Earlier than Oklahoma dominated the WCWS, Omaha wore softball’s crown

The Oklahoma Sooners are again in Oklahoma Metropolis this week for the Girls’s Faculty World Collection and a attainable four-peat. Round 13,000 followers will pack Devon Park. Social media might be buzzing about Jayda Coleman’s wall-crashing catches and coach Patty Gasso’s dugout maneuvers. It wasn’t all the time this fashion. In 1975, the 12 months the Sooners’ program was born, Oklahoma was eradicated after simply two video games in entrance of a smattering of observers at a spot referred to as Dill Subject in Omaha. There was no NIL or tailgating; the ’75 nationwide champions celebrated at a neighborhood pizza parlor and drank beer afterward on their very own dime. 5 many years later, the WCWS has morphed right into a nationally televised occasion that attracts 2 million viewers for the finals and showcases among the finest ladies’s athletes within the nation. That is the story of coach Connie Claussen and the 1975 Girls’s Faculty World Collection champions, the College of Nebraska at Omaha Maverettes.

IN THE Nineteen Seventies they made championship trophies obnoxiously large, which is why Connie Claussen appears as if she’s levitating close to a skyscraper as her gamers hoisted her on their shoulders. It was 1975, and the College of Nebraska at Omaha had simply received its first and solely Girls’s Faculty World Collection, they usually did it just some miles away from campus.

Claussen, a curly-haired younger coach with horn-rimmed glasses, extracted herself from the celebration shortly after this black-and-white photograph was snapped. She needed to name within the rating to the native newspaper and TV stations.

An un-bylined story within the Omaha World-Herald the following day carried a headline that stated UNO received the “Gals’ CWS” title.

Claussen had begged so onerous for media protection for the fledgling occasion. In a to-hell-with-it second a 12 months later, she took the promoting matter into her personal fingers, making orange and black bumper stickers with the deal with and dates of the occasion.

However again to 1975, and that photograph that captures a monumental, devastating and unbelievable month for Claussen, and town of Omaha, which hosted the occasion for many of its first 20 years. Within the days main as much as the WCWS, Claussen, one of many founders of the occasion, was on a landline calling coaches to inform them that their staff motel wasn’t accessible. It was not standing.

An EF4 twister leveled town every week earlier than the WCWS, chopping a nine-mile path by the guts of Omaha. One of many last buildings it hit was Dill Subject, residence of the 1975 championship, earlier than lifting again into the clouds.

“We might solely play on two diamonds,” Claussen stated, “as a result of the bleachers have been up within the bushes.”

However the video games performed on, and a metropolis rebuilt.

PAT LINSON GREW UP in a tidy neighborhood within the shadows and olfactory zone of the Omaha stockyards. Locals referred to as the odor “The odor of cash,” and it by no means stopped Linson from spending most of her summers outdoors enjoying sports activities.

Her mother, Kitty, was a hard-working secretary on the Wilson Packing Home, and when her three ladies have been sufficiently old, they sacked groceries on the Hinky Dinky grocery retailer. Pat Linson says her mother was “a looker,” and that her dad was silly for leaving her.

Pat Linson needed to be a trainer and a coach, however school wasn’t a pure route for single-parent south Omaha ladies within the Nineteen Seventies. That modified in Could 1974, when a typed letter from Connie Claussen arrived in her mailbox.

“Pricey Pat,” it stated. “The college of the Girls’s Bodily Training Division on the College of Nebraska at Omaha is joyful to award you our $100 scholarship. You have been chosen due to your many and diverse actions, scholastic standing, suggestions and private look.”

For Linson, it was like a lottery ticket. UNO did not have dorms on the time, so she might stay at residence, go to high school and work on the grocery retailer. Better of all, she might play softball.

She did not know lots about Claussen, a metropolis softball star who was born a decade and a half too early. Gamers described her as business-like, nearly as if she was in the course of one thing vital and did not wish to get sidetracked. Quickly, that mission grew to become clear: If Connie Claussen could not play school softball, she’d be certain any lady who needed to might.

Claussen was the chair of the college’s ladies’s bodily schooling division in 1969 when the Omaha Softball Affiliation requested her to assist begin the Girls’s Faculty World Collection. Omaha was referred to as the softball capital of America again then, and it additionally hosted the baseball Faculty World Collection. Claussen stated she was given a test totaling about $5,000 to place collectively the Girls’s Faculty World Collection.

UNO had no sanctioned ladies’s sports activities, and Claussen figured if the WCWS was coming to Omaha, town ought to most likely have a staff.

These first few years of the softball championship have been extra like an invitational, comprised of native groups or any squad that might make the journey to Omaha. By 1975, three years after Title IX, the occasion had picked up steam. Arizona, Oklahoma and Michigan State have been among the many individuals in Omaha for the ’75 WCWS. UNO needed to win state to qualify for the 18-team, double-elimination event.

The Maverettes have been a hodgepodge of freshmen and grown ladies with real-life grownup expertise. Senior Julie Armetta-Wolfe, for instance, was married and drove a brand-new Grand Prix. She was additionally the hardest-throwing pitcher on the staff.

UNO went into the ultimate day of the WCWS undefeated and confronted the College of Northern Iowa — and celebrity pitcher Patty Stockman — within the finals. Ladies highschool athletics in Iowa have been a giant factor earlier than Stockman ever picked up a softball, and Stockman dominated. She pitched in each sport of her highschool profession, going 83-15. She was solely a freshman in 1975, however to the Maverettes, she appeared a lot older and far larger.

“She was a badass,” Linson stated. “We knew her from summer time softball. I imply, she frowned when she checked out you and stared you down. We’re like 40 toes aside. The pitching mound was 40 toes, and now it is 43. She was quick … She tried to intimidate you on the mound.”

Stockman dominated UNO in an 11-1 victory within the finals on Could 18, 1975. However UNI had already misplaced a sport and wanted to beat the Maverettes twice. Armetta-Wolfe, who logged many innings that week, together with a 1-0 victory over UNI the earlier sport, took the loss. Claussen pulled her apart, requested her if she had sufficient left to throw once more that day, and naturally Armetta-Wolfe stated sure.

Linson supplied a unique look, relying extra on off-speed pitches, and Claussen determined to present the ball to the freshman.

“I assumed, ‘Whoa, carry it,'” Linson stated. “Let’s go.”

WHEN THE SKY turned black and the twister sirens went off late within the afternoon of Could 6, 1975, many of the staff was scattered in homes throughout city. Armetta-Wolfe was huddled within the basement of her in-laws.

Her husband, Bob, was on the Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack. She did not have a technique to come up with him.

“I used to be only a nervous wreck,” she stated. “I did not know what was going to occur as a result of we knew (the twister) was happening that manner. That was a really scary time.”

The twister killed three folks, injured greater than 130 and destroyed 1000’s of houses and companies. It stays one of many costliest tornadoes in U.S. historical past. (Greater than $1 billion immediately).

Her husband was OK. The twister narrowly missed Ak-Sar-Ben (Nebraska spelled backward).

Armetta-Wolfe performed softball at UNO for 3 years from 1970 to 1973. She left to get married to Bob Wolfe, a lineman for the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ nationwide championship groups in 1970 and ’71. In ’75, she needed to complete out her softball profession and contemplated doing it in Lincoln, however she couldn’t carry herself to play for UNO’s rival. So she reunited with Claussen and the Maverettes. She was 23 years previous. Earlier than leaving their home on sport days, Armetta-Wolfe put a document on the turntable, blasted it excessive and psyched herself up.

She initially stated that her jam that 12 months was Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” then corrected herself. That was her motivational music a number of years later.

In that last sport of her school profession, when Claussen moved her from the pitching circle to 3rd base, Armetta-Wolfe did not balk. She knew it was the proper name. There was no drama with the ’75 staff, she stated, only a bunch of girls who cherished softball and could not imagine they have been getting this type of alternative to play.

Linson stymied UNI’s bats in a 6-4 championship victory.

The staff went out for pizza, and Armetta-Wolfe and a handful of different gamers did not need the night time to finish. In order that they spent the night time at a teammate’s home, consuming beer underneath a lightweight put up.

“We have been too psyched as much as go residence,” she stated.

A number of days later, the Maverettes have been instructed to show of their uniforms. The volleyball staff wanted to put on them. Acknowledgment of UNO’s first and solely title got here within the type of a block-letter register entrance of the library. The staff paid for the signal, however UNO’s Alumni Affiliation ponied as much as purchase championship rings.

The faculty softball event was sanctioned by the Affiliation for Intercollegiate Athletics for Girls again then, so their championship just isn’t listed in NCAA data. However within the Wolfe family, that championship trophy sits in entrance of Bob’s soccer awards.

CLAUSSEN USED TO ASK her coaches to point out the gamers a video. It detailed the standard beginnings of UNO ladies’s athletics. She needed them to understand how far they’d come, and the individuals who paved the way in which. She pulled out a few of these thick-knitted previous uniforms, and displayed them for the younger student-athletes to see.

A 12 months after UNO launched softball in 1969, she determined to discipline a basketball staff. Armetta-Wolfe stated Claussen requested her softball gamers in the event that they’d assist fill out the roster.

“We’re all elevating our fingers,” Armetta-Wolfe stated. “‘Hell, yeah. We’ll play.’ And I used to be horrible. So then after basketball season was over, she stated, ‘Effectively, I feel we must always play volleyball additionally. Does anyone wanna play volleyball?’ All of us raised our fingers and stated, ‘Hell yeah.’ So we put collectively the primary volleyball staff.”

Their locker room, and the ladies’s athletic workplace, was in a metallic Quonset hut constructed as a short lived college facility about 30 years earlier. In a 1975 story printed within the pupil newspaper, the UNO Gateway, the bathe room was described as a “naked white enclosure with no provision for privateness between showers. The paint … peels from partitions and water pipes … One of many two bathe stalls has been transformed to a makeshift lounge containing a broken-down sofa and an previous wood desk.” It was so dangerous that lots of the gamers opted to not bathe after exercises or video games.

Former UNO sports activities info director Gary Anderson stated Claussen by no means resented what the boys had, and all the time tried to work in unison with the boys. She was good buddies with the late Don Leahy, the previous athletic director.

Claussen grew to become a tenacious fundraiser, beginning a charity stroll in 1986 that over time has netted thousands and thousands for UNO athletics. She later chaired the NCAA Division II champions committee and the Division II softball committee.

Via all of her jobs, she by no means forgot that championship staff. They got here collectively when most cancers claimed Sue Stone-Mehaffey and Micky Gehringer, and when Linda Wierzbicki was murdered in 1986. Wierzbicki, the backup catcher in 1975, did not play a lot, however the staff might all the time hear her cheering loudly from the dugout.

Claussen retired from her job as affiliate athletic director in 1998, however nonetheless serves as an AD emeritus, mentoring the following technology of girls leaders.

In 2021, the college opened a state-of-the-art softball facility, its first on-campus residence for the reason that inception of this system. It was named Connie Claussen Subject at Maverick Park.

ON THE PATH to the softball stadium, there is a black-and-white bench that bears the names of three folks misplaced from a long-ago 1975 championship staff.

The primary time Julie Armetta-Wolfe noticed the bench, she did not wish to contact it as a result of it felt too sacred. However now when Armetta-Wolf walks by, she stops. She waves to her ladies.

Final 12 months, members of that staff spoke to the present gamers as a part of a Title IX celebration. Pat Linson surveyed the massive group of softball gamers and their expansive facility. She informed them that they have been fortunate, and to by no means take it with no consideration. They informed them Claussen fought for them to get right here.

“We all know,” the staff stated in unison.

Claussen, who’s 85 now and walks with a Louisville Slugger bat that has been retrofitted to a cane, has her personal seat on the facility, close to the Mavericks dugout. Folks near Claussen say her well being has been failing her at occasions currently, and he or she would not get to as many video games as she’d like.

However when she comes down the walkway to the stadium, the Mavericks know she’s there. They’re going to cease what they’re doing in warmups and line as much as high-five her.

“If she would not present up at a sport,” coach Mike Heard stated, “it really will get talked about.

“She’s of their minds sufficient the place they’re actually asking, ‘The place’s Connie? Is she doing OK?'”

Two weeks in the past, the Mavericks performed in a regional at No. 7 Missouri. They beat the Tigers, then knocked off powerhouse Washington. However they have been eradicated in a 1-0 extra-inning loss to Missouri. After the sport, Heard acquired a textual content from Claussen.

She congratulated him on a historic season.