Southington woman wins World Series
Submitted photo
The New England Slammers shake hands with their International All-Star opponents after their World Series win in Hawaii.
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Friday, June 26, 2009 - 12:02am
The cliche question that often comes with age is, ‘What will you be doing when you’re 40?” The answer for most often involves similar ideas of working hard, caring for a family and enjoying life. For Southington resident and fellow 40-year-old Christine Spiegel, life is all of those things and just a little bit more. That little bit more involves playing on the New England Slammers slow-pitch women’s softball team in the World Vintage Softball League.
What makes Spiegel’s story more interesting is that this is not just another softball league and the Slammers are not just playing to have fun; they are playing hard and they are playing to win.
“It’s pretty intense; it’s not what you would consider to be recreation ball where you just go out and drink beer while you play,” Spiegel said. “It’s more of a competitive nature.”
Most recently, the Slammers returned home from an international tournament in Hawaii, where they mopped up on the competition, taking home the championship trophy.
“We kind of smoked everyone,” Spiegel says.
In fact, the Slammers were so good and so dominant, that the international teams created an All-star team to play the Slammers in the championship game; the result was still the same.
This journey, though, started back in 2007, and the journey for Spiegel goes even further back.
It starts in a place that is so unrecognizable and understandable in regards to Connecticut, that it might as well be an international country. That place is Alaska.
Spiegel grew up as an Alaskan and eventually attended the University of Alaska at Anchorage. She started playing softball as a teenager and began playing on a national travel team starting at age 18 and continuing to this day. She’s been to various tournaments, she estimates about 20, and has traveled all over the U.S. and parts of the world.
After making her way to Connecticut as a marketing professional, Spiegel continued playing softball and traveling and was at a tournament with a different team when the Slammers found her and asked her to join.
The Slammers are based out of New Hampshire, but they include players from mainly three states – Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire. However, the team of all-stars only convenes when it’s tournament time, as it would be too much to be traveling to New Hampshire on a consistent basis.
Spiegel stays in form by playing on three other teams aside from the Slammers. Two of them are co-ed travel teams and one is a women’s team and they are all competitive in nature. Spiegel plays three nights a week and usually is on the road every other weekend; her Slammer teammates have similar schedules.
“I would say every two weeks, I’m out playing ball somewhere in New England,” she said.
During the week, she plays in leagues out of Milford and North Branford. Both places are around 40 minutes away, which displays the commitment Spiegel has towards her sport. The reason she plays at the further locations is because she feels they are more competitive than what Southington offers and prepares her better for her tournaments.
“It’s a lot of effort, but I really get a lot out of it,” Spiegel says.
She even got her newlywed husband to start playing along with her on a co-ed team.
Jeff Spiegel, Christine’s husband, reaped the benefits of her fame, as he traveled to Hawaii with the team and honeymooned with his new bride after the tournament in Kauai.
However, the aforementioned work leading up to Hawaii started in the fall of 2007, when the team started their fundraising push. They did various events, as little as selling candy and having yards sells, to more extravagant ideas of working in a trailer at a NASCAR race in New Hampshire selling merchandise and sponsoring Super Bowl pools. The work over the year and a half was able to raise around $18,000 for the team, enough so that each of the 14 player’s trips was covered.
In Hawaii were teams from Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and U.S. teams from Florida, Hawaii and other states. These tournaments are hosted about every two years and the Slammers hope to defend their slow-pitch title in the 35 and over league in Netherlands in two years.
The 14 player team comprises of 301 total years of experience and 565 years of age. Because of their success, they are able to enter international events like the one in Hawaii and while any can “enter,” only those teams with good credentials and resume are accepted to participate, making the tournaments that much more competitive. Still, there is a good attitude amongst the players and their opponents when it comes to having fun and playing hard.
“It’s a great way to meet a lot of great people and make a lot of great friends and of course after the games you stay and hang out and talk, but everything during the game is 100 percent serious,” Spiegel says.
In August, the team will travel to Alabama for another World Series tournament as well as participate in the annual national tournament in Orlando. After those comes fall ball and then the dreaded winter season where the No. 1 ranked women’s slow-pitch team in New England, according to the United State Slow-pitch Softball Association (USSSA), will rest and look forward to the next year. For Spiegel, the winter’s are tough, because the camaraderie that she so loves during the spring, summer, and fall, is no longer there and she says each year she “jones’” for the season to begin.
“The funny thing is you see them so much in the summer time, but you really don’t do much in the winter, so when summer starts to roll around (you want) to see your friends again and get out and do it,” she said.
When the final pitch is thrown each day, or the plane lands from one of the many extravagant trips, it’s back to life in Southington for Spiegel, who works out at the Southington YMCA four days a week as well as playing softball, in order to stay fit.
“What I think is going to happen in the future is that I’ll keep playing ball, but if I have kids one day, I could be their coach. Coaching is that next step, but to be honest, I think I’ll be one of those old players on the field into their 50s.”
For Spiegel, playing into her 50s would not be a problem.
"I'm 40 and I've been playing ball since I was 15 years old; it keeps me young at heart and tells me that even tough I'm getting older, I can still have a lot of fun."
