The World Games 2025 may be Dawn Bodrug’s biggest event so far, but it’s the small connections the Canadian is focusing on in Chengdu.
The breath she takes, the friends she treasures, and the quality she brings to each throw.
The Softball pitcher from Georgetown, Ontario is of course delighted to represent her country on a grand stage like TWG – especially before the sport returns to the Olympics at LA28 – but being amongst her fellow athletes in China was another attraction about the event.
“I played in Chinese Taipei last year—so much about this reminds me of that,” said the 26 year old. “The culture here is very fun and welcoming. All the lifelong friends I'm going to have that I've met in Florida, Long Island, Taipei. Chinese Taipei is here and seeing their faces yesterday… those things I just feel like I can't get outside of softball.”
“Just being able to travel the world, meet so many people, and communicate over different languages about the same thing is special.
Bodrug’s brilliance lies not solely in the velocity of her pitches but in the thoughtfulness behind each one. Since moving to the seniors, she’s come to reject volume for volume’s sake.
“In college, it was the opposite. It was very much, let’s throw for an hour and a half every day, but my body can’t maintain that level.”
“So, I really learned how to do quality over quantity.”
It’s an understanding learnt from experience—the body tires, breaks down, but intention endures.
Rather than churning out empty reps, the Stony Brook Seawolves record holder in single season strikeouts (285) now insists on prioritising the “fine details” of Softball.
That intentional approach guided her through recovering from injury and improving her overall performance on the field—not just stats, but subtle markers of sustained health and thoughtful performance.
In the current stage of her career, she believes it’s not the physical strength that is getting over the line but something quieter.
“That breath work has been a game changer,” she added. “I think it's the intentional meaning behind it and knowing that just because I'm lifting my shoulders up and dropping them doesn't mean I'm taking an intentional breath.”
“When you really focus on that, it takes your head out of the game itself, it makes you think about whether you're expanding your rib cage.”
“It's kind of like putting your feet on grass or having ten toes down and being in the moment. It grounds you for those extra seconds, allowing you to really focus on your breath because I don't want my head to go.”
The dream of becoming a top player in Softball however wasn’t always so effortless.
Although Stony Brook University was the place where Bodrug made her name - the early, grind-it-out training nearly extinguished her passion.
The warmth and support from Canada’s team however quelled any chance of a break from the sport, most likely realising that losing a talent such as Bodrug would be a vacuum hard to replace in the team.
“They (Canada) make a healthy, safe environment for us to grow together as teammates and talk about the hard stuff. If we can't go through the hard stuff together and call each other out or hold each other accountable, then we can’t be very close and understanding.”
“I felt it from my first year on the team—I was just like, wow, it makes me love my sport again. In college, I sometimes felt pushed into the ground with so much softball that I didn’t know if I loved it anymore, but this made me realise I do.”
The memories that carry her forward into TWG 2025 aren’t just championship titles, but breakthroughs. She recalls a matchup against University of South Florida —where she and her mid-major squad took the game deep into eight innings, a match Bodrug still thinks about today that wasn’t about winning, but a signpost of her never-say-die attitude.
She also turned adversity into achievement when battling through injury to break the single strikeout record—a testament not to reckless endurance, but resilient intelligence.
“Did it cause an injury? Maybe. But I again see the positive in it…I was able to get those stats and get noticed, and it made me who I am today.”
Now, she stands on the global stage once more, this time representing Canada at the 2025 World Games in Chengdu.
She is part of the roster fresh off gold at the Pan American Championships and silver at the Canada Cup, carrying real momentum into the competition.
If she reaches the TWG 2025 Women’s Softball gold medal match on 17 August, she may not be perfect but the most powerful pitch that day will be the one thrown with trust in the process, and with teammates at her side, that will readily pick her up no matter the result.
“It’s easy to feel alone out there, but if you connect with your team and your infielders, no matter the outcome, your team will pick you up,” she concluded when asked what she tells aspiring pitchers back home. “It’s not all on you—you’re not out there alone—and you don’t have to be perfect.”
It shows Dawn Bodrug isn’t just playing softball—she’s living and loving it, one intentional breath at a time.