No strangers to the top of the Big East softball world, Head Coach Pat Conlan and Assistant Coach Kim Staehle are not too familiar with the predicament of Georgetown’s fledgling softball team.
“I had an idea of what starting a program would be like,” Conlan said, who established and coached the team at North Carolina State before being hired as Georgetown’s first-ever varsity softball coach. “But N.C. State had a whole year to recruit kids before we actually played a game.”
Georgetown softball, meanwhile, was not officially founded until June 23, and Conlan has since scrambled to put together a roster based loosely on that of the now-defunct club team. The squad consists of 18 girls, and in its first two tournaments – at George Washington on Oct. 8-9 and Towson on Oct. 15 – Georgetown went winless.
In only one match did the Hoyas emerge without succumbing to the mercy rule. So with months remaining before their next competition, when they kick off the spring season on March 2 versus GW, Conlan considers “everything under the sun” to be among her team’s needed improvements.
Recurring losses may be new to Conlan and Staehle, but big turnarounds are not. Best friends and roommates in college, they helped bring the University of Connecticut four consecutive Big East regular season and tournament championships between 1990 and 1993.
“We stepped into a program that was already established,” Conlon said, who pitched only 14 innings over the course of 60 games her freshman year. “You don’t have to build tradition; you have to maintain it. And it’s hard.”
Conlan, despite starting slow, went on to compile a striking collegiate resume. As UConn’s star pitcher, she earned a 55-17 career record and set school marks for wins (26) and shutouts (14) in a season. She also set school records for complete games (26) and consecutive innings without allowing an earned run (73.2).
It was in Conlan’s best year – 1993, when she sported the nation’s second-best ERA at 0.33 – that the Huskies won not only the Big East, but the program’s first NCAA regional championship. By the end of the season, they had claimed a fifth-place finish at the Women’s College World Series.
For UConn, the 1993 season was the stuff of legend. The regional finals at Hofstra, according to then-right fielder Staehle, was among its most magical moments.
“You just had that butterfly feeling,” she remembers. “We knew even before the game started that we were going to win.”
Against UNLV, Conlan pitched a terrific seven innings in which “every pitch moved the way you wanted it to.”
The game’s key play came in the first inning, when a UConn leadoff single was followed not by a bunt like usual, but by Head Coach Karen Mullins’ unexpected call for the batter to swing away. The result was a two-run homer – and a win.
Passing their team’s excellence on to a new generation, meanwhile, is nowhere among Conlan and Staehle’s short-term intents. Today, they insist it was off-the-field developments that kept the 1993 team close and promoted their title-winning chemistry.
“One thing that was very clear about our team is that we were the best of friends,” Staehle said, who shared a particularly strong bond with Conlan, outfielder Janna Venice and infielder Christine Woodman. “We spent an enormous amount of time together on and off the field. . The athleticism took care of itself.”
The team’s hopes and dreams, explains Conlan, were of winning championships, not games. At every birthday party and other wish-requiring situation, Venice, unbeknownst to her teammates, had a personal tradition of praying for a regional title. When it came time for the team to make a wish at the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, a stunned look appeared on Venice’s face.
“I don’t know what to wish for anymore,” she said. After all, recalls Conlan, it was “unheard of that a Northeast team would make it to the World Series.”
For Conlan and Staehle, their recurring dreams in college were of coaching alongside each other. And so, when Conlan was hired to the post of head coach back in June, Staehle was among the first people she called.
“Pat kind of knew that I was hoping to get back into it,” Staehle said, who was teaching special education to fifth-graders in East Lyme, Conn. Conlan asked her for advice, then asked her to come with her to Georgetown.
Now, the longtime partners in softball are hoping some of their title-winning chemistry will rub off on the players of Georgetown varsity softball – although they unequivocally refuse to force it on them.
“It’s easy to go back and say, `When I was in school.'” Conlan said. “There’s a new generation of student-athletes. Kids are very different today, but I do believe that it is very important to have chemistry with each other.”
And so Conlan and Staehle play a role, albeit small, in team composition. They ask their players if they feel recruits would fit in, and they do all they can to promote parental involvement. The result is two coaches, proud of how their team has gelled, extolling what Conlan calls “a family-like atmosphere.”
Winning, meanwhile, requires a different kind of intervention. Conlan says that her team’s play has been impressive considering the circumstances – especially in the eyes of opposing coaches – but asserts that her current expectations are high.
“We don’t expect [big losses] from these kids,” she said. “This is a Division I softball team, and we’re certainly treating the girls that way. If we get beat, we’re going to go down fighting.”
Conlan and Staehle know the virtues of the fighting spirit. They started slowly before they made history. Today, they believe as much as anyone that Georgetown softball will someday run out of things to wish for.
