What do you do when you remove the dream of life from you?
That was a painful question posed by softball player Jenn Gilbert in 2005, when the International Olympic Committee voted to remove his sport from the 2012 Olympic program.
“Personally I didn’t know what the dream was,” Gilbert said. "Rugby has been released right under me."
Softball had been part of the Olympics since its inception in Atlanta in 1996, but after the Beijing Games in 2008, that tournament would end leaving Gilbert sacked and unsure what the next step would be.
Gilbert made great sacrifices in his travels, including large areas of his growing life following his Olympic goal, starting at the age of eight.
"It was in a car trip where I turned around and went to my mom and said, 'I want to play Canada in the Olympics one day,'" Gilbert said.
While representing his country at the highest level at all, Gilbert did not give up. He continued to follow the game throughout his studies in Science at Ball State University, where he collected almost many records.
He completed his reunion career in 2014 as a league keeper in the RBI, running and repeating and being a full-time leader for Canadian-born players in 75 home games.
Then, two years later, the IOC announced softball back at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, joining the sport of karate, skateboarding, surfing and rising sports.
"When they brought it back in 2016 it was like, 'Yes, let's go.'. That's what I've been waiting for all this time. It's so big that they put it back.
Gilbert was born in Saskatoon, but moved to Texas at the age of three with his family because of his father's work.
“My father was involved in genetics in animal science so he got a job at Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, and I was born in Saskatoon at St. Paul’s Hospital,” Gilbert said.
“I regularly meet with the Canadian Olympic Center in Saskatchewan, they send me gift baskets every year and they give me a lot of support and I am very grateful for that,” Gilbert said.
Naturally, things would never have been right for Gilbert to achieve his goal, and with the exception of the 2019 Pan American Games silver medal at .429 average, and a secure Olympic guarantee weeks later, COVID-19 will bring the next hurdle.
"COVID has certainly been a challenge we have not seen help," Gilbert said of the epidemic. “We were in Halifax at the time when COVID was just a joke and we didn't know what the impact was. Thankfully we were already planning to go on leave March 15, 2020, so we were all at home.
"We've had a lot of Zoom meetings online, and fortunately I live on a Texas farm so I can train there alone, ordering more equipment on Amazon!"
Gilbert puts a lot of pressure on him, and he works on Vince Lombardi's quote that "Perfection is not attainable, but if we pursue perfection we can attain excellence."
“He puts the bar too high,” he said. “We are all human and imperfect, but I can control how I train, what I train, and I have to trust that training.
“We work hard, we grind, we ask each other. I will not think there is a team in the Olympics that is working hard now, ”said Gilbert.
He is now 29 years old, and with soft football currently missing from the Paris Games schedule for 2024, Gilbert knows this could be the end of his career, and he is happy with his team's chances.
"We play to win a gold medal, we say that every day," he said. “That is what we have been coaching and coaching for the past three or four years.
"We'll do great things, you'll see."
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