Loyal in softball's lean years, Michelle Moultrie and Valerie Arioto can celebrate rebirth

— -- Measured by almost any standard other than the family trees of fruit flies, Michelle Moultrie is, well, young. At 26 years old, she is a young human. In her current role as an assistant softball coach at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, she is young for her profession.

Even athletically, hardly a forgiving criteria, she should only be arriving at her physical prime.

And yet as one of the most senior players on the United States national softball team, she is presented with evidence on a day-to-day basis that, like all of us, she is only getting older.