Women’s softball hits a homer B
UBC: Thunderbirds survive targeting review, and have a new league and home base in Surrey
ack in February 2014, on the day UBC officially read last rites to its women’s softball team by stripping it of its varsity status, its head coach had a gripping message for his players.
“I said to my girls, ‘Don’t look at a called third strike,’ ” Gord Collings recalled of a plea that had everything to do with maintaining focus, and refusing to pack up its bats and balls.
“That was the lowest point, and I remember it well. We got commitments from each girl, that we were going to go through the appeals process and try to do everything that we could to get ourselves reinstated. We came up with a new model the next day and we just decided that if we were going to go down, we’d go down swinging.”
Instead of watching that thirdstrike pitch sail through the zone, the Birds hit it out of the park.
“Serendipity? Is that what you’d call it?” Collings asked with a smile of the circumstances which eventually led to a rapid-fire series of 11thhour announcements earlier this month, ones that not only signalled the program’s survival, but showed it to be healthier and more vibrant than at any stage over its previous six seasons.
While being left to literally dangle in the wind for the last two years by UBC’s Sports Targeting Review, Collings and Rick O’Connor, a program founder and key financial backer, waded hip deep into the fray, using equal parts savvy and resourcefulness to get their message heard.
For Collings, it meant a series of face-to-face meetings with new UBC president Arvind Gupta and his staff, meetings which he says were conducted with the kind of respectful tenor that allowed him to believe all was not lost.
Could he find an actual conference for the NAIA-based program in which to gain immediate membership, he was asked? And could he find a home park for the team?
Collings did both, triggering a chain of softball announcements from the school’s athletic department, which for the first time since the targeting review was announced in the fall of 2013, were unanimously positive.
On May 25, the school made it official that softball would remain a varsity sport. On June 8, it announced the team would join the NAIA’s Cascade Collegiate Conference with 11 other universities scattered throughout the Northwestern U.S.
And on June 17, with Gupta, Collings and Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner on hand, came news that UBC softball would play all its home games at South Surrey’s Softball City complex, a venue noted as not only the sport’s Lower Mainland hub, but one set to be refurbished in advance of the 2016 World Championships.
Playing scheduled home conference dates at a facility literally brimming with the area’s top youth rep teams provides the UBC program an opportunity for immediate engagement within that community through camps and clinics, ones which Collings says the program will embrace.
And the fact UBC wants to raise its profile in the massive Surrey market certainly didn’t hurt the cause.
“Not only are we excited about the Cascade Conference,” said veteran Quinn Dhaliwal, who will patrol second base next season in her final collegiate campaign with the Birds, “we have had the most amazing university experience and we wanted the younger girls to keep the dream a reality. Now, the same girls who want to play at UBC will have the chance.
“The whole experience has made us all leaders.”
UBC players had earlier filed suit against the university, seeking the return of its varsity status, yet those close to the proceedings have said the school’s decision to keep softball a varsity sport at UBC was made completely independent of the lawsuit.
Through all of the machinations, the positive news for Collings and Co. ensures that three post-secondary varsity softball programs will continue to operate in the Lower Mainland. Simon Fraser continues to play at the NCAA Div. 2 level and Douglas College competes in the Northwest Athletic Conference.
“It’s almost like rebirth in a new landscape,” Collings said of the ’Birds, who have basically lost two straight years of recruiting because of its school’s targeting review, and as an independent had played just eight home games over that span.
Starting this coming season, UBC will play seven annual home doubleheaders within the conference, plus whatever exhibitions it is able to schedule.
“It helps us in terms of cost because it cuts down on our travel,” said Collings, who admits the program, not fully funded by the school, still needs additional funds to help meet league operating costs and scholarships.
“It also gives us more exposure for recruiting. It gives is a footprint in B.C.”
One which Dhaliwal is thankful leads right to Softball City.
“It’s been hard because sometimes you couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “We’ve had so many hurdles thrown our way. But our coach and my teammates never gave up, and without them, we would not be where we are.”