Sippel Still Crosses 'em up

but fears for game's status

Perth County farm girl Lori Sippel realized at a young age that you've got to make hay while the sun shines.

Although she's long gone from her family roots near St. Pauls, the national women's softball team coach feels that same sense of urgency today. "There is a feeling that we should do it (aim for the podium) now," said Sippel, 40, who drove in stakes for the national team's 10-day training camp which opened in Kitchener yesterday.

The women are here in preparation for the world championship set for Beijing in August, with an eye to the Olympics at the same site in 2008.

A year ago, the International Olympic Committee voted to pull softball from its 2012 roster, a devastating blow to the game. But the women will trudge onward despite softball's shaky international status.

"I grew up when there was no such thing as (softball in) the Olympics," said Sippel, a former pitching great who represented Canada at the Atlanta Olympics a decade ago. "The game just snuck in while I was still playing. The game was great back then just like it is now. The game was exciting. The international competition was so good, people said, 'You know what? This needs to be an Olympic sport.' " So ahead they go with a precarious international future that includes no guarantees of gaining Olympic reinstatement.

But Sippel, whose hometown featured nothing more than a general store, a railway crossing and "a ballpark bigger than the town itself" was never one to cower away from insurmountable odds. In the middle 1980s, the small-town kid left the family farm for the bright lights of Division I softball at the University of Nebraska where she went on to star for the Cornhuskers, leading them to three Big Eight league titles and a silver at the College World Series.

She calls Lincoln, Neb., home these days and coaches those same 'Huskers. "My biggest fear is not that we don't have 2012. My biggest fear is that people will think the game is less because we don't (have Olympic status)."

Lisa Crompton at (416) 426-7150. crivet@therecord.com