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  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.