EASTON, Pa. – Forty years ago, a Lafayette softball team overcame a 2-10 start to the season and a first-round conference tournament loss before embarking on an improbable run to an East Coast Conference championship.

Then, in its first decade of existence, the program featured a part-time coach in her first season. The team, often made up of multi-sport athletes, squeezed into vans for road games. The Leopards played their home contests at Metzgar Fields with no team dugouts, a single bench down each baseline and a backstop that seemed miles from home plate. The facility, spartan by today's standards but typical of the time, lent a home-field advantage against unsuspecting opponents that combined chilly temperatures with frequent small airplane landings and takeoffs at the airport in the outfield.

Surprisingly for a program coming off 21-11 (1983) and 16-3-2 (1984) seasons, things did not start well. The team opened with three straight losses in late March and managed only two wins (over Penn and Lehigh) in the first 12 games. East Stroudsburg swept a doubleheader in Easton in mid-April that dropped the team to 2-10.

Team members recall a "meeting" but what followed was informal musings on the way home from a road loss.

'Maybe we could turn things around? Could we make a championship run?"

Those were the thoughts flowing through the heads of the players, but even for the strongest believers, a title seemed unlikely. The only certainty was if they turned things around and a championship run followed, so would a celebration.

The specifics of the conversation are fuzzy, but Chesla Wechsler '85 and Jessica Biamonte '87, who were on hand for the Leopards' alumni gathering in late April, and Mary Chlopecki '87 remember fondly asking "what if." How would they win – and how would they celebrate?

It was four years before the debut of Major League (a baseball cult classic that saw an MLB team under the unscrupulous leadership of a greedy owner avoid relocation by winning a title). But, members of the 1985 Leopards' team were talking about what their own celebration would entail if they were to "win the whole expletive deleted thing" like the Tom Berenger character, Jake Taylor, did to rally the clubhouse in the movie.

Something clicked. The rest of the regular season was much kinder to the Maroon and White who went 12-3. Lafayette ripped off four-straight victories, beating Bucknell in a doubleheader at Metzgar and smacking Lehigh 10-1 before capturing a doubleheader sweep of Towson State on April 21. The Leopards stood at 6-2 in ECC play and split their final four games to finish the conference campaign with an 8-4 record.

When the schedule turned to May, the team, under head coach Judy Kovacs and assistant coach Linda Hutnik, directed its attention to the East Coast Conference Tournament held at Patriots Park in Allentown, Pa. On Friday, May 3, a 3-1 opening-round loss to Towson State meant that the Leopards' postseason dreams might be extinguished quickly. Lafayette was relegated to the losers' bracket of the double-elimination tournament.

"It was a little demoralizing because you just knew how much work was involved in getting back," said Wechsler who played second base and is an early retiree from Bell Labs after a career as a software architect. "But at the same time, we just loved playing."

"I do remember the disappointment and surprise," Biamonte said. "We were seeded third, and we had had a pretty good run, and it was so unexpected and disappointing, and it never crossed my mind then that we would go as far as we did."

The Leopards re-grouped on Saturday, disposing of Lehigh 10-3 after an eight-run first inning. Biamonte, who is now an attorney in Manasquan, N.J., was 4-for-5 in the game. Lafayette followed with a 5-1 win over Towson, avenging the opening-round loss in the ECC Tournament the day before. Chlopecki, a sophomore, scattered four hits in the circle victory.

Lafayette recorded a third win in the final game of the day, shutting out Bucknell 4-0 thanks to four runs on six hits in the sixth inning. Backed by a strong defense that included Maroon Club Hall of Famer Stacey Cagenello '87 at shortstop, Chlopecki did not allow a runner past second base, pitching her second straight game.

"As the tournament went on, I feel like what the team started doing was narrowing the focus. We have to just get out of this inning or score in this inning. And then it became a focus on the pitch. This pitch, we have to get this out," Biamonte explained. "We just built on that inning by inning, and then we won a game, and then the next game. And it just happened all the way through the rest of the tournament."

"Every game was do or die. If we got in a hole, there was no second chance. We had to quickly learn to live in that do or die space, focusing on each little thing," said Chlopecki, who is now an employment lawyer in Arlington, Va. "There were so many moments where if we didn't make a play, we were out. And somehow we hung together in that state of incredible pressure, and it worked."

As Sunday rolled around, a loss meant the end of the Leopards' season. Delaware, with whom the Leopards had split the season series, was first on the slate. Left fielder Laura Pudloski '86 plated the game-winning run in the fifth to guide Lafayette to a 4-2 victory over the Blue Hens.

Only Rider remained – the same Rider team that had christened the 1985 season with 10-1 and 4-3 wins over the Leopards in March. The regular-season champion Broncs were undefeated in the tournament, so the upstart Leopards would have to beat them twice if the once-unthinkable were to happen. 

Mary Jane Darby '87 pitched a gem, keeping the game scoreless through seven innings. The contest never would have reached extra innings were it not for Darby covering home plate with a timely tag, followed by an iconic hair flip and a nonchalant stride back to the circle. The play kept the momentum for the Leopards. In the eighth, Biamonte and Cagenello (later named the tournament MVP) each recorded RBI-singles to push Lafayette to a 2-0 win and set the stage for a championship game at Patriots Park.

"In between the two Rider games, I went into the bathroom and the two Rider girls came in and didn't know I was there," Wechsler said. "And they were talking about how they couldn't believe that they had lost. They were dissing our team and I remember being really fired up about winning that next game."

The Leopards did themselves no favors in the title bout, spotting Rider four runs by the second inning against Chlopecki, who was battling fatigue and pitching in her fifth game in two days.

The third inning turned the tide for the Maroon and White who banged out five runs to take the lead.  A two-out single by Lori Warg '86 sent home the tying and go-ahead runs and the Leopards led 5-4.

"At one point, I said to myself, I just don't think I have any gas left in the tank," Chlopecki said, recounting the finale. "Then my team rallied and got five runs. And I said to myself, 'there's no expletive deleted way we're losing this. I'm going to dig as deep as it goes and find something.' You just don't know what you're capable of until you are put in circumstances where you're motivated to find it. And what motivated me was my team."

Chlopecki and the Leopard defense held Rider to one hit in the last five innings of the game. The celebration was on. Pat Fisher, who had played a significant role in the early days of women's athletics at Lafayette and was the team's coach from 1978-84, was the tournament director and on hand to present the team with its medals. A self-funded celebration that included revelry on the quad and a trip to Campus Pizza ensued. Those details are fondly remembered and eagerly shared by the players who suited up for the Leopards in 1985.

"That elation that I felt at the end of the tournament, it was like no other I had ever felt, and have even felt since, but it was because of the height of the achievement," Chlopecki said. "We climbed out of that hole, we did it together, we did it all with positivity. It was one of the best days of my life, and I treasure that whole experience."

The improbable run, from a 2-10 start to a 20-14 final record, closed with a six-game sprint to the East Conference title.

"We didn't know it at the time, but what a formative experience that was for me, at least, in my life, and how many life lessons I drew from it and how much it impacted my beliefs in things as I went through life," Chlopecki said. "So many more things are possible than you might think, and your reserve is so much greater than you know. When people ask, like, 'what is the value of college athletics?' Those are some of the most compelling life lessons I've ever learned on that softball field."