(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photos courtesy of the Aussen-family)
IN MEMORIAM
...Vita Aussen...
(1928 - 2021) |
 Former Official Scorer and Administrator Fiet Aussen passed away
Nederlands
 AMSTERDAM (Neth.) -
Fiet Aussen, who was an Official Scorer for many years, passed away on Thursday (April 29) at the age of 92.
Besides being an Official Scorer in both baseball and softball for a lot of seasons, Mrs. Aussen also has been active for many years in the former Rayon Amsterdam.
The memorial service will be held on Wednesday, May 5 in Amsterdam, starting at 11:30 AM.
Due to the current circumstances, this will be a private service.
However, it is possible to follow the service via a livestream.
The access code is 26230.
Sophia Magdalena Louisa Aussen-Koster was born on July 7, 1928 in Amsterdam.
Although her given first name was Sophia, she was mostly called Fie or Fiet.
She also was known by the name of Vita, which sometimes was written as Fieta.
She explained the way of writing her name as Vita herself several years ago.
,,Vita means live in Latin'', she said.
Through the years, Fiet Aussen has always been active in all kinds of things.
But she became especially active in baseball and softball in the seventies when she became closely involved with DVH, the baseball- and softballclub in Amstelveen, the neighoring city to Amstedam, where she and her family lived for many years.
Halfway the seventies, Mrs. Aussen started to do the game-administration for the softball-section of DVH, something she continued to do through the early eighties.
At DVH, Fiet Assen also was a scorekeeper for several softball-teams.
She much liked to be involved in the club-activites as well as the team-activities and frequently was at the site of DVH.
Her enjoyment in being a team-scorer led to her doing a course to become an Official Scorer.
She succeeded and in 1982, she became an Official Scorer, making her debut in the Dutch Major League Softball.
From 1986, she also was assigned to games in the Dutch Major League Baseball.
Fiet was always available for games or to fill at a late notice.
She enjoyed going to the games and was an Official Scorer for 18 years, retiring after the 1999 season.
In 1986, Fiet Aussen became a member of the International List of Dutch Softball Scorers.
With that, she got assignments for international tournaments that were held in the Netherlands.
In 1986, she made her debut during the European Cup Tournament Women's Softball at the site of Twins in Oosterhout.
In later years, Fiet was an Official Scorer in more European Cup Tournaments for both women and men, including tournaments in Santpoort, Bussum, Hilversum, Uithoorn and Haarlem.
In 1992, Fiet Aussen was one of the Official Scorers during the European Women's Softball Championship at the site of HCAW in Bussum.
Five years later, at the same site, the scored games during the European Men's Softball Championship.
...Fiet Aussen, wearing her scorers-jacket, with husband Hans...
(© Photo courtesy of Saskia Aussen) |
From 1991 on, Fiet was an Official Scorer during four Haarlem Softball Week, which were organized at the site of Sparks Haarlem (then HHC) in Haarlem.
Also in the early nineties, Fiet was one of the scorers during the first-ever Indoor Softball Competition, which took place at Sporthallen Zuid in Amsterdam.
Being an Official Scorer was not the lone activity for Fiet Aussen.
From the early eighties on, she held many administrative positions in the then Rayon Amsterdam.
Her first activity in Amsterdam was being a member of the Disciplinary Commission in 1980 and 1981, sharing duties with Wim Niepoth and Han Urbanus, who passed away in February.
In 1981, she started doing something she went on to do for many years.
She started to check the game-forms of all games in all leagues (youth and adults) in baseball in the Amsterdam-region.
In those years, all teams had to fill in a form with the names of the players, their club-membernumber, the final score, the game-number, signatures by a club representative and an umpire and more relevant game-information.
In 1982, individual player cards were introduced which teams had to present to the umpire.
Fiet did the adiministration for both baseball and softball for two years.
As if checking all the baseball-forms wasn't enough work, Fiet also started to check all softball-games played in and around Amsterdam from 1985 on.
In previous years, the softball-forms were checked by Wim van der Poel (1981), Jannie Koot (1982-1983) and Martin Goorts (1984).
She did the checking of both sports from 1985 through 1991.
This must have been an enormous task considering the amount of games that were played not only in the weekends but also during the week in the evening.
...Fiet Aussen...
...Always active with paperwork...
(© Photo courtesy of Saskia Aussen) |
But Fiet Aussen kept on doing much more in the Rayon Amsterdam.
In 1981-1983, she was a member of the Commission for Baseball/Softball Game Affairs in Amsterdam.
In those years, this commission was chaired by Nico Smith.
Other members were Jannie Koot (secretary), Frans Mäkel, Wim van der Poel and Peter Schuler.
In 1983, Herma Hodde, Piet Ladru and Frans Schreuder joined when this commission became an executive commission for youth and game-affairs.
Fiet returned in the Game Affairs Commission in 1986, this time being joined by Herma Hodde and Piet Ladru.
These three formed the base of this commission through 1991.
In 1990 and 1991, Fiet Aussen also was a member of the Board of Rayon Amsterdam, which was then chaired by Wim van der Poel.
After the 1991 season, the then nine Rayons were re-aligned into four Districts.
Amsterdam and Rayon North together formed District North.
Of course, Fiet Aussen continued her administrative activities.
And so, she kept on checking game-forms in baseball from 1992 through 2000.
This time not only of games played in the Amsterdam-region, but the entire province of North Holland.
In those years, she must have spend hours and hours of checking this paperwork, as its wasn't really a computer-era yet.
Oh, checking the game-forms was not enough for Fiet.
She also became the person to call the final score to after completion of a game in both Amsterdam and North Holland.
And yes, she also did this through 2000.
Another re-aligment was created after 2000 when the Districts became Regions.
This time, Fiet Aussen kept on doing the checking of the game-forms for some four more years.
Everyone knew in those years that Fiet Aussen checked indeed ALL forms and checked EVERYTHING!
She was very accurate in doing this and weekly, there were lists published with fines clubs had gotten for filling in something wrongly.
That could vary from one guilder to a bigger amount.
With her accurate checking, Fiet simply underscored to clubs and team-representatives to fill in the forms correctly.
If not, it would cost a club money.
Through the years, that led to a must accurate filling in of those forms.
...Fiet Aussen with her husband Hans and daughter Saskia...
(© Photo courtesy of Saskia Aussen) |
When Fiet was at a game as an Official Scorer or just as a visitor, she of course was alway accompanied by her loving husband Hans, who passed away at age 93 on November 23, 2019.
Hans and Fiet Aussen not only loved baseball and softball themselves.
Their entire family became closely involved.
Hans and Fiet were the parents of softball-playing daughters Saskia and Anja and the grandparents of several baseball- and softball-playing grandchildren.
Saskia played in the Dutch big league for SHELL and HHC in the seventies and eighties.
In 1979, she played for the Netherlands National Softball Team which then won the title at the very-first official European Championship in Italy.
Son-in-law Erik Boland (married to Anja) played several years in the Netherlands Men Softball Team with whom he participated in the World Championship in the Philippines in 1992.
He also was a softball-coach for several teams, including Terrasvogels and Amsterdam Pirates.
Granddaughter Ailleen Boland (daughter of Anja and Erik) is one of the current players in the Pirates-team.
Earlier, granddaughters Gallieth Haaker and Shanna Haaker also played in the Pirates-softballteam.
Grandson Jesse van Koeverden (son of Saskia) played baseball for both Amsterdam Pirates Rookies and DVH.
Granddaughters Gallieth Haaker and Lindy Boland participated with the Netherlands Women's Baseball Team in the World Championship in Canada in 2012.
Through the years, Hans and Fiet frequently traveled to several playing sites to attend the games played by their children and grandchildren.
The two were well respected and liked.
And they also had time for a talk.
When Fiet was assigned as Official Scorer, Hans also was there of course.
But besides keeping an eye on the game, he more focused on another big hobby of him, which was repairing gloves and other equipment.
Since 2000, Hans Aussen was a volunteer guest teacher/speaker in classes at elementary and secondary schools, giving lectures about his experiences during World War II.
In the funeral card, it was mentioned that Fiet passed away, exactly 69 years after she and Hans first met.
For her many activities through the years, Fiet Aussen was named Member of Merit of the Rayon Amsterdam in 1986.
She was then named Member of Merit of the Royal Netherlands Baseball and Softball Association in 1995.
On a personal note, as Offcial Scorer, I was assigned to several international tournaments in the eighties and nineties together with Fiet Aussen, but also with other longtime colleagues from those years, Ben Goorts and Feiko Drost.
We always enjoyed it very much to work together with her and we all three have pleasant memories or her, as she was a fine and sympathetic colleague.
It was a pleasure to score the games with her.
Fiet and Hans were warm personalities and always had interest in other persons, there well-being and how things are going in their private lives.
We will miss Fiet, as will many others.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Fiet's daughters Anja, Saskia and Aviva and son Hans-Louis, son-in-laws Erik, Henry and Vincent, her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other family and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(May 2)
(photos published with permission of the Aussen-family)
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