Softball flies far, taking Wright all over the world

Fresno State head softball coach Margie Wright meets with her pitcher during one of the Bulldogs' games this year. Wright guided the Bulldogs to the NCAA Championship this season.

by Michael Smoose, Athletics Media Relations

The distance from Warrensburg, Ill., to Fujinomiya, Japan, is more than 6,400 miles, but Fresno State head softball coach Margie Wright's journey to Japan has been more than a million miles.

The amazing thing is that she got there on a softball.

This summer Wright and three of her players from the 1998 NCAA national championship team brought home an unprecedented fourth gold medal from the ISF World Championships in Fujinomiya. In the summer of 2000 Wright may be making another international flight, this time to Sydney, Australia. Wright is a finalist in the USA Softball National Team Coaches pool to coach in the 2000 summer games in Sydney.

Sometimes, though, to get to Australia, you have to go through Decatur, Ill.

That's where Wright's softball career started in 1962. At that time there was only one organized league for women, the Amateur Softball Association (ASA), and players had to be at least 12 years old. Wright was only 10 years old in '62, so she tried out for Little League baseball. On the day she was scheduled to pitch her first game, league officials said girls were not allowed to play.

The rejected 10-year-old was in luck. Her father was the coach of the Decatur Blue Devils in the ASA. Kermit Wright decided to bend the rules a little to get one more player on the roster.

After she graduated from high school in 1970, Wright would move on to be a Redbird. In the summer she would play for the Moline Redbirds in Moline, Ill., and another Redbird team, Illinois State University, in the fall.

Wright, who was personally inducted to the ISU Hall of Fame in 1979, will join her teammates from the '73 World Series team as they are all inducted into the ISU Hall of Fame this September.

After Wright graduated from college, she would continue to play for the Moline Red-birds during the summer while she taught physical education at Metamora High School in Metamora, Ill.

At Metamora she got her first coaching job as the head coach for volleyball, basketball, softball, bowling and track and field. In 1977 Wright would get two big opportunities. The first came in the summer, when got a chance to pitch against the best players in the world as a member of the St. Louis Hummers in the International Women's Professional Softball League. That fall she started her collegiate coaching career at Eastern Illinois University as an assistant softball coach and head volleyball coach.

Once school was over for the year at Eastern Illinois, Wright would join her teammates in St. Louis. One of those teammates was Linda Wells, the head softball coach at Arizona State University.

As a pitcher-catcher battery the two would form a good friendship that extended beyond softball. "We became very close on the field as a battery," Wells said.

As a member of the Hummers, Wright played in the 1977 All-Star game and was named Rookie of the Year. Unfortunately the league would only last until 1979.

"We would play 80 to 100 games in the summer and it got pretty taxing," Wright said.

In 1981 Wright began playing again in the ASA as a member of the Springfield Rockets. She spent two years with the Rockets before moving to the Macomb Magic in Macomb, Ill.

After a year with the Magic, Wright would meet back up with Wells in Pekin, Ill., as a member of the Pekin Lettes. Wright would switch teams one more time in the summer

of '85. She went from the Pekin Lettes to the Fresno Force in Fresno, Calif., where she had just accepted the job as head softball coach at Fresno State.

She would play with the Force for 10 years,

but as she got more involved with the Bulldogs, it got harder for her to play.

Wells said Wright's desire for the game has always been there. "She could throw any pitch and you wouldn't have to move the glove," Wells said. "It would be unusual for her to miss the glove more than twice in a game."

In 1995 Wright was chosen to work with USA softball in preparation for the Olympics. With all of her commitments, something had to go. Unfortunately, it was playing.

Besides working with USA softball Wright has given speeches and clinics all over the county. She is the author of several softball books and videos and was the first coach to represent the USIA as a clinician in former Czechoslovakia.

As she prepares to go back to Normal, Ill., to be reunited with her old teammates from Illinois State, she is taken back to a time that is very special to her.

"It was the greatest time of my life," Wright said. "I've been able to explore the world outside my community."

Who would have thought a softball could fly so far?