By Dan Plouffe
It’s down to crunch time for the four-dozen-or-so Ottawa athletes in contention for Canada’s 2015 Pan Am Games team, with most sports set to finalize their selections this month in advance of the July 10-26 multi-sport extravaganza in Toronto.
Out of the local group, the opportunity likely isn’t any greater than for Jenna Flannigan and Hannah Martensen. Simply put, the Pan Am Games are the biggest stage their sport has ever seen.
They are two of 32 players headed to Toronto and the Rogers Centre for the May 10-17 final selection camp, where 18 will be chosen to compete for Canada in the first-ever Pan Am Games women’s baseball tournament.
“To see it at the Pan Am Games is really exciting,” says Flannigan, noting the women’s national team program has only been in existence since 2004 – always under the leadership of Ottawa manager André Lachance. “It’s only been like 10 years. It just shows how much the sport has advanced and improved and the amount of talent that has developed over the years.”
The local pair were both key contributors for Canada in their international debuts at the 2012 IBAF Women’s Baseball World Cup in Edmonton. Martensen earned the win on the mound in the bronze medal contest, and Flannigan was named a tournament all-star while batting .586 (second-best out of all players).
“The atmosphere with the crowd and everyone cheering for you, especially in tight games with the U.S. or Japan, it was surreal,” recounts Flannigan, who’s now eager to relive that type of experience for the Pan Am Games. “To be part of that and hopefully have success on home soil, in the first time Canada hosts an event like this, that would be pretty amazing. It’s really exciting.”
Camp prep a challenge
They may be amongst the best in the world in their sport, but Team Canada women’s baseball players are not full-time athletes by any means.
Both Martensen and Flannigan are completing university. Martensen, who served as athletic therapist for the University of Western Ontario Mustangs, recently wrapped up her studies in London and has setup shop in Burlington, while Flannigan would like to submit her University of Ottawa human kinetics masters thesis before the Pan Ams.
Since it’s not an Olympic sport, Canadian women do not receive national carding financial assistance, and their program’s funding is also limited, so the team tends to come together for training camps only in advance of major competitions.
That reality, along with winter – an obstacle many Pan American rivals don’t face – has made it challenging to get ready for the camp, but both players feel relatively well-prepared.
Martensen got in the cage as much as she could and did crossfit training, while Flannigan frequently joined the Ottawa Knights competitive youth club for their winter sessions at the OZ Dome, along with Saskatchewan pitcher Melissa Armstrong, who studies at Carleton University.
“That’s how we got our baseball-specific training this past winter,” outlines Flannigan, who would help out with the Knights’ developmental teams at the same time. “That really helped a lot.”
Since the snow melted, Flannigan lives in Ottawa during the week while she’s at school, and then heads home to Cornwall on weekends for baseball training alongside teammates from the River Rats, Cornwall’s senior team in the National Capital Baseball League, which is managed by her father.
It may seem counterintuitive that a player would go from a big city to a small one to train, but she doesn’t face the same restrictions on field access before May 1 in her hometown as in Ottawa, she explains.
Travel has been a constant theme in Flannigan’s journey. The 23-year-old outfielder says her biggest challenge has always been finding a team and a competitive place to play. That brought her to the Kanata Pirates softball team as a teenager and later the Gee-Gees softball women, but mostly she’s found a home on boys’ baseball teams, which does carry benefits.
“It’s more of a challenge,” explains Flannigan, who’s also appeared for women’s teams in the GTA. “The pitchers throw a lot faster, and more curveballs. They also hit farther, so playing outfield, I’ve got to cover a larger range.”
Martensen, who most recently played for the NCBL’s Ottawa Black Sox locally, has spent most of her career playing with the boys too. Since she’s been based closer to Toronto and its large population base of late however, Martensen has joined other women mostly from the Ontario provincial team program to form an entry that competes in a GTA league.
“We’re the only all-girls team of course,” underlines the former Pinecrest Patriots Little League MVP, noting there used to be a women’s baseball league, but “it wasn’t really good baseball, to be honest. But once you get those girls who have been playing on boys’ teams their whole life, we can hold our own.”
While women’s baseball may not be widely recognized, the local products don’t mind taking on de facto trailblazing roles at all.
“When I tell people I play baseball, they’re like, ‘Oh, you mean softball?’ and I say, ‘No, I mean baseball,’” smiles Flannigan, a past OFSAA high school provincial javelin finalist and Ontario Games badminton competitor. “I have to explain it’s like they do in MLB, it’s 90 feet, you know, all that. And they’ll say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize girls played that.’”
Martensen says inclusion in the five-team Pan Am Games competition that will feature Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico and powerhouse USA is “a huge step forward” for the sport.
“It’s a great way to get exposure too because we’ll be playing at home in Toronto,” indicates Martensen, expressing hope that one day women’s baseball could be part of the Olympics. “With that awareness, hopefully more girls will start getting involved and realize there are bigger opportunities.”
Martensen only found out at age 12 herself what kind of doors might open for her when she was invited to be part of the Sparks, a team of international girls’ baseball players that competed against boys’ teams at a tournament in Cooperstown.
The Sir Robert Borden High School grad went on to win a 2008 Ontario Summer Games gold medal in her hometown, and is now an experienced Team Canada player at age 21, having competed at two World Cups, including the 2014 edition in Japan (Flannigan wasn’t part of that squad).
But she says the Pan Am Games will undoubtedly be the biggest show of them all.
“Just because it’s a multi-sport event and people know more about it,” Martensen highlights. “Especially my friends, they’re seeing all the signs up now – not only in the GTA, but even in London – and the commercials on TV, everyone gets pretty hyped up about it. It’s a great opportunity.”
Heaps of hometown hopefuls
The nation’s capital is sure to be well-represented in the provincial capital this summer. More than a dozen Ottawa athletes are virtual shoo-ins to make the Pan Am Games grade, with plenty more strong contenders lining up.
Orleans ball player Joel Langford faces an inverse scenario as Flannigan and Martensen. He’ll attend a May Team Canada selection camp as men’s softball makes its return to the Games after an absence from 2003-2011.
Angus Mortimer of the Rideau Canoe Club is one big step closer to doing the nearly unthinkable – unseating four-time Olympic medallist Adam van Koeverden as Canada’s Pan Am Games representative in the K-1 1,000 m.
The 29-year-old local paddler beat the Canadian legend at the May 2-3 sprint team trials in Georgia and can secure his Pan Am berth by finishing ahead of van Koeverden at the season’s first World Cup May 15-17 in Portugal (or face a head-to-head showdown for the Games spot if he’s not the best Canadian).
Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson of the Greater-Ottawa Kingfish and past Ottawa resident Tabitha Baumann have been officially nominated to the Pan Am team, while national team members Andrew D’Souza and Alex Bruce (badminton), Kelleigh Ryan (a recent team foil silver medallist at the Senior Pan Am Fencing Championships), Lucinda Nowell (rhythmic gymnastics), Melanie McCann (modern pentathlon), Samantha Cornett (squash), Adam Simac (volleyball), and Jessica Gaudreault, Dusan Aleksic, John Conway, Alex Taschereau and David Lapins (water polo) are all in line to participate.
The local Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games crew of Segun Makinde, Mike Robertson, Sultana Frizell, Melissa Bishop and Tim Nedow will be strong candidates in athletics, along with fellow Ottawa Lions Ashley Maddex and Sekou Kaba.
Cam Smedley, Mike Tayler, Alexandra McGee and Thea Froehlich lead the list of Ottawa River Runners who are poised to grab the lion’s share of Canadian canoe slalom berths, while Ben Tardioli of the Rideau Canoe Club remains a contender on flatwater.
Glasgow 2014 competitors Vincent De Haitre (track cycling) and Isabelle Després (weightlifting) have a shot at more Games action, while Commonwealth Games gold medallist Erica Wiebe missed her chance at the Pan Ams, as did fellow wrestler Alex Brown-Theriault.
Cristy Nurse, Kate Goodfellow and Sarah Black (rowing), Natasha Watcham-Roy (rugby), Jamie Bissett (diving), Gabriela Dabrowski (tennis) and Eugene Wang (table tennis) are also strong contenders, while Phil and Thomas Scrubb (basketball), Chris Bisson (baseball), Christina Julien (soccer), Xavier Therien and Hongtao Chen (table tennis), Joanna Brown (triathlon), Jonah Shaffer (water ski), Mike Woods and Alex Cataford (road cycling), Sam Zakutney (gymnastics), Garnett Stevens (modern pentathlon) and Evan McNeely (mountain bike) are also on the radar.