Oñgwaweñna’
By: Diohgwine
Softball is certainly a family affair for Jan Moses. After all, she is the second in line to a five-generation lineage of Native women softball players. Jan began playing on the all-Native Syracuse Red Jackets softball team with her mother, Eulalie Green Moses, when she was 15.
“We used to practice in a field by Tom Huff’s old house,” said Jan. “But our games were played on the old field behind where Helen Jones lives now on Main Road.”
Coaching the team back then was Stanley Buck and Vern Thompson who demanded a lot from the team.
“It was a tough but fun competition back then,” said Jan. “I was the youngest on the team and I wanted to prove myself to the older players, like Heddie Buck, Dale Solomon, and Jody Lewis.”
But going to practice and playing in games was not enough softball for Jan. She remembers clearing out a field behind her family’s home on the Nation, just so they could keep playing ball. Well after practice was over, you could find Jan continuing to practice her game.
“Softball was life for us,” recalled Jan. “Ginny Doctor and I cleared out a big part of my backyard so we could have our own field. We would play all day, every day.”
Another fond memory Jan shared was how the whole team would work together off the field as well. For their team to exist, they had to fundraise for all their expenses.
“During the Green Corn dance,” said Jan. “We would set up a booth and sell food to raise money for everything we needed, including material for our uniforms. Vern Thompson’s wife, Geralda, would hand sew this silk-like material to make them and they were sharp! One year, my mother painted a mural of a softball game on a big wooden board that people could pay to shoot at. We all were really dedicated to the team!”
Jan carried that determination through her adulthood, as the coach of her daughter Kellie’s softball team, the Onondaga Blue Jays.
“I was tough on them but they handled it good,” recalled Jan. “They were all a really good group of players. They won the championship every year. They were unbeatable.”
Kellie would go on to have two, talented, softball-playing daughters of her own, Allison and Ganarehawi Printup. Both of Jan’s granddaughters played for the Blue Jays, although by then it was named the Onondaga Nation girls’ softball team. Allison also played with Team Haudenosaunee during the 2002 North American Indigenous Games, as well as many leagues and tournaments throughout New York State.
Ganarehawi was a pitcher like her great-grandma Eulalie. Ganarehawi went on to play for Onondaga Community College’s softball team when they won the National Junior College Athletic Association Region 3 championship in 2017. She has also dedicated her time to coaching the Nation’s young girls’ team she once played for. And like her grandmother, used fundraising to purchase a batting cage for all the players on the Nation to use.
“Softball is life for our family,” said Jan . “When Allison had her daughter, the first gift I gave her was a little glove and bat. Her little sister Judanih is playing t-ball with it.”
Jan Moses and her girls continue to embody the right mixture of sportsmanship and talent that it takes to build a family legacy.