The Canadian National Team has maintained an incredible consistency throughout the majority of their roster during softball’s Olympic drought. A number of longtime Canadian stars have donned the maple leaf year-in and year-out – many of them for the better part of a decade – and, in doing so, have made themselves almost synonymous with the sport’s fanbase north of the border.
Jen Gilbert is one such name. The former collegiate star for Ball State University rewrote her alma mater’s record book during her career at BSU that stretched from 2011-14. A two-time all-American, Gilbert remains the only player in Cardinals program history to earn such an honor. A three-time Mid-American Conference Player of the Year, Gilbert ended her career as the all-time home run record holder among Canadian-born NCAA Division I players.
Gilbert’s success on the diamond wasn’t limited to strictly her collegiate days, either – her time in the Canadian red and white has been marked with impressive success since she debuted on the national team’s senior roster in 2012, after three years spread across the nation’s U16 and junior national teams. In 2013, her second year on the senior national team, Gilbert batted .338 with nine extra base hits and 25 RBI during the summer season and helped lead her squad to a silver medal at the Pan American Championship.
After upsetting the US National team in a semifinal game of this year’s Pan American Games, and despite ultimately falling in the two teams’ championship-game rematch, the Canadians are expected to enter the Americas Olympic Qualifier in late August as the favorites to earn one of the two Tokyo berths up for grabs.
“We’re going to treat every single game like it is the Olympic qualifier game,” Gilbert said earlier in the summer. “That way, when we get there, it’s only something like ‘okay, we’ve done this already’… I think continuing to push and continuing to grind it out is most important. We knew that this was going to be a really long season. And I think that taking it one game at a time and continuing to make adjustments where we need to is going to help us get to where we want to be by the end of the summer.”
Commitments of the international season – events like the British Columbia-hosted Canada Cup that spanned more than a week in early July – were far from the only games on the schedule this summer for Gilbert and her teammates: For the first time ever, the Canadian National program sponsored a franchise in the National Pro Fastpitch league during the 2019 summer season; the Canadian Wild of Southern Illinois debuted in June.
The Wild took the NPF by storm at the beginning of the 2019 season, drawing on experience from Gilbert and other veterans to make an immediate impact in their inaugural campaign as part of the six-team professional league. The Wild began the season on an 8-game winning streak that included a pair of victories over perennial league championship contenders, the USSSA Pride.
During the NPF draft in March, the Wild declined to participate and select players from the college ranks, instead opting to stack their roster with members of the national team. The franchise signed just one player from the class of 2019, former Austin Peay pitcher, Canadian-born Morgan Rackel, who also ultimately earned her way onto the 15-member Pan Am Games roster.
“It’s already made us such a better team,” Gilbert said of her country’s participation in the NPF over the summer. “I think we’ve learned so much. And, just keeping things in a business picture, this is preparing us so much more. We [were]halfway through the NPF season and already close to the number of games we played all of last year. Getting so many reps is so great for us.”
The Canadians were one of four countries to use the NPF as a sort-of training ground ahead of their respective nations’ Olympic qualifiers later in the year. Mexico, Australia, and China also each either fielded a team or partnered with another NPF franchise for the 2019 campaign. The opportunity to face off against other countries on a regular basis is experience that Gilbert said is of great benefit to herself and her teammates.
“It means great things for us,” Gilbert noted. “The more times that we can see a certain pitcher, that just makes it so much more beneficial for us when it’s Olympic qualifier time, or World Championships time, or hopefully the Olympics themselves. Same thing for our pitchers facing their hitters; if they can get them on a certain pitch, again, it’s just more information that we’re learning, and about ourselves, as well.”
The 2019 season was not Gilbert’s first foray into the NPF; after originally being drafted by the now-defunct Akron Racers in 2014, she spent four years splitting her summers between the Racers and her duties with team Canada on the international stage.
A year after her collegiate playing career ended, Gilbert added another job title: coach. Originally hired as a volunteer assistant at her alma mater in 2015, Gilbert assumed a new role a year later as a full-time assistant coach under then-first-year head coach Megan Bartlett. She spent two seasons tutoring the program’s hitters, but after the 2017 season, a decision loomed.
“That was probably one of the toughest decisions that I’ve ever had to make,” Gilbert said of her decision to leave the coaching world. “[Ball State] just holds such a special place in my heart… I knew that I would have to maybe make that decision, but it was kind of up in the air. I talked about it once, then again at the end of the season, and it just dawned on me: ‘I gotta be all in [for Team Canada]if I’m gonna be doing anything.’ And it wasn’t fair to the program for me to split myself in that way, so I had to make a choice and I chose playing.”
During the 2018 calendar year, Gilbert worked with Canadian assistant coach Dave Paetkau, both training and working at Paetkau’s softball academy. She committed full-time to national team preparation, and spent the entire summer season wearing only her home country’s colors.
“From a very young age, I wanted to play for Team Canada,” she said. “That was the dream: To go play in the Olympics. When [softball]was taken out of the Olympics, I was heartbroken. It was almost like ‘Okay, what’s the plan, what’s the dream now?’ So when it got put back in, it was just like a godsend. [Playing in the Olympics] would be an absolute dream come true for me. And I know, for our program, it would be the same thing. Everybody dreams about playing at the highest level and representing your country on the biggest stage in the sport. It would just be extremely, extremely honorable.”
As her Olympic dream gets closer to realization – a berth in Tokyo now stands just days and a handful of wins away – Gilbert sits ready to appreciate the fulfillment of a childhood goal; a longtime dream so near, she can almost taste it.
