First-Year Program Feels Pain And So Does The Student Who Fought For Softball

Looking back, trekking from dorm to dorm and knocking door-to-door was the least painful phase of Andrea K. Smith’s plan.

That was the fall of 1994, and Smith, a fuel-injected freshman and self-appointed Title IX advocate, desperately wanted Whitworth College to add varsity softball to its athletic program.

Nearly three years later, her goal came to fruition, but as the Pirates softball team suffers through first-year growing pains, Smith lives with a different agony.

An impingement syndrome, a pinching of the bicep tendon and the rotator cuff in her right shoulder, has forced her to give up softball. The senior catcher began to notice something felt wrong during the fall practice season. A throw down to second, pain. A quick toss to first, more pain.

“It felt like a muscle was ripping in half,” she said. “After a while my eyes were watering. I was in so much pain every time I tried to throw the ball.”

More than six months, four doctors and an igloo’s worth of ice later, Smith is finished with softball.

This, after being credited with giving Whitworth the giant student-body push it needed.

“I’ve stood there and watched practices,” Smith said. “It’s killed me. It just killed me to stand there and watch.”

Surgery is one option, but Smith is avoiding it for as long as possible. She’s hoping shoulder rotation exercises, something new to her regimen, will help. For now, sleeping is an effort, knots constantly disturbing her shoulder and neck.

With two-thirds of Whitworth’s season completed, Smith’s name remains on the active roster although she’s been forced to take a passive role. Just last weekend, when Whitworth (7-18) swept a doubleheader from Seattle University before going out Sunday to drop two against Central Washington University, Smith was not there. After endless sessions with the school’s athletic trainers - sometimes up to 10 hours a week - she’s decided to work at her part-time bank teller job on the weekends.

“Just to sit there and look out the window during therapy and watch tortured me,” she said.

And for good reason. Smith came to Whitworth by way of Meridian High School in Boise. During her first three years of high school, Idaho schoolgirls played slowpitch, not fastpitch softball. Smith, always a catcher, played fastpitch with an all-star team during the summer, but it was back to the less challenging slowpitch during the school year. She, along with her parents, wanted that changed and began working with administrators.

“People on administrative boards were using Title IX to try to implement getting fastpitch softball,” she said. “This was so women could get scholarships out of high school. … (If we didn’t have fastpitch) nobody would come look at us.”

By her senior season, all Idaho schools had switched to fastpitch. Smith’s team won the state title. Only one player in the entire Boise Valley received a softball scholarship. It wasn’t Smith, but it was a start.

Smith was offered a partial engineering scholarship at Loyola Marymont with the chance to play softball as a walk-on. She choose Whitworth because she was shopping for a good feeder college with the intention of applying to medical school. Whitworth fit her needs, although her original interest in neurosurgery has faded. Instead, she carries a double major in biochemistry and communications and has a 3.9 grade-point average.

Whitworth’s curriculum was the right fit, but the athletic offerings were limited. Smith wanted to play varsity softball and the male-to-female athlete ratio practically shouted at her that something needed to to be done. During 1995-96, Whitworth’s percentage of full-time women students was 59 percent. Only 33 percent of all athletes are women (216 male athletes to 108 women), far below the Title IX standard compliancy acceptance number of 5 to 6 percent variance.

Smith laughs about the time she went to former athletic director Kevin Bryant and asked to see the file on softball.

“He handed me the file and it was like one piece of paper,” she said.

He asked her “How badly do you want to play?”

She answered, “Oh, I want to play. I’d love to see it here.”

That’s when her door-to-door soliciting began, 25 names in all, four who showed true conviction. Softball was offered as a club sport Smith’s sophomore year, complete with the backing of the Associated Students of Whitworth College, the routine car wash fund-raisers and a volunteer coach by the name of Gary Blake.

Blake, a part-time business consultant, who has been around softball forever, was hired as the full-time head coach in January. His salary is minimal and his workdays are never ending. For starters, the team practices and plays its home games at Franklin Park, a 10-minute van ride from campus.

An on-campus field adjacent to the football team’s Pine Bowl is in the works, but athletic director Scott McQuilkin doesn’t see that happening until 2000-2001. There’s the issue of rerouting a ditch that will cost between $180,000-$500,000 in addition to constructing a diamond at a cost of $300,000.

Those numbers many not be Blake’s problem, but there’s another set of numbers that’s troubling to everyone. Currently, only 10 players remain on Whitworth’s team (four freshman, one sophomore, five juniors and no seniors). Only four club players - Amy Thonstad, Michelle Condon, Nicole Tippie and Penny Pearson - remain. Thonstad, a senior catcher, was persuaded to return to the team last week after two players quit, putting the Bucs perilously close to forfeiting games.

Willamette University, one of the nine schools in the 10-school Northwest Conference that has offered varsity softball for more than 20 years, did that last year. After the Bearcats’ roster slipped to eight, they forfeited the final five games. This season, the squad is up to 16.

Blake is optimistic the program will grow each year as he continues to bring in players. His start-up team has four recruits. With the addition of four to six hand-picked athletes each year, he expects to be in good shape in three seasons.

The one player he’ll always remember is the one who did so much without ever getting an official at-bat.

“I really wish Andrea could be here because she really worked hard to put the program together,” Blake said. “And now not being able to play, I know it’s really hard on her.”