A WINNING MINDSET

40 years in the making: The story of the team that started it all for Bulldog softball

By Eddie Hughes

Fresno State’s 1982 team started a string of national-record 30 straight NCAA Tournament appearances – in the first 30 years the tournament existed. The Bulldogs have been to 12 Women’s College World Series, beginning with that 1982 appearance.

The fall issue of Fresno State Magazine recognized 100 moments and milestones that helped shape Fresno State athletics. Within that feature were numerous achievements from one of the most storied programs on campus – Bulldog softball.

It’s a program that, for decades, proved to be one of the nation’s elite. A national record 30 straight NCAA Tournament appearances. Twelve Women’s College World Series appearances. A national championship. Attendance records. All-Americans. Olympians.

But before any of that came the team that started it all.

The year was 1982. Coach Donna Pickel had previously coached both women’s basketball and softball, but shifted her focus solely to softball (and teaching) at the University. It was the first year Pickel was able to hire part-time assistant coaches (Barbara Avila and Ralph Salazar).

Most of the softball players on campus were not heavily recruited, nor did they receive scholarships — but they did receive one unit of course credit for signing up to play.

Catcher Denise Ketcham

Denise Ketcham, who later became a standout catcher, recalls learning about the team in 1979 as a student when she picked up a copy of The Daily Collegian student newspaper. After seeing the team practice, she remembers chasing down Coach Pickel near her office in the South Gym.

“I honestly ran Donna down in the hallway and said, ‘Excuse me, excuse me, how do I sign up for that team?” Ketcham recalls. “And Donna said, ‘Well, it’s in the course catalog under Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics.’”

A couple years later, 1982 marked the first year college softball teams competed within the NCAA, after previously being governed by Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Pickel led the team to a 43-11 record, including 17-3 in the NorCal conference before advancing to the first-ever Women’s College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Maybe at the time we didn’t realize, but now, looking back, that was a big thing,” Pickel says.

Fresno State softball advanced to the first-ever Women’s College Word Series in Omaha, Nebraska, finishing as the national runner-up.

After an early setback to Western Michigan, the Bulldogs beat Oklahoma State, Nebraska and Arizona State to earn a spot in the national championship game against UCLA. They battled to extra innings, eventually losing 2-0 to All-American pitcher Debbie Doom and the Bruins.

“We didn’t know we were supposed to lose,” Ketcham says. “We knew we had a good team. We didn’t talk about it, but we just knew. Losing was never in our mindset, no matter who we played.”

Pitcher Wende Ward.

The Bulldogs had an All-American pitcher of their own in junior Wende Ward, who went on to become the first softball player at Fresno State to have her jersey (No. 19) retired in 1987. They also had freshman Barbara Cambria in the circle, who that year threw the first perfect game in program history (Ward threw the second perfect game one month later).

When the team flew home, they were surprised by a group of about 100 Red Wavers waiting to greet them at the airport and they cheered as Ketcham carried the national runner-up trophy out of the airplane and down the stairs to the runway.

“I remember I wanted that trophy in my hands,” Ketcham says. “There was a crowd of people to greet us. I think we were all pretty surprised by it. We could see them from the windows of the airplane and it was like, ‘Wow, look at that, they’re here to greet us.’”

In 1982, Fresno State finished 43-11, including 17-3 in the NorCal conference, under coach Donna Pickel before beating Oklahoma State, Nebraska and Arizona State to earn a spot in the national championship game vs. UCLA.

Forty years later, Pickel saw footage of that airport greeting for the first time, thanks to the ABC30 archives. Because her mother had passed just a few months earlier, Pickel drove to Oklahoma after the national championship to check on her father for a few days while most of the team flew home.

“I was shocked to see such a crowd,” says Pickel upon seeing that footage for the first time.

There were about 100 fans there that day at the airport — but it was only a sign of what was to come for Fresno State softball. The Bulldogs parlayed that success into a return to the Women’s College World Series and a fifth-place finish in 1984, before Pickel retired in 1985.

Her successor, Margie Wright, led the Bulldogs back to the Women’s College World Series 10 times from 1987 to 1999, including three consecutive runner-up finishes from 1988 to 1990. In 1998, the Bulldogs won the national championship — the University’s first Division I team national title in any sport.

Fresno State softball had become a true national powerhouse — and it all started with that unassuming 1982 team, a group of women who bonded together, played for the love of the game and just won and won and won while crashing the biggest party in college softball.

Sixteen years later, Ketcham says it “gave me chills” watching the national championship parade and seeing the firetruck carrying the team down Cedar Avenue while then-athletics director Al Bohl described Nina Lindenberg’s game-winning home run from the 1-0 win over Arizona in the final.

Back Row (L-R): Edna Figueroa, Barbara Cambria, Denise Fabris, Wende Ward, Roberta Garcia, Sandra Taylor, Ralph Salazar, Ella Vilche, Donna Pickel, Rene Polanco. Front Row (L-R): Kim Muratore, Denise Ketcham, Alyce Rodriguez, Rhonda Williams, Judy Tucker-Shaubach, Barbara Avila. Not Pictured: Caroline Mullin, Janee Silva, Shell Voorhees and Debbie Camacho (deceased).

Prior to that, in 1996, Fresno State opened its new venue — Bulldog Diamond — which was the largest on-campus softball stadium in the country. It was renamed Margie Wright Diamond in 2014, and to this day boasts the all-time NCAA record for a regular season crowd — 5,724 fans watched Fresno State vs. Arizona on March 14, 2000. The Bulldogs also hold the all-time NCAA record for regular season attendance with a combined 55,746 fans in 1999.

A meteoric rise for a softball program that Pickel started as an on-campus club in 1976. Perhaps it was that 1982 season that showed what Fresno State was capable of on the diamond. Perhaps those 100 people greeting the team at the airport were foreshadowing of the thousands that would fill the nation’s best stadium.

And perhaps the scholarship endowment the 1982 team is now starting will help ignite a spark as the Bulldogs work to return to prominence under new coach Stacy May-Johnson.

“You don’t know the impact you’re going to have on people,” Ketcham says. “Maybe those teams that came after us didn’t understand or recognize the impact that ’82 team had on the softball program, but over time our team came to appreciate that. Somebody had to be the torchbearer.”