Central Michigan University Athletics
Olympic Notebook With Assistant Softball Coach Margo Jonker
9/21/2000 12:00:00 AM | Softball
Sept. 21, 2000
Coach, the team suffered another loss despite great pitching. What happened?
Unbelievable -- USA Softball has never lost two games in a row in major competition. We just got home from playing China and losing in 14 innings. Michele Smith pitched a GREAT game. We have not been able to get a key hit. She gave up two hits in 14 innings. She was awesome. That's all I'll say about that game.
Are there any differences in the style of play of the teams from other countries?
China and Japan have different styles of equipment than we do in the USA. Take their bats for example. They are made by Mizuno and are basically white with some black markings on them. Their gloves appear to be stiff. I haven't had one on my hand, but that is the appearance from the first base coaching box. It is interesting to see how different countries do things. One thing I am impressed with is how good of a job Japan and China do of pitching to our players. They utilize video and all the high tech equipment there is. The United States Olympic Committee has a high performance center set up here in the Village. One of people running it invited me to go over so I plan to go shortly to look at what is available. A number of sports utilize the technology here at the games. I am looking forward to it.
The team lost its third straight extra-inning game. How did the team react and can you still win a medal?
This is unbelievable. If you were at Central when Dot Richardson then spoke you know that is one of her favorite words. Well, it is now becoming my word of the week. We just lost to Australia, 2-1, in 13 innings. They had not touched pitcher Lisa Fernandez, not touched her. We scored in the top of the 13th and then with two outs someone who had struck out three times in the game hits a home run with the runner on second (the runner was placed there because of the international tie break rule). Unbelievable!! Should we say the crowd was a little partial to the Aussies. It was loud and it wasn't friendly, but that was sort of fun.
When the team got home they all got in the shower with their uniforms on and washed all the voodoo off. They were scrubbing each other's uniforms to get rid of it. It was a riot. What will they think of next? As long as they haven't lost their sense of getting it done. Whatever it takes. We now have to win the rest of the games to get into the medal round. The top four finishers of the round robin play a "page system" tournament to determine the winner. So our next goal is to make the top four and then we will again reset our goal, which of course is to bring home the gold. We have not given up on that. We have to beat New Zealand and Italy, which we certainly should, especially with all the voodoo worn off. We are dressed in head to toe with Nike so we'll have to "Just do it". There have been more extra inning games than you can imagine, and extra inning games between teams where it wasn't suppose to be close. This must be the Olympics.
How well are the athletes and coaches taken care of in Sydney?
The athletes are well taken care of here. One example is the "AT&T building" which is a place set up for the athletes, their families and their friends. Each athlete can sign up 4 people to the "AT&T" building. It is in downtown Sydney at Cyrcular Quay which is on the harbor by the Opera House. It is set up with excellent free food, free computer service, etc., and just a place to hang out. There are a couple other places similar in nature in the area. These are not for coaches. The other assistant coach and I tried to get into the AT&T building but were informed it was not for coaches. We learned something. The same was true with the Nike building. The whole team was to go to Nike, including the coaches and administrators, so we went. The athletes received numerous items and were invited to bring their families and we learned that it is also only for athletes. The reason has to do with the origin of the Olympics. Individual sports were the only sports at first and each athlete in an individual sport has their own personal coach so to keep numbers and cost down, only athletes were taken into consideration. That hasn't changed since team sports were included into the Olympics. The same is true for medals. Coaches do not receive medals.
