Canada's softball team fourth as sport enters Olympic limbo
Published Wednesday August 20th, 2008
BEIJING - The future of the Canadian softball team at the Olympics would be bright, if only the future of the sport itself wasn't so bleak.
The young Canadian squad that finished fourth with a 5-3 loss to Australia on Wednesday is loaded with young talent which now has Olympic experience.
That won't do any good at the next Games because softball isn't on the program.
The International Olympic Committee dropped it and baseball for the 2012 Games in London. Both sports have applied for reinstatement for 2016.
Japan and defending champion U.S. meet in the gold-medal game Thursday in a rematch of Wednesday's Page playoff between the top two seeds. The Americans won 4-1 in nine innings.
After beating Canada, Australia fell 4-3 in 12 innings to Japan in the semifinal and took the bronze medal.
Canada's fourth-place finish was its best at the Games. Canada was fifth in in 1996 and 2004 and eighth in 2000.
A dozen players on the Canadian team in Beijing were under 25 and making their Olympic debut.
Some will continue playing in world championships and Pan Am Games for the next few years, but asking them to stay with it for eight years is a tall order.
"Absolutely it's a bittersweet moment because the youth of our team, the next one would have been the big one," head coach Lori Sippel said.
"In terms of Canada and the group of young ladies on this team and how young they are, four years would be an easy call. Staying around for eight, there's going to be some people who are going to have to think about it.
"It's a shame that it's not in (the next Olympics) and of course I'm biased because I think we're one away."
The IOC will decide softball's fate for 2016 next year and a positive vote for the sport could keep a few of the youngest Canadian players in the fold.
"This team still exists," said outfielder Alison Bradley of Pinkerton, Ont. "There's Pan American Games, there's World University Games, there's lots of events that exist out there for softball other than the Olympics, but hopefully we'll be back in 2016."
One weapon the sport does have in its corner is the support of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Softball was introduced during his presidency at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
That's where Sippel, a national team pitcher for 12 years, ended her career by leaving her spikes on the mound and walking off in her socks after Canada's final game.
She remembers her sport in the pre-Olympic years and says this current crop of players have always held the Games as their ultimate objective.
"They never knew what it was like to work up to a world championship and having that be their Olympic Games," Sippel said.
In an effort to cut down costs at the Games, the IOC chose to axe the team sports was baseball and softball.
Another reason given for their dismissal was the sports weren't played in enough countries world-wide.
The best players in the world don't participate in the baseball tournament and the length of games is problematic for television in a crowded schedule.
To please the IOC, both sports have incorporated tie-breaking formulas that would seem bizarre to traditionalists.
In softball, if a game is tied after seven innings, each team puts a runner on second base and can start batting from anywhere in the order in their half of the inning, in order to get a decision quicker.
Sippel doesn't know what else softball can do for the IOC.
"It's a clean sport and it's a women's sport and it's a team sport I think there's a whole lot of check marks that should go by softball as far as getting back in," she said.
Players such as Bradley, catcher Erin Cumpstone of Saskatoon, and pitcher Lauren Bay Regula of Trail, B.C., all two-time Olympians, said this was their last chance to win an Olympic medal in softball.
"2016 I'll be way too old," said Cumpstone, 27.
Bay Regula, also 27, may have pitched her last game Wednesday for the national team, although she says she has yet to cement her decision to hang up her spikes.
The sister of Boston Red Sox outfielder Jason Bay threw nine strikeouts over a complete game. She gave up five hits, including solo home runs in the second and fourth innings.
The Canadians held their own as the game was tied 3-3 heading into the fifth inning.
But Kerry Wyborn's two-out shallow single to left field in the sixth scored a pair of runs for Australia.
Canada, which mustered four hits against Australia, didn't get a runner on base the final two innings as Australia played airtight defence.
Leaving the bases loaded in the second inning didn't help their cause.
"Their little hits fell," Cumpstone said. "They had a couple good hits and the rest, they manufactured runs. We didn't play some 'd' and that's a tough way to lose."
Canada opened the tournament 3-0 and was up 1-0 against the U.S. after five innings before falling 8-1.
But they didn't score a run in three consecutive losses after that until Wednesday's Page playoff game.
"I feel we were definitely capable of a medal," Bay Regula said. "I feel like we didn't play our best ball here.
"Unfortunately just because you think you should get a medal doesn't mean you do. You have to earn it. We definitely got outplayed."
Early in the tournament, the softball team looked like a candidate for a rare team medal for Canada.
The country hasn't won an Olympic medal in a team sport such as volleyball, basketball or soccer since a silver medal in basketball at the 1936 Olympics.
"Wouldn't have known it and I wouldn't have even expressed that to the girls," Sippel said. "That certainly wasn't what we were playing for.
"We were playing for the pride of winning for Canada for sure. They're disappointed because they fought hard and it wasn't enough."
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