Lesley McPherson has gone from playing minor softball on the fields of Maple Ridge to catching for her country at the Olympic Games. Lesley was in Grade 8 when her family moved here from Ontario and she started playing ball on house teams with the Ridge Meadows Minor Softball Association. By the midget level, she was playing for rep teams, and she moved into elite junior ball after graduating from Maple Ridge Secondary in 1989. A leader on the field, she went on to captain Simon Fraser University’s women’s softball team against the best NAIA clubs in the United States, and to catch for our national team at the world championships. In the year 2000, she was a force for Canada behind the plate at the biggest show in women’s softball, the Summer Olympics. Lesley, now a teacher at her old high school, believes Olympic dreams aren’t out of reach for those willing to work hard for them. "As a kid watching the Olympics on TV, you always think it's for somebody else, but all the people I met there weren't that much different from me."