Fresno State Athletics
31 Years of Softball Tradition: Part 1
6/11/2009 12:00:00 AM | Softball
June 11, 2009
FRESNO, Calif. - When Donna Pickel moved to Fresno in 1967 to teach in the Physical Education department at Fresno State, teaching was her No. 1 priority, and while she had experience with sports she never dreamed that coaching softball and beginning the tradition of what Fresno State softball is today was something she would have a hand in.
Pickel was born in Ponca City, Okla., where she then stayed in-state and attended Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Okla., to get her bachelor degree. From there she went directly to the east coast and got her masters at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
She taught for two years at a private girl's school in Connecticut before returning to her home state and OBU to teach at her alma mater.
"I knew that to go anywhere at the university level as a teacher I was going to have to get my PH.D," Pickel said. "So that's when I applied and got an assistantship at the University of Oregon."
While at Oregon, a job opened up at Fresno State in 1967. Pickel taught Pedagogy, which is the study of teaching students how to be teachers.
While Pickel didn't get into coaching immediately at Fresno State, she had some experience while at the University of Oregon to work with various teams on minor projects in the field.
Pickel said the only sport she even considered coaching when she first got to Fresno State was women's basketball, but they had a coach when she arrived.
"When I came to Fresno State I wasn't doing any coaching," Pickel said. "Then eventually in the early 70's when the women's basketball coach stepped down I had the opportunity to step into the position."
As the women's basketball coach from 1971-77 and 1978-79, Pickel posted a 59-62 record while leading the Bulldogs to two conference championships and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) Championships in the 1973-74 season.
In the fall of 1977, Pickel decided to return to Oregon for the spring semester of 1978 to complete her Ph.D., so she took a year off from teaching and coaching at Fresno State.
When Pickel knew she was leaving Fresno for a semester, she knew it was the right decision for her professional career, but hated having to leave behind the basketball team and the new team that she spent the last two years forming.
Softball had been a big part of the city of Fresno from the 1940's to the early 1970's with the Fresno Rockets. But as women's sports were emerging at Fresno State, Pickel thought it only made sense to add a softball team to the university.
"Fresno State and the city of Fresno had history of softball with the Fresno Rockets," Pickel added."When anyone talked about softball in this area it was about the Rockets because they were nationally known and if ladies wanted to participate in the sport they could play for them. Well my feeling was that athletics was developing at Fresno State, and at that time we had basketball, volleyball and badminton so I thought it was only logical that we have softball."
Fresno State softball began as a club team in the spring of the 1977 with Pickel as the head coach. When the university decided to move forward with adding more women's sports softball was the first that transitioned from a club sport into a varsity sport sponsored by Fresno State.
Just one short year later the Bulldogs would play their first-ever game as a member of the AIAW, which was the equivalent to the NCAA that was sponsoring only men's sports at the time.
In the fall of 1977, Pickel helped to set the teams schedule for the 1978 season and run practices before leaving for Oregon. She left the team in the hands of her club assistant Pat Gavello and Jan Rintala.
That 1978 team posted a 12-5 overall record and won the NorCal Conference with a 10-2 league record.
When Pickel returned to Fresno State in the fall of 1978, Fresno State softball changed forever.
Check back in the coming days on www.gobulldogs.com for the continued parts to the story. Part two will feature some inside information from former coach Pickel on the early years of Fresno State softball, what it was like when she returned from Oregon for to coach and why she decided to retire.
"We Are Your Team" - For Fresno State ticket information log onto gobulldogs.com or call 559-278-DOGS.
