Former softball players reuniting with coach who formed team over 60 years ago

A group of former ball players is treating their coach to lunch in Saskatoon Saturday, thanking her for the memories and lessons they experienced decades ago.

Norma Colborn, now 94 years old, established a girls' softball team in Delisle, Sask., a town about 40 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon, that became a force provincially under her tenure in the 1960s.

"We would have come to the game with a few skills, just because we had spent hours amusing ourselves playing catch, or fielding fly balls or grounders in our yards, or playing scrub at school," said Shirley Shockey, Norma's younger sister, who played on the inaugural Delisle midget girls softball team.

Scrub is a form of baseball that only requires a handful of players, instead of fielding two teams of nine.

"But the chance to play on a real team was like a dream come true — and that's what Norma gave to us," she said.

Growing up, the Shockey family was synonymous with softball and baseball, she said. Her father coached the Vanscoy Caps, a local girls' softball team, during the 1940s and 1950s. Norma and their other sister Eleanor each played for the team.

In 1961, Norma had been married for nearly a decade and was raising three children on a farm, Shirley said. Yet, she started a girls' softball team.

The team drew midget-aged girls from Delisle, as well as nearby Vanscoy and Donavon, including Shirley, who is 17-and-a-half years younger than Norma.

They had no money, so Norma and her mother sewed all the uniforms, Shirley said. They had to use old equipment, too.

But the team became a ringer quickly, winning back-to-back provincial titles in 1962 and 1963. The team clinched another championship in an older age category in 1965.

Shirley recalls droves of people