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In the rich tradition of Montclair State Athletics,
there have been many great coaches that roamed the sidelines
of their respective sports. But if you were to make a list
of the coaches with the most victories in their tenure, regardless
of sport, it is interesting to note that the No. 2 person
on the list is Anita Kubicka.
Completing her 15th season at the Red Hawk helm,
Kubicka has far and away won more games than any other coach
in Montclair State softball history. In fact, she trails only baseball Norm Schoenig (555 wins with three
more seasons under his belt) in total victories by an MSU
mentor.
This past season Kubicka joined Schoenig as the only coaches in MSU history to reach the 500-win mark at Montclair State as her Red Hawks downed Richard Stockton, 4-3 in the opener of a doubleheader on April 25.
In 16 seasons Kubicka has fashioned
quite a coaching resume – 506 victories, a .724 winning percentage
– both which rank in the Top 15 among active coaches in Division
III. Eleven times her teams have won 30-plus games, including
the last six of the last seven campaigns, and she has led the Red Hawks to eight
NCAA Tournaments. In those eight appearances are two trips
to the national championship tournament where in 1997, MSU
finished as the runner-up. Montclair has also won seven ECAC
championships under Kubicka’s watch and she has earned several
NJAC and Regional Coach of the Year honors. Among the list
of 48 players to be named All-American at MSU, Kubicka had
coached 30 of them – 14 First-Team selections, including 1992
NCAA Division III Player of the Year Lois Fyfe.
You can also add to Kubicka’s resume her role
in the construction of the Montclair State University Softball
Stadium that now gives her team a first-class facility that
matches it success on the field. Last season, the MSU Softball
Stadium opened to raved reviews and has become one of the
premier softball-only complexes in the East Region.
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Kubicka’s road to success in Montclair
began with a sub-.500 inaugural season back in 1991.
That season she finished 19-20, coaching a small team
with little time to recruit. Over the next two years,
however, MSU went 58-28 including one of the most memorable
seasons, 1992, the team’s first trip to the World Series.
That year the Red Hawks started the season 10-2, but
lost 11 of their next 14 games and dropped to 13-13.
Montclair penultimately finished 20-15 to gain the fourth
seed in the NCAA Regional Tournament. The team then
lost its first game of the tournament, but went on to
win its next four including three in one day to win
the NCAA Regionals and a trip to the College World Series
in Pella, Iowa. Using its late season momentum, Montclair
finished third in the National Championship tournament,
its best showing ever to that point.
After getting a taste of NCAA Regional
play, MSU averaged 33 wins over the next three seasons,
however each season left the Hawks unsatisfied as the
team consistently battled but came up one run short
of the Regional Championship. In 1994, Montclair was
defeated 5-4 by Buffalo State. In 1995 and 1996, NJAC
rival, The College of New Jersey, won 2-1 and 3-2, respectively
over MSU.
In 1997 Kubicka led MSU to a 29-8 regular
season record that paved the way to an NJAC Championship,
and got the Red Hawks over the hump with two wins over
Salisbury for the NCAA Atlantic Regional Championship.
The squad earned a trip to the NCAA Division III Softball
World Series Tournament in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, coming
oh so close with a 2-1 loss to Simpson College in the
Championship game, leaving MSU with a school-record
38-11 final mark (.792).
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KUBICKA
YEAR-BY-YEAR
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| Year |
Rec |
NJAC |
| 1991 |
19-20 |
4-4 |
| 1992 |
27-18* |
1-7 |
| 1993 |
31-10 |
5-3 |
| 1994 |
29-19 |
2-6 |
| 1995 |
37-11 |
4-4 |
| 1996 |
33-10 |
5-3 |
| 1997 |
38-11&*! |
6-2 |
| 1998 |
27-10 |
4-4 |
| 1999 |
37-10 |
4-4 |
| 2000 |
31-10-1% |
4-3-1 |
| 2001 |
36-12% |
12-6 |
| 2002 |
30-11% |
12-6 |
| 2003 |
36-9% |
12-6 |
| 2004 |
34-10% |
12-6 |
| 2005 |
28-9-1% |
8-8 |
| 2006 |
33-13% |
9-9 |
| 2007 |
38-8 |
16-2^ |
| 2008 |
43-6 |
18-0& |
| TOTALS |
506-193-2 |
104-81-1 |
& - NJAC Champion
* - NCAA Regional Champion
! - Division III National Runner-Up
% - ECAC South Champion
^ - NJAC Regular-Season Champ.
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MSU
SOFTBALL COACHES
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| Anita
Kubicka |
587-207-2
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1991-Pres.
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| Willie
Rucker |
209-87-0
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1984-1990
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| Donna
Olson |
20-14
|
1983
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| Marilyn
Taiglia |
149-92-1
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1966-82
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For the 1998 season, with a small squad
poised to repeat its trip to “the big show”, the Red
Hawks lost to Rowan in the first round of the NJACs
but earned a fourth seed in the NCAA Atlantic Regional
Tournament. MSU’s 27-10 season was put to a premature
end, though, by the unrelenting rain that postponed
and ultimately cancelled play, and sent number-one seeded
Salisbury to the World Series.
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Montclair again took the trip to the
NCAA Regional tournament in 1999, but two losses to
TCNJ sent the Red Hawks back to the drawing board. The
following year, a new selection process by the NCAA
changed the landscape of the national tournament and
no one was affected by this change more than Kubicka’s
teams.
From 2000 to the present, Kubicka has guided Montclair State to a 195-41-1 mark, which five 30-plus win seasons. Despite playing against one
of the toughest schedules in the nation each year, the
Red Hawks have been on the outside looking in when it
comes to the NCAAs. But Kubicka has been able to turn
that perceived negative into a positive, rallying her
team to capture the ECAC Division III South Championship in each of the last seven seasons.
Kubicka, a 1984 graduate of Trenton
State, is well acquainted with winning traditions. During
her career, she played on the Lions’ 1983 National Championship
squad, the first for the school after having finished
runner-up in both its 1982 and 1984 World Series campaigns.
Following her graduation from Trenton State, the first
team All-American earned her Master’s in Science in
Sports Management from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, while serving as an assistant softball coach.
During those three years, UMass earned two Atlantic
10 Championships and in 1986 garnered a bid to the NCAA
Tournament.
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