By Herb Moering
After Ed Martens threw out the ceremonial first pitch, it was all business as the Division A USA Team garnered the bragging rights for the coming year and its name engraved on the beautiful trophy with a win over the Canadian Team in Friday’s International Senior Softball Tournament.
Team USA regained the trophy after the Canada team won it in 2024. In fact, Canada has had its name on the trophy for four of the last seven years of the CanAm senior’s tournament. The USA Division B Team also won its game with Canada. The trophy is housed by the City of McAllen.
Martens has the distinction of starting the Ed Martens Senior Texan Softball League some 30 years ago. This year the two divisions had nine teams and 120 ballplayers, about half of them Winter Texans and half local residents, which included nearly a dozen women in the B Division.
Zeny Vasquez, from Edinburg, was one of the women playing in her second year. Her husband, Rick also plays but had the role of coach for the USA’s Division B Team for this year’s game at McAllen’s Westside Park. Zeny, who loves softball, didn’t see much difference in playing with the guys. The right-center fielder said one of the perks is “you meet a lot of people from a lot of states.”
Among the spectators were friends Diana Van Middlesworth and Gloria Arnold cheering for the Canadian Division A Team.
Diana’s husband, Gary played in the game in addition to singing both the U.S. and Canadian national anthems as part of the opening ceremonies. Diana, who spends summers back in Indiana, is a retired school principal and Gary was formerly a science teacher, who remembers many of the players and can recall a lot of the games. The couple had been RVers for about 10 years, but bought a home after friends invited them to visit the Valley in 2019. Diana said she has met people from all over the U.S.
Gloria, who met her husband, Don, here in the Valley some 15 years ago and convinced him to spend summers in Minnesota, said he had been playing softball here for 11 years. Being here in the winter is all about the weather and friends she has made. It was a first time visit to the Valley that convinced the couple “this was it.”
The league appears to fuel a lot of camaraderie and fun times over what is usually a 15-game season. Mike Brower, the league’s secretary and media specialist for a five-member committee who hails from Michigan, said each season includes a banquet for both divisions. These events are held at various sites in the mid-Valley, which had to be moved up this season because of earlier “cold out” postponements following drafting of players last December. The banquet is one more chance to rub elbows with teammates and opposing players along with spouses after enjoying softball in the middle of winter.
