TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - All eyes have been on Florida State's softball team since they won the 2018 NCAA National Championship, but did you know, just 26 years ago, only 14 of the 67 counties in the state of Florida were playing fast-pitch softball?
The other 53 played slowpitch.
Exactly half of this year's Seminole squad hails from Florida, and they can thank one woman for changing the course of softball history in the Sunshine State.
"I've never seen a game! I don't know anything about it," said Mary Ellen Hawkins. "I've never seen anybody do a fastpitch!"
She had never watched a game, but in 1993, Mary Ellen Hawkins, a State Representative from Naples, caught Florida up with everyone else: the state was the last in the country to force high schools to play fast-pitch softball.
The reason? Simple.
"It was all about scholarships," Hawkins explained. "The girls who played softball were not able to get scholarships. Only to community college, and that wasn't good enough."
"It was that important. Slowpitch was okay and they were playing, but some of us realized the amount of scholarship money the girls would receive by switching to fastpitch," said Robert Iamurri, who was a supporter of the bill and was the softball coach at Naples High School at the time. He's now the current coach at Florida Southwestern.
But not everyone was happy.
"Lots of opposition. Finally, the last day before it passed, they sort of got cute on the floor, and they tried to embarrass me," said Hawkins. "They kept this up for about an hour or so, and then finally, they passed the bill."
"I think it was the unknown of what fastpitch would be and trying to develop fastpitch players. Florida softball was real strong slowpitch wise," said Iamurri. "There was a lot of opposition from counties that had real strong slowpitch teams."
The bill passed, and in 1994, the first State Championships for fastpitch softball were held, and since the switch, Florida has become a hotbed of high school talent.
"I started with my masters at Barry University in North Miami. We had to recruit pitchers from California because nobody pitched here because they played slowpitch," said Lonni Alameda, the head coach of FSU's softball team. "When they switched over to fastpitch here, the athletes are here, everything's here so the opportunity for those kids to play this level of softball was just amazing for them."
The Seminoles, won their first National Championship this year. The University of Florida won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015 and that success can all be traced back to Mary Ellen Hawkins, who changed the game for Florida high schools.
"That goes to the growth of the game here in the State of Florida and people investing back into the growth of the game," said Alameda. "I think there's people sometimes whose name we don't know and we're so grateful."
"The number of players I got through Naples High School and moved them on. Fortunately as a parent, I had a daughter go on and play college softball," said Iamurri. "We're very thankful, and I hope every player is for her being very tough because she had to really push hard to get that passed."
"It didn't matter if I would have enjoyed the game or not," said Hawkins. "I wanted them to have equality all down the line, and anytime I could do something about that, I did."
And just look what equality has done.
