Princeton University Athletics
Senior Standout: Jen Neil
April 23, 2003 | Softball
April 23, 2003
PRINCETON, N.J. - Jen Neil came to Princeton University for two reasons - school and hockey. She was recruited to Princeton to play for the Tigers' women's hockey team but when she dislocated her shoulder during her freshman preseason, all of her plans changed.
Neil was accustomed to devoting her time, energy, and emotion into sports and needed a new outlet for that passion. The frosh was meanwhile exploring what college was all about and, in the process, discovering what she was all about.
Neil grew up surrounded by music, academics, and family but her life revolved around sports. She played hockey for 14 years of her life, softball for 12 and, in high school, played five years of badminton, three years of volleyball, two years of rugby, and a year each of field hockey and ice hockey. Neil earned a spot on the 1999 junior national softball team that competed at the World Championships held in Taiwan, and was named the 2001 Ontario Provincial Softball Championship MVP for the tournament her team lost 1-0 in a 24-inning, seven-hour national championship game. Although hockey was what brought Neil from Kitchener, Ontario to Princeton, New Jersey, her preseason injury prevented her from dressing for a single hockey game the entire season. She instead looked forward to the spring when she would join the softball team as a walk-on. Neil was an immediate starter, playing in 13 games with three hits and a stolen base before she learned she had two cartilage tears in her shoulder. Although the injury was in her non-throwing arm, surgery was necessary to prevent further damage. With athletics out of the picture for at least the short term and for the first time in her life, Neil turned to music.
Neil, who started the piano at age four, played the trumpet throughout grade school, and developed a zeal for singing in high school, discovered the guitar in college. One of the first classmates she met at Princeton was a guitar player, who inspired her to borrow a friend's guitar and learn the chords to several of her favorite songs. Neil focused on music by Ani Difranco and the Indigo Girls - female musicians who inspired her and who she could relate to. She quickly found in herself a passion not unlike the one she had for sports her entire life. Neil remembers the rigorous but necessary practice - strumming in the dorm stairway until 3 a.m. or until her fingers bled. She was practicing to reach her newfound dream - singing and playing the guitar on stage.
After Neil's shoulder surgery during that freshman year, her new college friends chipped in and bought her a guitar of her own, realizing that the injury would give her much free time away from sports. By the middle of her sophomore year, Neil taught herself to simultaneously sing and play the guitar, and learned that hockey wasn't worth what her limited time and limited arm movement could provide. She struggled with bad shoulders for five years and, without the recovery time she had before the college level, she knew the pain wasn't going away.
Neil retired from hockey after playing in 17 games her sophomore season and instead flourished on the stage, as well as on the softball field. Her dream was to wear the Canadian uniform, and the 2004 Softball Olympics was a realistic possibility for her.
"I made an executive decision," Neil said. "I gave up hockey and devoted my time to reaching my Olympic dream."
She returned for her second season with the Tigers to start all 35 games that she played in, and register 83 at-bats, 21 hits, and 12 runs. Neil also stole five bases in eight attempts as a sophomore. Her best performance was a 3-for-3 day against Columbia, in which she hit a double, scored two runs, and got an RBI.
Neil carried her success as a sophomore into her junior season when she started the first 25 games of the year. She batted .255 during those games, with two home runs and five RBIs. But Neil, the team's star outfielder by this time, fractured her ankle while fielding a fly ball in a non-conference game before NCAA Regionals, and was sidelined for the rest of the season. Her injury was so severe that doctors doubted whether she could ever participate in sports again, giving her just a 40% chance of doing so.
"Breaking my ankle obviously put a huge wrinkle in my plans," Neil said. "My dream of making the Canadian Olympic team was postponed."
After she was told it would be two to three years of rehab before she would walk without pain, and with hockey and softball out of clear view for Neil, music came into sharp focus. She was now writing, singing, and playing her own songs and had transformed her dorm room into a makeshift music studio. Neil took part in open mic nights and earned gigs across campus, which fed into her inspiration to take music further. She has currently written over 18 songs and produced her own CD.
But the fervor she developed for softball as a collegiate player and Olympic hopeful never faded. Now, 12 months after her surgery and contrary to doctors' predictions, Neil has begun to jog and fully participate in team practices, with the exception of base running. Despite her inability to play in a single softball game for the Tigers this season, Neil has been a vital member of the team. She is one of just three seniors who demonstrates her leadership and dedication by attending practices and games, and traveling with the team to every away game and tournament.
"Daily physiotherapy is intense, but it has brought me back to near-playing status," Neil said. "For now, I'm practicing hard, trying to prove to the coaches and to myself that I can be the player I was before my injury."
While completing her senior thesis and working on her music, Neil dedicates several hours a day and almost every day of the week, including eight days in Georgia for the team's Spring Break tournament, to a sport she can't play. Nothing, not her music or her interest in anthropology, has matched the type of passion she has for softball. She is satisfied with casually playing music but her more ardent goals lie elsewhere.
With her ankle recovery surely coming along, Neil longs to get back on the playing field, and has included softball in her future plans. She hopes to attend graduate school at the University of Hawaii in the fall of 2004, after spending this summer in Fiji to participate in an archaeological dig. After the dig, she will join a softball league in New Zealand, where she'll play for the Wellington team from September to April.
Four years and two injuries later, Neil said, "I still dream of making it to the Olympics to wear the maple leaf."