Anderson heading for home at UMaine> Successful softball coach set to retire after 21-year career

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When Janet Anderson finishes 21 years of coaching softball at the University of Maine this spring, she will close a career that bridged two vastly different eras in women’s sports.

Over the years, Anderson worked through a multitude of bench marks at UMaine. She is coaching through her final season as if it were only a step toward something better.

There are reminders of the end to come. Anderson stops to recognize that this is her final season – and could be her most successful. But there is still the promise of challenges beyond.

“[February 21] was my last clinic. This week will be the last time I have to take out that pitching machine,” Anderson said in late February, days before UMaine left for its Florida trip. “That is pleasant. Yes, it will be the last time I am in the third base box. But I will be taking a different role. I won’t be far away.”

The UMaine softball boosters club was formed in Anderson’s office three years ago. It has grown. It has elected officers. But it is still a fledgling club. Anderson’s plans to expand the organization makes this season an easy ending.

She envisions a New England booster group, a Massachusetts group, and a stadium in Orono where alumnae will come to tailgate and celebrate their team, and the greater success toward which Anderson believes Maine is heading.

The Bears went 15-7 on their spring trip, their best start ever. They are 1-5 in the league, but with the America East champion getting an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time this year, there is more incentive to finish strong.

With a quicker route to nationals and a new stadium promised for next year, UMaine could be on the verge of reaching a new level.

“I’d say if any one thing has held the program back, it’s been that it’s lacked a major Division I facility,” said former Black Bear football coach and UMaine outdoor instructor Walt Abbott. “Now [Anderson] has gotten it. That’s another feather in her cap.”

But for Anderson, who will be 62 in May, the time has come to leave the field. She talks of pain in her back from long bus rides. She says she has only been waiting to qualify for benefits. Others say she has only been waiting for the stadium.

Yet, in many ways, Anderson sounds relieved about the change – and as if nothing will change.

“With the automatic berth to the NCAA, now we are truly a Division I program with all things in place,” Anderson said. “The stadium is the last jewel. We’ll have music, we’ll fly ECAC flags, NCAA flags, do it up special. As a coach, you don’t have time for that. Me, I’m going to work on that as my contribution.”

It is appropriate Anderson’s future plans involve helping a struggling group, because seeing women’s sports through three decades of change is what she will be remembered for at UMaine. That and taking the Bears into the national spotlight.

When Anderson came to UMaine in 1966 she started as a physical education instructor when there were no women’s varsity sports. She would go through three major changes in 28 years before she would take the first UMaine women’s team to the NCAA Tournament in 1994.

First, women’s teams would have to become varsity programs in the years after Title IX was passed. Anderson’s upbringing in Iowa, where travel teams had her playing softball all summer long, prepared her to coach at a state university that fell behind the front-runners of Title IX.

After getting a master’s degree in education from UMaine in 1968, Anderson coached field hockey, volleyball, fencing, basketball and softball as those sports were introduced. In 1978 softball became a varsity sport at UMaine and Anderson entered the second phase of her tenure as she focused her attention on one program.

“It was a modest beginning. We stayed within the state when we played,” Anderson said. “When the push came for scholarships, we could do more things.”

Scarborough High field hockey coach Janet Hoskin, who played for Anderson from 1979-82, said the first UMaine women’s softball teams traveled in yellow school buses and played in-state teams. By the end of Hoskin’s career, women’s teams used charter buses like their male counterparts and faced some Division I competition.

Other things were slower to change.

Back then, in the weeks Lengyel Field was muddy, Hoskin said the team played in the basement of Lengyel Gym. In the cramped space Anderson crafted workouts with no support staff.

“She came up with drills. We’d run around cement cylinder obstacles,” Hoskin said. “I’ve coached field hockey since and used a lot of what she taught us.”

Today, UMaine practices in the field house when the ground is wet, but the field has remained a stumbling block.

Former America East Player of the Year Michelle Puls, who graduated last year, remembers the time the Bears went down to play Hofstra the day after a rain storm. A recreational softball team had taken off the tarp, played on it and left it uncovered. Puls said the Bears found it soaked.

Anderson has her own stories. Like when the mud at UMaine’s dugout smelled so bad she had to sprinkle kitty litter on it. Or when the drains in the field sank a foot into the ground.

Lynn Coutts, who played at UMaine from 1984-87, said it was at such times Anderson proved a model leader.

“Janet always stood for what women needed to do. She stayed there and worked through it,” Coutts said. “A lot of coaches might have left. We used to play in the mud in that field. She found ways to practice. Some kids don’t realize what she did. I think I was one of them.”

The hardships Anderson faced leave some amazed she stayed at UMaine as long as she did.

Boston University coach Deb Solfaro said Maine’s greatest disadvantage has been its location. BU holds its home opener every year in March, whereas UMaine has to wait until mid-April.

But Anderson’s loyalty never surprised Solfaro.

“Janet loves Maine,” Solfaro said. “She loves being there. She loves living in the state.”

But when UMaine became a member of the Division I North Atlantic Conference in 1992, Anderson had to change with the times. It was during the push for scholarships that Anderson faced the third and final stage of her coaching career: the task of building a Division I program.

Title IX pushed UMaine to provide equal opportunities for women, but Anderson helped remind the university.

Hoskin said Anderson was pushing for a stadium in 1979. When Anderson recruited Puls in 1994, she talked of UMaine’s chances of getting a new field then. All her players heard Anderson hope.

“She’s been a big advocate for women and equality. Not so much to cheat the men, but just to bring us up to be equal,” said assistant coach and former UMaine pitcher Deb Smith, who holds several school records.

Former 22-year UMaine baseball coach Dr. John Winkin, now a sports fellow and assistant baseball coach at Husson College in Bangor, said Anderson had a reserved manner, but always spoke up for her program.

“It seems to me when all this began to develop, we were a staff talking about it as a staff,” Winkin said. “[The women coaches] certainly stood up for what they believed. They wanted a share of what was to come. Janet was a leader in that respect.”

Anderson has posted a career record of 383-382-1 during her years at UMaine. She was named NAC Coach of the Year in 1993. She won two ECAC championships and a NAC title.

But the highlight of her career, without a doubt, was when she took the first Black Bear women’s team to the NCAA Tournament in 1994. In the eight years since the league’s inception, only three championship teams have made it past the play-in round to the tournament. Maine was the first.

Anderson had been to the NCAA Tournament before – but as a fan. Walking into the stadium through the locker rooms was a whole different experience.

“We were looking at the NCAA banner from the field,” Anderson said. “We were looking out at all that other stuff. They were getting the field ready for us to play. I had tears in my eyes.”

Smith, the pitcher who led UMaine to the NCAA Tournament, said Anderson always recruited with team chemistry in mind. She said that element of UMaine’s 1994 team was its strength.

On the other hand, Anderson had her areas of weakness. Hoskin said she worked around them.

“She was willing to acknowledge areas that she may not be knowledgeable,” Hoskin said. “She was a catcher, so pitching is a finite skill, she didn’t know that. She would get assistants with those skills.”

Anderson’s present players describe their coach as others have. They say she is honest, she creates a family setting. They describe her as a team player who participates in pranks, toilet-papers their locker room, organizes team dinners, includes their families, and encourages their pursuits.

“Last year, there were mumblings at the tournament that it was her last year. We wanted to do it for coach, to give her a winning season,” junior Sara Jewett said of UMaine, which finished third in the league. “We couldn’t come through. It is incentive this year to send her out winning.”

But before Anderson retires, she wants to be a part of one more pioneer effort. Having led UMaine softball to the NCAA Tournament first, Anderson hopes to return the first year the league champion will ride an automatic berth there.

“I think we could be the first this time,” Anderson mused. “That would be good for me. To be the first. I think that is very special.”