A formidable opponent: Diane Grinkemeyer
Blair Scanlon

Diane Grinkemeyer grew up loving the thrill of competition. Little did she know that the love she had for playing games would help her in the competition for her life.

In 1957 Diane VonDenBenken was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Carl and Maria VonDenBenken, both immigrants from Germany. The family, including her two brothers Ron and Tom, lived in Blue Ash, Ohio where VonDenBenken began to develop her passion for athletics.

“I just naturally loved sports,” she said.

By the time she was in high school her skills were developed and she was a stand out among her peers. At Mount Notre Dame, a Division I Catholic High School in Cincinnati, VonDenBenken played varsity basketball, volleyball, softball and soccer all four years. While she was a successful athlete, she looked at the sports as more fun than anything.

“Playing is a means of meeting people and a social event,” she said. “If you do well it’s a bonus.”

Perhaps her bonus was becoming a member of the Mount Notre Dame Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005. Or maybe it is her distinction as a LaRosa’s Athlete Hall of Famer- a great honor for local Cincinnati athletes. Either way, she was definitely seeing a return of her efforts.

In 1974, VonDenBenken met her now husband, Robert Grinkemeyer and her athletic ability even played a role in this.

Grinkemeyer was dating a close friend of VonDenBenken’s and she had no intention of becoming involved with him. That is until she saved him from drowning. However, she will tell you that she did not really save his life, but just merely helped him out of the water. Nonetheless she caught his attention.

They were married four years later on September 2, 1978 and VonDenBenken traded one German name for another. Together they had two children, daughters Lisa and Krista. The four eventually moved to Delhi, a suburb of Cincinnati, and settled into family life.

Her daughter Krista developed a love for athletics early on as well. She played many sports throughout her middle school years and continued on to play basketball and softball at Seton High School. She too, was celebrated for her skills in softball receiving Honorable Mention in the 2007 Cincinnati Enquirer Division 1 Softball poll.

But she maintains that her mother never pressured her to play sports-rather she just encouraged both her and her sister to explore and find something that they enjoyed.

“She never forced any kind of advice on us but she was always there if we had a question or needed to talk to her about something,” she said. “She would always tell us something positive and just genuinely wanted us to be better athletes.”

Grinkemeyer’s passion for all things sports followed her into her adult and family life.

She joined a local bowling league and just as she had excelled in high school, she excelled in bowling. The list of all of her accomplishments throughout the years is extensive. Among her awards are- Hamilton Association Hall of Fame Bowler and second in the state of Ohio in Doubles. She has held an average of 200 for the last 10 years and has a high score of 290- a nearly perfect game.

It would seem such a distinguished athlete would be invincible. But Grinkemeyer soon found out that no one, no matter their skill level, is invincible.

In 2000, she received a devastating diagnosis. She had breast cancer and would have to undergo extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

The news was a major blow but Grinkemeyer knew there was only one course of action for the formidable opponent- positivity.

“I have a strong will and I just forced myself to be positive,” she said.

While everyday was a struggle, everyday was also a victory for Grinkemeyer.

Her daughter Krista remembers that her mom did not tell her about the cancer right away.

“It was very evident that she didn’t want us to think or worry about anything that she was going through-she never wanted us to worry about her,” she said.

Grinkemeyer was determined not to let cancer interfere with her life. And just like any other game she played she would play until the last whistle blew.

“It’s an instilled thing you know, just get through everyday,” she said.
And she did- Grinkemeyer- 1 Cancer- 0.

But this was no ordinary win. Sure the stakes were much higher-life or death- but this win also warranted a priceless award.

“I’m a firm believer that good can come from something bad,” she said.

So what was the good that came from cancer, a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year? It is Grinkemeyer’s ability to inspire others who were suffering like she had. It is the positivity that has only grown in her life. And it is her ability to see the good in more things now than ever before.

“I don’t worry about petty things and I live everyday like there is no tomorrow,” she said. “What is important is what is in front of me-my family and my friends.”

Today Grinkemeyer has a new pastime. You can find her on the golf course with her husband.

“I need something to do and now I have golf,” she said. “He (Robert) enjoys it so now it is something we can do together.”

Her daughter Krista maintains that her mother is a strong positive woman and that is how she was able to beat breast cancer.

“She is just a fighter, I guess you could say, and she is definitely a competitive woman and I think it was the battle of her and cancer,” she said.

But if you ask Grinkemeyer about her positive outlook and competitive nature she has a much simpler explanation.

“It’s just me,” she said.

Bulldogs fall to underdog Cavaliers

The season ended Thursday for the Bulldogs who lost 6-1 to the underdog Chillicothe Cavaliers in the first round of the OHSSA Softball Playoffs.

This was a tough loss for the favored Athens team after an emotional game. The Bulldogs were a number one seed playing the number 8 seed Cavs. Coach Sheila Ross commented on the pressure the girls may have felt.

“When you’re coming into a game where you’re supposed to win and things start off slow you do feel more pressure and when someone is expected to win, you got a little weight on your shoulders,” she said.

The start of the game seemed to be a match of pitchers with both Jayne Seymour for Athens and Rylee Boullion for Chillicothe pitching three and out.

But the bats proved stronger for Chillicothe which scored two runs in the second inning from Kali Kight and Page Rinehart, both sophomores.

The Chillicothe team is in fact a very young team with only one senior, first baseman Holly LeMay. LeMay made a game changing play at first. With the tying runs for Athens on first and second, two outs and Seymour up to bat, she made an acrobatic behind the back, upside down, twisted catch to get the third out.

At this point something changed for the Bulldogs.

“I thought we would be able to score two right then,” Ross said. “That would have changed the ball game right there and at that point our experience would have been a little different.”

On the flip side, Greg Philips, coach of the Cavaliers, was rather thrilled with the catch.

“That’s the game right there,” he said, noting that if the game had been tied up at that point, the outcome could have been different.

He was not so surprised, however, by the play from the lone senior.

“She is our one senior and I expect that from her,” he said.

LeMay was pretty pleased herself with the play.

“It felt really good,” she said.

She also expects that things will be a little different when the team returns to school tomorrow.

“We had a lot of people not have faith in us and they believed that we weren’t going to win and it's just going to be crazy,” she laughed.

But the Cavs have not always had such great success and people truly have been less than impressed by the team.

Philips has only coached the team for two years but has worked very hard to point the team in the right direction but he had quite the challenge ahead of him.

Out of the last one hundred games the Cavs had only won three. Their record going into this playoff game was only 9-17. It is a team with nine freshmen and sophomores on a roster of 11; the odds seem to be against them. But as Philips plainly put it: “They believe.”

They are not a team with unrealistic expectations, though.

“We didn’t have expectations except that we were going to play hard and get this program headed in the right direction,” Philips said.

Now people might be paying attention to the underdog Cavs and that’s just what Philips is hoping for.

“We’ve sent a good message and we will see how far we can ride this train,” he said.

Iris is number 33 in the front row



Athlete Profile-
Iris Butcher: The anatomy of an athlete
Blair Scanlon

She is a member of the National Honor Society, she was on the honor roll all four years of high school, and received Federal Hocking High School’s highest distinguished honor, The Principals Award, as a sophomore. And these were just her academic honors.

Iris Butcher began playing basketball when she was in the second grade. Her father coached her brother Ian’s Bitty League and she attended all the practices. She watched, and absorbed.

There was no team for second grade girls so Iris joined the fifth and sixth grade girl’s team. After just one year, this just was not competitive enough and so she joined the boys. With the boys she felt comfortable and welcome and she felt like she was playing at the level she needed to be. Sometimes others were not as comfortable.

“When I started playing with them, it was no big deal to me but it was the other teams that had a problem with it,” she said.

There was the problem of "cooties". Boys would refuse to guard her for fear they would contract the “disease.” Butcher was also taller than most of the boys and a few concerned parents would argue that she had an unfair advantage. Her mother even made it a point to carry Iris’ birth certificate around with her. Puberty would eventually catch up with the boys and Iris would have to make the transition to playing with the girls again. This was not an easy move, either. In her words it was “horrible.”

The years of playing with the boys taught her not only how to play with them, but also how to relate to them. Unfortunately, she did not make a lot of girl friends in the process. The style of play was slower, too.

Butcher wanted to return to the boys team but her parents insisted that she stick this out.

“You need to make them better is what they said to me, and they were right,” she said.

Eventually the adjustment was made and Butcher transitioned brilliantly.

It would be naïve to think that all of her talent was just something that she developed one day. Iris credits much of her success as a basketball player to her family supportive family.

As a young girl, she could be found dribbling up and down the streets of Amesville, Ohio just trying to get in as much practice as possible. This is when she developed most of her skills, when it was just she and her dad going over the basics. It would be a few more years until he would be her official coach but his influence in the earlier years was invaluable.

You often hear the stories about father daughter, coach player relationships that don’t work out but the one between Iris and her father did. “We would but heads and stuff but we never had a problem and we always worked really well together,” she said.

The car rides home from the game were usually silent. Not because there was tension or frustration but because that was the time both coach and player could collect their thoughts about the game. Then when they were home there was eat, again, and talk about the game. But the dialogue was not between coach and player- this was a conversation between father and daughter.

“When I got home it wasn’t my coach talking to me it was my dad talking to me,” she said.

Her mother has also taught her some valuable lessons off the court that have transitioned into her success on the court.

Butcher suffered some major set backs before her senior season. At the end of July while in Washington D.C. for a tournament, she injured her knee. On the ride home she was convinced it was just a bad sprain.

“None of us thought it was that bad,”her mother Rosemary said.

The news from her doctor was not in accordance- she had a torn ACL and meniscus. Her entire senior year was wiped out in a matter of seconds.

But her strong personality and the strength of her family helped Iris work through the injury.

“I told her everything happens for a reason, you may not know the reason now or even 30 years from now, but you are never given more than you can handle” her mother said, “she is also just very strong young lady.”

Just as she was completing the rehab for her knee, she broke her foot in a fluke accident walking across the gym floor. It took over 150 hours of rehabilitation with the two injuries before Butcher was cleared to train again. But it definitely paid off in big ways.

Butcher made the 2010 McDonald All-American Team, and the Top 25 in the Ohio Class of 2010 for basketball. ESPN ranked her in the top 100 in the nation for shooting guards and Kent State awarded her a full scholarship.

After years of recruitment beginning the seventh grade Iris had narrowed down her choices. She whittled the pool down to three schools two of which were in the Ivy League; Princeton and U Penn. Those schools did not offer Iris exactly what she wanted and in her words she “would have been settling”.

Her background of growing up watching the Ohio University Bobcats compete in the MAC led to a loyalty to the conference. But OU was too close to home. Kent, on the other hand had everything she was looking for.

So Kent State University is the next stop for Iris Butcher.

“There is a family atmosphere that they pride themselves on having and I felt as a player and student I would fit in really well at Kent,” she said.

Butcher’s family in Federal Hocking will miss her, though.

“I’m going to be a basket case,” her mother said.

She has no fears for her daughter in the transition but she does worry that she and her husband will have a tough time adjusting to their first experience as empty nesters.

It will be a transition for all and there a few worries that Iris has but she plans to succeed. “I think I will probably be one of those kids who calls her mom everyday asking, ‘what are you guys eating?’ and I worry about being homesick but I think by the fall I will be ready to go,” she said.

Successful senior night for Bulldogs

Balloons and posters covered the dugout but there was no distracting the Athens High Bulldogs. They had a goal and were determined to achieve it. And they did as they walked away with the TVC-Ohio Championship.

Beating the Meigs Marauders handily 8-1, the Bulldogs improved to 16-7 overall and 10-1 in the league. This was not only an important win because of the Championship, it was also senior night.

And the seniors were there to win.

Raven Cline, who has been an impressive asset all year, struggled in her first three at bats but had two catches in center field. She also hit a sailing double to left field resulting in a run off of the sacrifice from fellow senior and catcher Richelle Hecker.

Hecker also had a great final regular season game with some strong at bats and a scoring single.

Pitcher Jayne Seymour was playing for a shutout. While Meigs did score a sole run, her performance was still memorable.

Seymour sat out much of last season with an injury incurred while throwing the ball overhand, something her arm was not used to. She spent the offseason rehabilitating and it paid off.

“It’s been feeling good lately and so I came in knowing that I would be able to throw hard as long as I could,” she said.

While she seemed a little dissatisfied with her hitting, she had a double and contributed to Athens’ eight runs.

The seniors dominated the lineup but they were not the only ones who were playing with a purpose.

Sophomore Abby Pimento had a successful game at shortstop with a catch that rivaled Brianna Scurry’s saves on the soccer field. Perhaps it is Pimento’s goalie background that gave her the impetus to reach for that ball but nonetheless it was spectacular- and she would agree.



“That felt amazing and it’s always good when your ready and jumping; you feel so free,” she said.

Coach Sheila Ross was equally impressed with her team’s performance. After the game she enjoyed a brief shower courtesy of flying water balloons but she did not seem to mind.

“Yes, they are enjoying this and they should,” she said.

She was right, they should celebrate. The Bulldogs were coming off of a two-game losing streak and momentum seemed to be down. It was evident though, from the first inning when they scored four runs in six at bats, that this game would be different.

“Having a two game losing streak coming into tonight, we definitely wanted to get off to a good start,” Ross said.

Meigs, on the other hand struggled from the very beginning. They failed to score a run until the sixth inning and pitcher Hally English struggled to contain the Bulldog’s bats.

Coach Steven Wood said that the Marauders struggled all season with making the kind of solid contact that Athens was achieving.

“We fought hard and tried to make it a game but their offense was really tough,” he said.

But the Marauders were not sore losers. The entire team stayed after the game to participate in some of the senior night festivities.

Athens even presented the Meigs’ seniors with small tokens of congratulations on their final season.

Ross stood outside the dugout and announced each senior and her parents along with a humorous list of favorite memories that included some things she just could not say. The stands were filled with proud friends and family and the smiles and laughter were infectious.

It would have been a perfect ending, but this is not the end. The Bulldogs will participate in the tournament and if they can keep this spirit and momentum they will be a force that demands attention.