Article added: Tuesday 02 August 2022

Canterbury Softball is mourning the passing of life member Nancy Beale, one of the most influential figures in our game, as a player, coach and administrator, during the mid to late 20th century.
Nancy, who has died in Christchurch, was a Canterbury and South Island representative catcher, a New Zealand triallist, a longtime Canterbury women’s team coach and served for several decades on the Canterbury Softball executive, including a significant stint as treasurer.
She forged a formidable battery partnership with New Zealand’s first world championship team pitcher Bev Makinson.
Together, they steered Canterbury to six Bensel Cup national titles between 1955 and 1964 and their Monowai club to seven Dustin Cup national interclub crowns from 1959 to 1968.
Monowai won five interclubs in a row from ’59 to ’63, a consecutive championships record that still stands today.
No Canterbury club has won more national women’s titles than Monowai. who contributed so much to the general fabric of the game in Christchurch. 
Nancy and Bev played senior softball for around 30 years, stepping down around 1983 when in their early fifties.
Their combination proved so telepathic at times Nancy didn’t even need to give Bev a signal.  “Nancy used to hold her glove up and spin it to encourage me to throw a spinning pitch,’’ Bev once said.
Monowai players were encouraged to give back to the game from an early age, none more so than Nancy, Bev (who died in 2017) and the late Lyndsey Leask - all faithful servants of the Canterbury association while still playing and coaching.
A report in The Press in 1958 paid tribute to Nancy’s service to sport, noting she was treasurer and ‘personnel officer’ of the Digby ‘s hockey club as well as a member of the Canterbury Softball executive in the summer. “Catcher on the Monowai team, she has represented Canterbury for several years in this position” and “as well as coaching teams of young women, last season she helped coach a team of boys’’.
Nancy was part of the first golden age of Canterbury women’s softball when the province’s leaders were Betty Quested and New Zealand representative Hazel Johnson. The province won the Bensel Cup for the first time in 1955 and dominated for most of the next decade, due in part to the Makinson-Beale combo.
While she initially shared the catching duties for Canterbury with Cath O’Byrne, Nancy soon made the position her own and became known as a canny strategist. She played a big part in  Monowai’s first Dustin Cup win in Whanganui in 1959 where the Samoan Society was the only team to score runs off Makinson.
That gave Canterbury the province’s first Bensel Cup-Dustin Cup double.
Nancy was widely regarded to have been unlucky not to join Bev in the New Zealand team, but played in an era when there was a glut of quality catchers, including the big-hitting Martha Rush (nee Yandall) from Auckland and Hawke’s Bay’s Jan Foote.
But, for years she was a mainstay in South Island teams, which often beat their North Island rivals in annual games and she showed her international quality by hitting a home run in Canterbury’s 7-5 win over Australia at English Park in 1962 just before a three-test trans-Tasman series.
In 1963, a NZ Softball Monthly correspondent wrote of Nancy: “It has always seemed inconceivable to the cognoscenti that a still young player who has collected more Dustin Cup and Bensel Cup medals than a marching girl, should be barred from higher honours'', a NZ Softball Monthly correspondent wrote in 1963.
It was “downright incredible to anyone who has seen her play for Monowai and Canterbury that she did not proceed straight to the New Zealand team''. Beale, the writer asserted, had “submerged her own ability in the effort to bring out the best in her team-mates''. She was “one of the most powerful hitters'' in a “crop that really clout the ball'', but was “always fighting for the run which will count'' with deftly placed bunts and pokes into right field.
The NZ Softball Monthly declared also in 1963 that “no-one at [the Bensel Cup] in Palmerston North was prepared to deny that Christchurch is the softball capital of New Zealand’’. A Press report at the time noted catcher Beale, “combined well with Makinson and produced her best form ever’’.
While Nancy took her softball seriously, she and Bev were not above a bit of fun, once smuggling a baseball onto the field for a North v South game in Christchurch in 1960. Bev produced a sleight of hand, swapping balls before firing the smaller baseball past North’s New Zealand captain Rose Fletcher, who was left swinging at fresh air as the ball thudded into Nancy’s glove. “Rose eventually saw the funny side of it,’’ Bev said.
Overlooked for the first women’s world championship in Melbourne in 1965, Nancy by then was Monowai’s player-coach, arguably becoming the first successful female player-coach in New Zealand women’s softball history as most leading club and representative women’s team were coached by men up to that point.
Nancy was Canterbury’s player/coach/manager in 1967, played for The Rest in a 2-1 loss to New Zealand in 1968 and was still Canterbury head coach in 1978 while still leading Monowai to national tournaments.
While golf became her sporting passion later in life, Nancy and Bev – both life members – could often be seen on the balcony at Canterbury Softball HQ for big tournaments and New Zealand White Sox games.