Karen Doell always felt more comfortable in the batter’s box than anywhere else on a softball diamond. In fact, she probably felt more comfortable in the batter’s box than she did anywhere else on the planet.

“The strongest part of my game was hitting,” said Doell, who went from boys’ baseball in Winkler to the 1996 Canadian Olympic women’s fast pitch team. “I wasn’t a power hitter, but a pretty confident contact hitter. I could get on base. The most confident and comfortable I ever felt in my life, was when I was in the batter’s box.”

Karen Doell was an Olympian. The second baseman with Canada’s national team at the ’96 Atlanta Games, she was also an example of skill, dedication and, most of all, perseverance.

Born and raised in Winkler, she started playing ball with her brothers in the back lot. Since there was no organized girls’ softball at the time, she started out playing boys’ baseball, and was so good, she helped the local nine reach the Western Canadian Bantam Championship in 1976.

At 14, she was asked to play women’s softball with the Winkler Skylarks, a senior team that not only helped her hone her game, but also prepared her for the adult world. “I was so much younger than these ladies, I think the next youngest was about 18,” Doell recalled. “But they were so good to me and taught me so much. It was a lot of fun.”

It also prepared her to take the next step.

“When I was 17, Mr. and Mrs. Holenski (Roy and Evelyn) asked me to play for Smitty’s,” she said. “That changed my life. We won a national junior championship and then, between 1995 and 1997, we won three Canadian senior championships. That’s where I really learned to play the game. I played with Smitty’s from 1983 until the time I turned 40 (2006).”

She was inducted into the Manitoba Softball Hall of Fame as an individual in 2002.

Today, Karen Doell, 42, is a successful physiotherapist in Winkler. She still coaches hockey and “a little softball.” And she still looks like she could suit up and play.