Dale looks to lead team to another title

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior pitcher Courtney
Dale is known as a team player. She has been drafted into
the Women’s Pro Softball League.

By Andrew Borders
Daily Bruin Contributor

Don’t compare Courtney Dale’s softball career at
UCLA to a 1-2-3 inning. To put it more accurately, Dale has had
runners on, and the count is not always in her favor, but she has
faced those obstacles and battled back to earn herself the win.

Coming out of Fresno’s Bullard High School with a 0.19 ERA
and a .347 batting average to boot, UCLA coach Sue Enquist knew
what she was getting in Dale. What she couldn’t predict were
the obstacles in Dale’s time at UCLA.

She excelled at both hitting and pitching for UCLA, batting .330
as an outfielder, and limiting her opponents to a 1.43 ERA. With
her help, the Bruins finished the season as national runners-up.
What the UCLA softball team didn’t foresee, however, were the
conditions under which they would play in that NCAA Tournament.

In May 1997, the NCAA Committee on Infractions decided that
because of scholarship misappropriations by UCLA in the mid-1990s,
the Bruins would forfeit their 1995 title and have any 1997
postseason play voided. The school immediately appealed, and while
the appeal was considered, Dale and the Bruins cruised to a
second-place finish. In August of that year, the NCAA chose not to
remove the sanction it imposed. Instead, it moved the postseason
ban from the 1997 season to the 1998 season.

Dale took the circumstances and made the best of them. She and
five other players redshirted the season and used it to refine
their skills. Bruin opponents in 1999 would find out just how good
the now-veteran pitcher and her teammates had become.

UCLA was hungry for success after the second-place finish in
1997 and the removal of the 1995 title. With expectations high,
Enquist knew who to call on to shoulder the burden.

“The greatest thing that I could say about Courtney Dale
is that she came in in ’99, led this team, handled the
pressure beautifully and enjoyed great success,” Enquist
said.

That success included an undefeated postseason record and the
1999 national championship. Dale won 33 games, tied for best in
school history, and lost only one that year. She posted a 0.98 ERA
in 221 1/3 innings pitched, fifth-most all time at UCLA. She was
named a first-team All-American and conference Pitcher of the Year.
With accolades and statistics like that, it would seem that the
year was smooth sailing for Dale. However, as it is with any team
sport, Dale had to share the spotlight with a highly touted
newcomer.

The newcomer had the accolades to match Dale, and came in with
the tag of No. 1 high school prospect in the country. However, Dale
chose to embrace Amanda Freed instead of engaging in a statistical
competition. This attitude earned high praise from her coach.

“You always want to teach your players to think team
first, and when it comes to pitching, it’s very difficult to
do that because the pitcher is different than any other player.
They have the ball in their hand. (Dale) saw Amanda Freed and said,
“˜Perfect, we’re going to be a better
team,'” Enquist said.

“In the history of this program, there has never been a
player that truly has that team attitude in the circle like
Courtney Dale. She embraces competition and more talent in the
circle because she knows the team will win more.”

“There’s a lot of respect between Amanda and
I,” Dale added. “Softball is a team sport and we need
everybody on our team to win. Our goal as a team is not to stand
out individually but to work together as a group.”

Rather than view Dale as competition for the spotlight, Freed
looked at her as a mentor.

“She kinda showed me the ropes and is a great leader. Just
coming into college, you don’t really know what to expect and
having somebody there (who’s) older that you know and
experienced, it helps,” Freed said.

The team won the title in 1998. However, the next year,
Dale’s junior season, posed a challenge that most athletes
can identify with.

It began with some soreness in her pitching shoulder. Just part
of the usual aches and pains, she thought.

“I was sore and I didn’t know what was wrong, so I
kept throwing, hoping it would go away, but it didn’t,”
Dale said of the injury.

On Feb. 25, in the middle of the nonconference season, Dale was
informed that she had a torn labrum in her right shoulder. The
labrum is a muscle essential in easing the rotation of the arm in
the shoulder joint. She would miss six weeks of the season.

“It’s hard to be involved and play on a team all the
time and be taken out and have to watch,” she said.

Just as she did in her 1998 redshirt season, Dale used her time
to improve her game and work at getting back between the lines.

“It was very enlightening for me to be on the other side
of the field, to learn the game in a totally different way than I
did from playing. That was a benefit for me,” she said.

She returned in a limited capacity in early April, and on May 13
pitched her first complete game since the injury.

Dale and the Bruins went on to a second-place finish in 2000. In
the three seasons she has played, the Bruins have finished no less
than second nationally.

At the end of the 2001 campaign, Dale and the team will go their
separate ways. The pitcher has been drafted into the Women’s
Pro Softball League, a four-team league with two teams each in Ohio
and Florida. Dale was chosen first overall by the Tampa Bay Fire
Stix.

The team will be faced with the task of replacing Dale after the
2001 season. Enquist questions if it is possible to fill
Dale’s shoes.

“When you have somebody of Courtney Dale’s caliber,
you have to realize you will not replace her. She’s one of
those unique players that when she’s gone, I believe that the
void will always be there. I only hope that our younger pitchers
pay attention to how she attacks the game,because if they do, their
game will go to the top like it has for her,” Enquist
said.

Statistics can tell only so much. Though numbers alone would
paint Dale as an excellent player, intangibles like her “team
first” attitude about the game raise her to a higher
level.

“She will go down as one of the greatest
“˜player’ players in the history of this program,”
Enquist said.