During the 1992 season, the Cabrini softball team unloaded its equipment from a 15-passenger bus at the Philadelphia College of the Textiles & Sciences – without a chance under the sky to pull out a win, according to anyone else.
“We were getting laughed at when we walked onto the field,” James Hedtke, Ph. D., said. “We had been mercy ruled the two games before. They had already put that one in the books.”
Cabrini started the season winless in its first 10 outings. Hedtke had six student-athletes on the roster that played softball in high school.
As a professor at Cabrini since 1973, he used his presence around campus and in the classroom to convince students to come out for the team. He couldn’t stop at just putting out a list for people to sign.
“I had a player from Norway on the team and a player from the field hockey team,” Hedtke said. “I’m telling these students ‘I just need people to play’. I was trying to pull kids out of class.”
Initially, Hedtke took the reins of the Cabrini softball team for two seasons, beginning in 1986. In 1987, the Cavaliers boasted an 18-6 overall record. After three seasons as coach at Archbishop Prendergast, he returned to the Cabrini dugout.
At the onset of the 1992 campaign, Hedtke inherited a squad that had won just four games combined during the two seasons prior. With his daughter Lisa as one of his first recruits as a pitcher and outfielder, the Cavaliers rallied to finish 10-11, including victories in 10 of their last 11 contests.
Hedtke led the program for four more years, taking the Cavaliers to four conference tournaments and two championships games. Yet, he’ll always remember the 1992 season as his favorite due to the team’s resiliency.
“I had other teams that had better records,” Hedtke remembered. “But, in my eyes, those kids saved Cabrini softball. They just came off of two dismal seasons. They really pulled together, played hard and revealed their character in those last 11 games.”
Hedtke walked away from the diamond in 1997, assuming the NCAA’s faculty athletics representative responsibility at Cabrini. Today, his role with the Cabrini faculty often reminds him of his days as a coach with the Cavaliers and of course, that game against Textile.
“We did beat Textile that day, though,” Hedtke recalls. “We beat them 3-1. I’ll never forget that score.”
