Oregon daily emerald., June 05, 1985, Supplement, Image 9

Summer sports
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Wednesday. June 5. 1985
Emerald Sports Supplement
J. Harlln leaned against the dugout
fence and reflected on her third
season at the helm of the Oregon
softball team.
It was May 6, and the Ducks
had iust swept a double-header
against Lewis and Clark. In two days
the 1985 season would end, and coach Harlln would
step out of the spotlight and disappear into the
anonymity of the University student body in pursuit
of a business management degree,
"It's really been a great year," Harlln says. "The
team Is so loose now, and playing so well, I wish we
could back up and start the season over.”
Some would not call a 19-25 record and a 2-8,
fifth-place NorPac Conference finish a great year, but
Harlln has reason to be proud.
Consider that In 1984 Oregon finished 17-33.
This year's record was not only the best of the Harlln
era but also the Ducks' best since 1980, when a
squad coached by Nancy Plantz went 18-12. And con
sider that in March the Ducks played defending na
tional champion UCLA to a virtual standstill in a 1-0
defeat. The Ducks went on.to:a third-place finish In
the Pacific. University Tournament April 5-6, which
marked Oregon's first tournament trophy since 1979.
In fact, the Ducks hadn't even won a tournament
game since 1980.
Finally, consider the improvements between
1984 and the just-completed '85 season:
• The Ducks had 220 hits In 44 games, com- .
pared to 192 hits In 50 games in '84.
• Six Oregon players — Stephanie Heisler,' •
Lesley Stine, Jackie Coburn. Capi Lynn, Susan
.Uhrlch and Sue Voeller — hit higher than .200 this
season; only two .did so last. year. *. \
• Oregon's pitchers struck out T45 opponents
this year, ?8 more than 1984's total of 117.
V. • In.'84, the team as a whole" struck out 181
times. This season, the number shrank;to 135.
Clearly, Oregon's softball"program is on the
upswing. And much of the.credit .for that must, go to •
‘It’s really been a great year. The
team is so loose now, and playing
so well, I wish we could back up
and start the season over.’
• — P.J. Harlin
Harlin. ■ .
"They've gotten progressively stronger over the
last three.years," Portland State University 'coach
Teri Mariani says of the Ducks. "And that’s, due to
P.J:" 0 •
"Where the program was, and where it is now,
has a direct reflection on what P.J.'s done," says
Chris Voelz, Oregon's assistant athletic director.'"In
the last three years, it's come a long way."
When P.J. (Peggy Joan) Harlin took the reins in
t983, the Oregon softball program was “shaky at
best," Voelz says. After 1980's successful season,
the Ducks had slumped to 8-19 In '81 and 8-13 the
next year. Worse, they had a different head coach
each of those seasons, and each coach also doubled
as head of a women's program in a different sport.
Thus, when Charles Sylvester stepped down
after the '82 season, Voelz established stability as a
top priority in hiring a replacement.
"I didn't want someone to take It over for a year
while they were a grad student because I thought we
owed something to our student athletes," says
Voelz. “Some of them had had a different coach
every year for four years.”
As it turned out, Harlin too was searching for
stability — in the form of a place to earn a college
degree.
"It’s like I guaranteed them verbally that I would
be here for at least four years," Harlin says. Although
Harlin says she applied "almost as a joke," Voelz
realized that each side had something to offer the
other, and an agreement was soon reached. P.J.
Harlin became a student-coach.
Because being head softball coach is a part-time
position, Harlin has enough time to go to school
when she Isn't coaching. Balancing the two respon
sibilities is not hard, she says, "except in the spr
ing," during softball season.
When Harlin came to Oregon from San Diego,
she gave up a full-time job as a service technician for
Pacific Telephone Company. » .
"It’s probably one of the highest paying jobs in
the phone company that you can get without a col
lege degree — for a woman in particular,” Harlin
says. "But it wasn't enough; I wanted my degree."
A college degree was something denied Harlin
due to circumstance. Though she had played softball
since she was 12, college scholarships were not of
fered to women at the time. So Harlin, aided by her
father and her brother, got the telephone company
job and went to work. But in the back of her mind,
she still longed for a degree so that she would be
able to fulfill her "ultimate goal” — to own a
bookstore.
In her spare time and on weekends, Harlin ran a
softball instructional program, drawing on her six
years of experience with the farm system of the
Orange Lionettes. The Lionettes are nine-time world
champions, operating out of the competitive
Southern California leagues, where Harlin says soft
ball is played "364 days a year."
The instructional program paid some dividends
for Harlin. One of the women she coached was hired
to begin a softball program at Mesa College in San
Diego, and she in turn hired Harlin to assist. Though
she built a program from scratch, Harlin could not of
ficially be paid by Mesa without having a college
degree.
“You can see how it reflects back,” Harlin says.
"I’m really thankful that the University would take me
on without my degree, knowing that that was my goal
— to get my degree."
Once Harlin initially arrived at Oregon and saw
the state of the softball program, however, she may
not have been so thankful.
' She says her inaugural season here was her
worst year ever. She charitably describes the team as
"Lacking in some areas’’ and says it didn’t know how
to win. As the Ducks struggled to a 6-21 record,
Harlin assessed what needed to be done. ■
"We had to recruit in-state and rebuild the pro
gram so that Oregon talent would want to come
here," Harlin says. “We needed to get the Oregon
gals interested in the program:”.
■Over the past . two years -Harlin’s in-state
recruiting efforts have been largely successful. Of
the 18 players on this year’s Duck roster, 16 are from
Oregon. . • ;
More importantly, the program is drawing in- .
creased notice.- °
■ “I think P.J.’s brought some, discipline-to the
program, some, accountability,’’ Voelz says. “The
behavior of the team has been a little bit more polish
; ed over the last three years than it had been at other
times.” •* .
“I’m starting to hear other AD.’s (athletic direc.
tors) say to me, ‘Hey, your team, looks good,’ ’’ she
adds. >
’ Consequently, the state of Oregon’s softball
• program looks good. With the demise of the varsity
b'asebafi program, there is serious talk'in the athletic '
department of-rehovating Howe Field and moving the
• sdftb°all team there, and possibly e*e'n charging
v adrriission. • *. •
v Voelz warns.that the project is still in “the pen
and pencil stage, ’’ yet admits that by as early as next
spring the'softball team could be c"alling Howe Fjeld
home. . ' ' . ...
As for, now, leaning against the dugout fence- .
after *a double:header sweep,‘Harlih concedes that
the program'is nearly where s.he’wants it to be.’ ’’
‘Where the program was, and
where it is now, has a direct reflec
tion on what P.J.’s done. In the
last three years, it’s come a long
way.’
— Qhris Voelz
“It’s like the old adage, the first year0we’re trying
to get the boat turned over,” she,says. “The next
year, we got the people in the boat. This year, we’re
trying to get everybody to row together." Next year,
it’s,just a question of how fast and how far we wanna
go/’ .
She explains how she wants to field a hustling,
aggressive team and says this year’s model is ap
proaching that goal. She refers to a catch that left
fielder Heisler nearly made against Oregon State, a
spectacular, diving shoestring attempt w th one out
in the bottom of the seventh: Heisler h^d the ball, but
it bounced out of her glove as she crashed to the
ground.
More than any other single play, that catch sym
bolizes the type of game Harlin would like her teams
to play.
“Believe it or not, we practice making those cat
ches,” Harlin says. “We have a drill where the players
practice running with their mitts stretched out in
front of them. Then we toss balls to them and they
practice catching while running that way.
“Pretty soon, they’re diving for balls. We tell
them to go all out and try for the catch because there
will always be someone there to back them up.”
A move to Howe Field would be nice, Harlin
says. But would anybody come to see softball if ad
mission were charged? She looks up toward the
darkening sky for a moment, pondering.
“We try to be entertaining," she finally says. “I
think fans appreciate an honest effort, and all we can
do is hustle and play as hard as we can.
“But I think that once they see how exciting
softball can be, people won’t mind paying a dollar or
two. And win or lose, we aim to give them their
money’s worth.”
For the first time in five seasons, the Ducks
seem ready to deliver on that claim.
Story by Adam Worcester