high school, and I had to cut back because I was getting burned out a little and the summers became packed with high school basketball camp in June and softball in July.”
In her eighth-grade year, Ainsley experienced one of the highlights of her career.
“Coach Watts took several of us eighth graders with the team to state the last year that they won. I remember I got to carry the bats and go into the press box where they tested the bats and then walk around the Hall of Fame Stadium, and I just kept thinking how I liked being there.”
And she got that experience as a player the next year when once again Rattan went to state. Covid wiped out the spring season her sophomore year and then she moved to Valliant for her final two years and here we see a different side of Ainsley.
“I really felt like I had something to prove when I moved to Valliant. A lot of people didn’t think I was good enough to make it in Valliant’s basketball program, so I really worked my butt off to prove them wrong. I not only made the team, but we went to state my junior year which was the first time since girls started playing five-on-five that it had happened for Valliant, and that was something I didn’t think I would ever see.”
At Valliant, there was also an academic challenge that Trapp took on.
“Another goal I had when I moved was to compete for class Valedictorian at Valliant. But I was way behind because students there had been able to take AP classes which you couldn’t do at Rattan until you were a junior. So those last two years I loaded up my schedule with a bunch of AP classes in addition to my regular classes and ended up being Co-Valedictorian which was a big accomplishment for me,” said Trapp who was a member of FCA which she led at Rattan as well as the National Honor Society.
Ainsley Trapp-a great example of meeting challenges and showing great character.
