2008 Hall of Honor: The Chicagoans
/The Chicagoans
In the mid-1970s, Gloria Kolbusz, a 2001 Illinois USSSA Hall of Fame inductee, was managing a 16-inch softball team, but they were looking to get into some 12-inch softball. She soon found the Northeastern Illinois Women’s Slow Pitch Softball League, which featured some of the best women’s softball teams in the area.
Wanting to push themselves to the next level and see where they measured up against the best competition available, they were soon looking beyond the Chicagoland area.
“When you’re a big fish in a small pond, you want to see what else is out there,” Kolbusz said.
The Chicagoans began play in ASA softball, but because the tournament set up was not to their liking, they moved to the USSSA. Now they found themselves matched up against powerful national teams such as Little Caesar’s out of Detroit, Michigan and Cincinnati Knights of Columbus, Ohio. They finished as high as eight nationally and were always ranked in the Top 20, mostly due to solid defense and powerful hitting. During the 1980s, the Chicagoans traveled all over the nation, which included many tournament stops in Rockford.
The line up consisted of players like Illinois Hall of Famers Mary Malpede, Karen Foley and Jan Wilson, along with Mary Pat McGuire and Mary Schaeffer.
Malpede, a 1999 Illinois Hall of Fame inductee, won over 500 games from the pitching circle and appeared in ten USSSA Class A World Tournaments. Foley, a 1996 Illinois Hall of Fame inductee, was the first female to hit a home run over the year-old 250’ fence at Forest Hills Diamonds. Wilson, a 1999 Illinois Hall of Fame inductee, was a career .557 hitter with over 200 home runs.
In 1982, the Chicagoans won their first of three Illinois Class A State Championships and pulled the trick two years later by capturing the championship in 1984. In each championship, Foley was named the most valuable player and Wilson was selected to the All-Tournament Team. Although the team changed their name to C.M.C., they were still just as tough and were Class A champs in 1988. During those years, the Chicagoans, along with the Lassies and Coors Light, were always among the favorites.
“Gloria’s teams competed in our program more than any other Class A team,” said Illinois USSSA State Director Brenda Paulson. “They didn’t just play, they were competitive and that had a lot to do with Gloria Kolbusz.”
Tonight, we honor a team that pursued the goal of being the best and playing the best they could. Great teams take more than one great player and have to have a smart and creative manager. The Chicagoans met both those attributes for many years.
“Softball gave me the opportunity to meet and associate with many great people, both here and around the country,” summed up Kolbusz. “There have been so many memories.”
And for that, Chicagoans, the Illinois USSSA thanks you.
