Deep Left Field Q&A: Canadian softballer Jenna Caira on bronze, beds and being in Tokyo

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This article was published 14/08/2021 (1560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On this week’s episode of “Deep Left Field,” Mike Wilner spoke to Jenna Caira, co-captain of the Canadian women’s softball team that won bronze in Tokyo, the first Olympic medal in the sport for Canada:

Congratulations on the Olympic bronze.

Thank you. It was quite the accomplishment for Softball Canada. It’s been a long time coming and it was awesome being able to be back at the Olympic Games for our sport. Quite the journey.

A journey with a pandemic in the middle of it. How did you stay in shape in lockdown?

I have a dog, Bowser, and he has a big bag of dog food. And I just started lifting that and squatting it. (I packed a backpack) with books and cans and anything that could make it relatively heavy. And then Scott Willgress, our strength coach, (gave us) isometric holds (to do). So we had to stabilize and hold onto positions that we didn’t love in the moment, but it definitely helped in the long run. I also tried to do yoga and barre classes a little bit more.

Jumping ahead to Tokyo, what was it like there before your games started?

The Olympic Village was beautiful. Oh, my gosh. We were right along the water, it was just beautiful. There were the Olympic rings along the water where you could go and take pictures. They had a Canada moose by our building.

It was very picturesque. There’s so much greenery. Obviously, we were respecting social distancing, so while it looked a little different, it was still a really cool vibe. We were still able to trade pins and that gave us opportunities to talk to other people from different countries and get to know them a little bit.

And the food. I’m a big foodie and I thought it was great. They had a had a worldly section, they had Asia, they had Japanese cuisine specifically, they had a halal station. They thought of everything and that made our time really comfortable, I can’t say enough about how great my experience was.

A big topic of conversation here was the cardboard beds. What were they like?

I slept great! I really did. I really liked what they did in making it as sustainable as possible, and I thought it was really creative. They had a barcode along the backboard that you would scan with your phone (which) takes you to an app that scanned your body and it would suggest what type of firmness you could make the bed into. You could do firm, moderate or soft, and it’s based on your scan recommendation. (It arranged) your bed mattress sections accordingly to give you the best sleep possible. I was talking to other Canadian athletes and they said they had six big guys on the bed jumping on it. And that thing was so sturdy. It was very creative, and it worked.

I’ve always thought that in team sports the bronze medallists feel better than the silver medallists because you won your last game and you get to celebrate as opposed to losing a gold-medal game, where the silver seems like sort of a consolation prize.

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All I can speak to was our moment winning the bronze medal and the fact that we could run on the field after the final out. That was incredibly special. And that’s really cool. You always visualize if you win the gold medal, what that’s going to look like. And while it wasn’t the colour that we obviously wanted, we still had that celebratory moment and coming together and hugging each other and knowing that we made history.

You’ve won Pan-Am Games, competed in multi-sport events, but the Olympics are the Olympics. Just being out there, what was that like for you?

It was so cool. It really was. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. I’m going to be like a like a four-year-old here. It was just really great to get on the mound and I looked at my catcher, Kayleigh Rafter, and I just waved at her, like, “Here we are!” It’s something that I started doing probably the last month and a half of our season, knowing how special this team truly is. When I came into every game, I would look at my infield before we (broke) off and tell them that I love them. And that eventually extended to my outfielders. I would tell them I love them, too. And they would wave back at me.

I really took this year to really just celebrate what this journey has really meant. And it’s so weird … While there is pressure, I just really enjoyed the moment and I had so much fun.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness