By
Brett Erickson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
UA softball team celebrates 10th anniversary of 1st championship
It's a brisk Saturday afternoon, and Debby Day is comforting her six-year-old daughter. Kylie is crying in her mom's arms because another girl took one of her toys without asking.
"She doesn't take well to people taking her stuff," Day says.
After a few minutes of talking things out with her mom, Kylie's carefree spirit returns and she is running around in the first-base dugout with several other children.
Afternoons like this don't come often enough for Day, who, despite the intermittent rain, is still smiling for the better part of three hours.
This past weekend, Day and her teammates from the 1991 National Championship Arizona softball team were reunited in Tucson for the Alumni Game. Even though the game was rained out, the weather couldn't wash away the memories from the team's Cinderella run to its first National Championship a decade ago.
"I saw people last night that I haven't seen in, literally, 10 years, and it's like time doesn't pass," says Day, whose voice is barely heard over cheers from alumnae applauding the rain-shortened Home Run Hitting Contest.
Day transferred to Arizona in 1991 from the University of Texas at Arlington in order to find a program capable of winning the national title.
But in 1991, it was UCLA and not UA at the forefront of collegiate softball. The Bruins had won six national championships, including the previous three.
In the title game, though, the Wildcats would upset their long-time rivals and pave the way for Arizona's five national championships in the decade.
"There's no doubt that they set the foundation for this program," head coach Mike Candrea said. "I just think that, at that time in the softball world, they did something that a lot of people didn't think they could do."
The 1991 regular season was a roller-coaster ride for Candrea and his team. Arizona got off to a blistering start in non-conference play but hit the wall in Pacific 10 Conference games. The Wildcats posted an 11-9 conference record, as they finished the season in fourth place and with a lot of questions surrounding the team.
"Like any team, we had our ups and downs, and we were in a down slump at the time we went into regionals," says Suzanne Lady, the team's left fielder that season.
Standing between Arizona and its fourth-straight trip to the College World Series was a best-of-three Regional Tournament showdown with Arizona State. But before the Wildcats could take on the Sun Devils, they had some internal problems to work out.
Lady, now a chiropractic physician in Portland, Ore., and other teammates produced a highlight video that included pictures of each player and their thoughts about the team. The Wildcats then watched the video before each game of the Regional Tournament and College World Series.
"The video brought us together, and we actually congealed at the same point," Lady says. "There was more unity."
Behind strong pitching efforts from Day, who went 30-8 with a .50 ERA during the regular season, Arizona swept the Sun Devils in two games to advance to the College World Series. Waiting for the Wildcats there, among six other teams, was UCLA, which advanced to Oklahoma City after two convincing regional victories against Central Michigan.
Kristin Gauthier, a senior and the team's center fielder in 1991, said the Wildcats had the physical skills to beat UCLA; it was the mental side of the game that Arizona needed to master.
"It was a matter of believing that we could beat them at the World Series," said Gauthier, now a massage therapist in Tucson.
Arizona won its first three games - all in extra innings by 1-0 scores - and soon discovered that it indeed belonged with the elite teams in the nation.
"Initially, we went in and we were kinda like, 'Hey, let's go have a good time,'" says catcher Jody Pruitt, who now teaches at Sunrise Mountain High School in Phoenix. "Then, once we got there and won a few games, it kind of seemed like reality set in that this is a possibility for us to take the national championship."
In the NCAA Championship game against top-ranked UCLA, the Wildcats walked on the field with an aura of confidence. It didn't come from cockiness, they say, but instead from their belief in each other and Candrea.
"At that time, there was a little bit of magic going on in our team," Gauthier said. "Coach would always tell us that their girls put on their pants the same way. We felt when we walked on that field that we were going to win that game.
The game was scoreless until the top of the third inning, when Arizona broke through and sent a message to UCLA and the rest of the softball world.
With the bases loaded, clean-up hitter Julie Jones knocked in two runners with a triple (Gauthier was thrown out trying to score from first base) and put the Wildcats up early. Arizona tacked on three more runs and built a 5-0 lead that would prove to be too much for the Bruins to overcome.
"People had made it a joke that (the College World Series) was the UCLA Invitational, so it's not just that the hit had gotten us on the scoreboard, but it was also significant because of who we were playing," says Jones (now Julie Jones Roberts).
For the rest of the game, time couldn't move fast enough for the Wildcats.
"Once we scored the runs, it was the longest game of my life," says Gauthier. "Susie and I were in the outfield counting the outs just trying to get through the game."
For the rest of the game, Day continued to handcuff UCLA's hitters until Arizona was up 5-1 and one out away from its first national championship. Her last pitch of the game - a screwball - resulted in a ground ball to shortstop Julie Standering.
"I remember turning and looking at Julie's face, and as soon as she fielded it, she just had the biggest smile on her face, and I just thought, 'Oh my God, she's going to throw the ball away,'" Day says. "She, of course, didn't, and I remember Julie Jones taking it and throwing it way over her head and I thought, 'Oh my God, she's going to hit one of the UCLA girls.'"
Day, now a special education teacher in Burbank, Calif., remembers little of the ensuing chaos.
"I remember hugging Jody and we were just hugging and not wanting to let go because we were so tired," she says.
The season was over, but the book known as Arizona Softball was in its opening chapter. The athletic department rewarded Candrea with a new, state-of-the-art stadium (home plate used to be in present-day center field) and the Wildcats were off and rolling. They would capture four more titles in the '90s and stake their claim to one of the greatest dynasties in NCAA softball history.
"Arizona was just another school with a softball team, now it's the dominating power," Pruitt says. "I think the '91 team was the turnaround team that kind of got Arizona on the map."
It's been 10 years since the players from that '91 team took the field in Oklahoma City. Most have left Tucson. Many are married. Some have kids. But they all remember.
"Some of the girls I hadn't seen in years, but being right here, now, it's amazing that 10 years has gone by," Gauthier says. "I feel like I was practicing with (them) last week."
Day agrees.
"We will always have this really incredible bond."
