Words by 'Birds: Challenging the third strike and fouling off life's curveballs

Quinn Dhaliwal was a student and Thunderbird who just completed her four years at UBC this spring. In her second year, UBC softball launched a lawsuit against UBC after it lost its varsity status — and won. She captained the team in her senior season.

And just like that, it was done. Gone in a blink of an eye. Four of the most amazing, challenging and rewarding years of my life. My years spent as a Thunderbird varsity athlete came to an end this past April.

I started playing softball when I was five years old and have been playing ever since. That’s 16 years of playing a game that I absolutely love. I can still remember that day in grade 12 when Dad picked me up from my high school history class with a Subway sandwich in hand. He was ready to drive me from Delta to Vancouver for my university tour with my coach and future teammates. Before I knew it, we were at UBC.

Everything about softball has helped shape me into the woman I am today. My years at UBC have certainly been the most memorable years in my sporting career. Softball is one game that is loaded with constant failures, but it has given me some of the biggest successes of my life. You spend so many of your days committed to your sport as a varsity athlete that you never really believe that it’ll ever come to an end.

But in my second year, my fate as a Thunderbird was put into question after a UBC broadcast email announced that the softball team would be cropped from UBC athletics. I can still remember everything so vividly about that day. I was standing in my Fairview apartment with one of my teammates and we both opened and read the email together. We couldn’t even believe it. We read the words over and over again, but they didn’t sink in.

So many questions flooded my brain. How was this fair? How could they just cut us? Did they understand what this would mean for all of us? I remember feeling completely numb. Betrayed. Hurt. I couldn’t and didn’t want the words to be true. I remember it didn’t seem real until later that day. I was walking to meet my friend for coffee at the Starbucks in the Old SUB and people were staring at me and saying sorry. Even people I didn’t know, offering me apologetic stares. People I did know, came up to me and gave me long hugs. Then it became real and sunk in. My life as a softball player, everything I was, my passion and what I thought my future would hold for my last two years as a Thunderbird could be over.

Our head coach gathered us in for a team meeting that day. After our meeting was over — it was filled with some tears and lots of confusion and questions — the decision was unanimous. We weren’t giving up without a fight. It was a strange feeling to be representing your university as an athlete, but realizing that your own university had deemed your team as an unwanted part of the Thunderbird family.

We played games and travelled to different softball parks not fully knowing if that would be the last time we would be wearing “UBC” across our chest. Our head coach would come to practices completely exhausted from comprising a five-year plan that proved we had the ability to fund ourselves. We also filed a lawsuit against the university in opposition to their decision to cut us from athletics.

We never wanted monetary value in the lawsuit, all we wanted was for softball to remain a sport at UBC. It wasn’t even just thoughts of our own softball careers coming to an end that made our fire and hope stay alive — it was the lives of hopeful softball players that wanted to attend UBC. Eliminating softball at UBC would mean one less post-secondary institution that young softball players could add to their list.

Getting softball back to its varsity status was a rollercoaster filled with many highs and lows of emotions. Just when it seemed like it could truly happen, another decision was put in opposition against us. I remember biking back from practice just after one of our 6:30 a.m. gym practices at War Memorial. A gentleman yelled outside of his car window, “Go UBC softball! I’m rooting for you all!” I’ll never forget that moment.

We had support from so many different varieties of people — fellow softball teams within our conference, fellow varsity teams in UBC, women's leadership groups, our families and alumni. It constantly gave us hope. In all honesty, sometimes it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. What I mean by this is that it wasn’t easy playing softball not knowing if my fellow teammates and I could ever finish our eligibility at UBC. Not knowing if I ever would get to become a senior. Would the start of the most amazing years of our life be cut short? During my second and third year, every time I went up to bat or ran from the dugout to my position to second base, I began treating every game like it could be my last.

During practice in the April of my third year, our coach called us all in during batting practice. We all were gathered around the field, some of us shagging balls or up to bat and the pitchers were off to the side with the catchers. He had been on the phone for the first 20 minutes of practice. We huddled around the coach and I just remember the biggest smile forming across his face. “We made it,” he said, “we’re back in varsity status.”

I’ll never forget that moment. It came true, everything we had been working towards for the past two years was finally true. We hugged, we smiled and we were officially reinstated. It was true, it wasn’t just false hope anymore. It was easy for us to accept our fate without a fight. But we didn’t. Instead, we never gave up and look at where that brought us. Softball was rightfully brought back as a varsity sport at UBC. We did it and we did it together as a family.

I finished my senior year as captain of the softball team this past spring. Four of the most memorable years of my softball career finally came to an end. In this closing chapter, the program experienced so many amazing milestones. We gained access to our first-ever home field at Softball City in South Surrey. We also played our first season in the Cascade Collegiate Conference. It still doesn’t feel real that it’s over. I will be forever in debt by how much the sport of softball has given me, especially my years at UBC.

Every day before I played a game as a Thunderbird, I would read the quote by women's world cup winner Mia Hamm that said, “Somewhere beyond the athlete you’ve become, the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you, is the little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back. Play for her.” It’s something I always lived by as an athlete. If you don’t love the sport with your whole heart, you won’t be truly playing for yourself.

Being an athlete at UBC was full of many unexpected moments. Obviously, the biggest one was softball getting cut from athletics. However, that doesn’t at all define my years as a Thunderbird. If anything, it makes me smile thinking about the adversity we overcame together. I’ll miss everything about the game of softball. The seventh-inning walk off hits, the laughs during practice, the early morning weights, the awful tan lines, the feeling of dirt against your cleats and everything else in between.

If there's one thing I’ve learned during my years here at UBC as a softball player, it’s that one shouldn't look at any challenge as a called third strike. You control your own fate. Life will always throw you curveballs, but it’s how you foul them off that shows your true character.

It’s time to begin the next chapter in my life. Being an athlete at UBC has given me lifelong friends in my teammates and life lessons learned from overcoming obstacles in a hard practice. It’s given me an education I’m passionate about and it’s even brought me love. I’ll forever be a Thunderbird, but it’s time for this bird to fly into new horizons.

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