For Judi Garman, Time Has Come to Stop and Cheer : Cal State Fullerton’s Softball Team Has Made the Climb From Homeless Wanderers to National Champions

One of the nice things about reaching the plateau of success is looking back at the arduous climb it took to get there. Cal State Fullerton softball Coach Judi Garman has spent the past few days reviewing the climb.

The Titans finally returned from Omaha with a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. softball championship this May. Four previous trips to the College World Series had produced two second-place and two third-place finishes. But a 3-0 victory over Texas A&M; on May 25 in the championship game meant that the Titans would no longer have to hear that talk about losing The Big One. The national title is theirs, giving Garman an opportunity to reflect on the roots of her program’s success. And talk about humble beginnings.

Garman left Golden West College--where she had won four national community college championships--to become the Fullerton coach in July, 1979. Golden West had been good to Garman, and vice versa. She had built something of a softball dynasty, and had supervised the construction of a softball complex that was recognized as one of the best in the Southland.

When Fullerton’s athletic hierarchy decided to build a softball program, Garman was the logical choice to do the building. Garman had grown tired of a heavy teaching and coaching load at Golden West (she coached women’s cross-country during the fall) and was ready to make a move.

“The hardest part, though, was leaving the beautiful facilities we had built at Golden West and coming over here to start with absolutely nothing,” Garman said.

In 1980, the Titans opened their first softball season with no place to call home and practice facilities that one might expect an intramural slo-pitch team to use. In those days, the right fielder at a Fullerton practice had to learn how to play the sidewalk in front of her and beware of the telephone pole over her shoulder. The infield was all grass. The windows of the adjacent maintenance building took such a beating that the inhabitants decided to replace them with plexiglass. The softball equipment was stored in a men’s room that the maintenance workers made available.

“Our electrical source for a pitching machine was an extension cord thrown out the window of the carpentry shop,” Garman recalled.

When game time came, Garman would load the equipment and concession supplies into the back of her truck and cart it all off to one of three fields that Fullerton used for home games. The Titans were the homeless orphans of college softball. A colleague in the Fullerton athletic department presented them with homemade buttons that read: “Garman’s Gypsies,” which Garman still keeps on the bulletin board of her office as a reminder of the formative years.

“Nobody ever knew where we were playing,” Garman said. “A couple of times, we got kicked off fields because somebody else was scheduled to play on them, so we’d have to put up signs and leave maps to tell people where the games had been moved to.

“I remember our first conference game. We were using the field at Fullerton College, but they hadn’t got the word. They left the sprinklers on all night, and the field was under water. It was about three hours before our first conference game, and we were out looking for a field to play it on.”

The Titans were in no position to buy their way onto a field. In the beginning, this was a low-budget operation. “I think our entire budget for that first year was $3,000 for scholarships and $12,000 for everything else, including travel.”

This year’s budget serves as a symbol of how far the Titans have come. Garman estimates that Fullerton will be at or near 11 full scholarships, the maximum allowed by the NCAA, and that the softball budget is $57,000.

There have been other noticeable improvements. Garman had only a volunteer assistant coach in 1980. Now, Kathy Van Wyk, an All-American pitcher for the Titans in 1982, is Garman’s full-time assistant.

And the extension cord and right-field sidewalk are now just material for Garman’s memoirs. No longer are the Titans homeless. They practice and play on a two-diamond lighted complex that Garman proudly calls “the nicest facility in the country.”

Fullerton began practicing at Titan Softball Complex in October, 1984, and played its first game there the following February. That opening game represented the end of Garman’s long struggle to secure an on-campus playing facility. The complex was built on a parcel of land once occupied by a dying orange grove.

“It was old ,” Garman said. “I mean, the trees were dead. It was just sitting there, with athletic fields all around it. Once we got the trees knocked down and everybody saw what a nice piece of land it was, they started fighting over who would get it. They weren’t necessarily willing to let softball have it. It became a political hot potato.”

With Garman constantly lobbying, softball won out. This was a big step in the climb.

Judi Garman’s mom had traveled from western Canada to Omaha to see her daughter’s team play in each of Fullerton’s four previous trips to the College World Series. This time, she was considering staying home.

“I called her and said, ‘Mom, I think you’d better come this year,’ ” Garman said.

There were a number of reasons why Garman felt that this would be her team’s year to return from Nebraska with more baggage--including a bulky national championship trophy--than it had left with. For starters, there were Susan LeFebvre and Connie Clark, the team’s starting pitchers. Most college coaches would be more than satisfied to have either one on their rosters. Garman had both.

Between them, LeFebvre and Clark allowed only one run and eight hits in five World Series games. Clark pitched a no-hitter in a semifinal victory over Texas A&M;, then came back in the championship game to one-hit the Aggies. LeFebvre, an All-American in 1983, finished the season 31-6 with a 0.27 earned-run average and 208 strikeouts in 284 innings. Clark was 20-2 with a 0.18 ERA and 197 strikeouts in 155 innings.

The Titans also had an All-American outfielder and productive leadoff hitter in Chenita Rogers, a transfer from Sacramento City College. Rogers gave Garman the speed she thought the Titans had lacked in the past. She stole a school-record 14 bases and led the team with a .330 batting average.

The total package claimed the elusive national title. The victory in the NCAA championship game gave Fullerton a 57-9-1 record for 1986 and improved Garman’s career record to 357-91-3. That’s a lot of games to look back on.

But then, the view’s always a little nicer from the top.