If you play softball for Syracuse, your upcoming weekend shapes up like this:

Depart Hancock International on Friday evening on a 6:10 flight to Roanoke, Va. Arrive around 10 and gather your equipment at the baggage terminal, provided it’s a) arrived and b) arrived in one piece.

‘We’ve lost our equipment before,’ explains coach Mary Jo Firnbach, ‘and we’ve had two or three ball bags come through the turnstile with a big hole in the side and the balls completely gone.’

From Roanoke Regional, drive one hour to Blacksburg, Va. On Saturday, play Virginia Tech in the standard noon doubleheader. Following the game, pack up and drive six hours to Pittsburgh. Manage what sleep you can, play two with the Panthers at noon Sunday, then drive the six hours home.

You will arrive late but likely no later than had you flew. The Big East, as you well know, requires you to take the last flight out when you do fly in case games are delayed.

These are but four of the 54 games on your schedule packed into 73 days.

‘We’ve gone through some major struggles as far as team dynamics and mental toughness and the girls’ approach,’ Firnbach admits. ‘But I think they get it now.’

She speaks both about the challenges of the current season and the painstaking process of building a program. Before April 6, 2000 — the team’s home opener in its inaugural season — no Division I baseball or softball had been played here in 28 years. In three-and-a-half seasons, the Orangewomen are 74-84-1. Despite a 6-12 record, the Big East preseason poll predicts they will finish second. League play begins Saturday, a meaningful day for the seniors, especially the ones who said yes to Firnbach four years ago to what amounted to a blind date.

It was, after all, inherently ridiculous. Softball in Syracuse? In the Never Ever Under Any Circumstances handbook at this university, starting a sport that requires cooperative outdoor weather ranks right up there with, upon having your fake ID confiscated, saying that your daddy is a Long Island lawyer. All it does is make you a landing strip for criticism.

‘I don’t know if her challenge was more difficult,’ says Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel, comparing the genesis of a softball program to the introduction of women’s lacrosse and soccer. ‘But it was a different challenge.’

Firnbach accepted this fate when hired in July 1998. She inherited the office of legendary lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Jr., who was retiring, and found herself with everything she needed except players, equipment, assistant coaches and a field.

In other words, she had a shiny new desk, a computer and a phone. Not to mention a community upset that the university had, in recent years, closed the book on wrestling and men’s gymnastics in favor of softball.

‘We dealt with a lot,’ Firnbach says. ‘The questions the first year were like, ‘Title IX, wrestling is gone, gymnastics is gone, it’s because of you.’ It was very negative.’

And very undeserved.

Firnbach ignored all this and began to build a team. She couldn’t put recruits up with her players because she didn’t have any. In response, volleyball players volunteered their apartments and their time.

The first year, Firnbach landed nine freshmen recruits, two junior college transfers and six walk-ons despite having fewer than five full scholarships at her disposal. Since softball is an equivalency sport — meaning scholarships can be divvied up among players — she was forced to be creative.

When the Orangewomen did begin play, the local papers highlighted not only the team’s debut but its place in the context of Title IX.

‘Because of that, we felt a lot of pressure,’ said Tara DiMaggio, a senior pitcher from Hopewell Junction who was the first recruit to sign with Syracuse. ‘Pressure not only to succeed but to do well in school and not go out and drink. To behave well all around.’

For some, the unnerving combination of academics, homesickness, community expectations, on-field performance and a lack of upperclassmen to act as big sisters was too much.

‘They would have their little nervous breakdowns,’ Firnbach recalls, ‘and I’d be like, ‘OK, you’re OK.’ Then they’d come back the next day and they’d say, ‘Coach, it’s OK, I’m fine today.’ ‘

Amazingly, the team won, compiling a 24-23-1 record its first season while playing its first 29 games on the road. Road trips galvanized team unity.

‘I could write a book about that,’ Firnbach says.

Once, in Birmingham, Ala., high winds ripped open a team bag on the airport tarmac. Believe it or not, weather has proven worse away from Syracuse. Of the team’s 30 games canceled because of weather since 2000, 21 have come on the road. Another time, the team spent the night — and DiMaggio’s 18th birthday — sleeping next to a gate at Atlanta International Airport.

‘People were taking pictures of us,’ Firnbach says, ‘while we were like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘

The second season, a 19-28 disaster, two walk-ons quit and four starters went down with injuries. Firnbach found herself with 11 players at the start of the Big East season. In desperation, she scanned the rosters of other SU teams. A swimmer joined, and women’s soccer coach April Kater allowed some of her players to try out.

‘I can’t tell you how much support we felt as a program,’ Firnbach says, ‘to have other teams willing to risk their athletes to help us out.’

Other teams have assisted in different ways. The men’s basketball team, which often practices at the Carrier Dome, allows the Orangewomen to use the turf behind the curtain at the same time. The only rule is to keep the balls heading away from the court.

‘Guaranteed, if I have any balls rolling on the court and hurting Carmelo Anthony, I know I’ll be fired,’ Firnbach says. ‘All of our girls are on ball control. Every time a ball starts heading the wrong way, they’re diving to keep it off the court. But Boeheim’s been great. You go to other schools and the basketball coach would say, ‘Get them out of here.’ “

Last year, the softball team broke through with a 25-21 mark and a stunning 12-6 record in Big East play. The challenge now is dealing with expectations, especially at 6-12.

The most phenomenal statistic, though, is this: No team — not even men’s basketball — travels more than softball, yet the team GPA has never dipped below 3.0.

Firnbach holds mandatory study hours on the team bus, and sometimes — if players are eligible but performing far below their academic capabilities — will suspend them and write up a contract dictating their return to play. That — during a time when football and lacrosse players are keeping Onondaga Community College in business — is phenomenal.

As a student studying for a masters degree at Southern Illinois, Firnbach wrote a thesis about the ‘Career Termination of Female Student-Athletes.’ She found that females’ goals differed from males. They arrived at school with a greater sense of their academic goals and less concerned about their future in sports, knowing there would be opportunities to play, have fun and win but no assurances of glory and fame.

This is the approach that many have taken when buying into Firnbach’s vision.

‘Those first girls are going to graduate this year, so that will be emotional,’ she says. ‘They were willing to take a chance on me and this program. I have a lot of respect for the women who the first year committed to this.’

So should you.

Chris Snow is a staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear on Thursdays. E-mail him at [email protected].

Published on March 26, 2003 at 12:00 pm