Archie’s Wry Hook: Softball championship cements Portland State’s dominance in athletics

Quietly, ever so quietly, athletic director Torre Chisholm is building a sleeping giant.

You probably haven’t noticed.

In the less than two years that have elapsed since Chisholm trekked up I-5 from UC Irvine to become the athletic director at Portland State, varsity sports have now won six conference championships.

Over the weekend the softball team claimed their second Pacific Coast Softball Conference in three years.

This, despite the team undergoing their first season under new head coach Tobin Echo-Hawk, not having any semblance of a practice facility and having to play their home games 15 minutes away from the quaintness and familiarity of the South Park Bocks.

The battles that they have fought—obviously in triumphant fashion—are not dissimilar to the glaring deficiencies that other athletes, teams, coaches and the administration on this campus have overcome.

Chisholm, in his unassuming way, would attribute the success to hardworking student-athletes and dedicated coaches. He would probably say that the fans of Portland State athletics, a small but faithful contingency, deserve championships.

Kudos to the softball team for realizingg their potential and winning the conference outright despite being picked to finish fourth in preseason polls.

Chisholm knows, as does anybody who is well versed with the Portland State community, that winning, let alone winning championships, is an uphill struggle at Portland State.

Over the past 24 months, women’s golf and now softball have each claimed conference championships.

Volleyball took the Big Sky regular-season championship in 2007 and earned a berth in the NCAA Tournament in 2008 after defeating Eastern Washington in the postseason tournament.

The men’s basketball team has also had their share of success, earning trips to the NCAA Tournament in consecutive years, which headlines the progress that Chisholm and Co. have made here.

During this time, the South Park Blocks has seen coaching changes in every varsity sport—outside of football. Jerry Glanville, the entity, is the longest tenured coach here.

That type of progress hasn’t been had by any other school in the Pacific Northwest, including athletic juggernauts Oregon, Washington and Gonzaga. Those schools, while successful in their own rights, have never had to live by this athletic department’s mantra of “doing more with less.”

And Chisholm has done it all, or at least been the man behind the curtain, despite limited facilities, a diminutive budget and an apathetic student body. The events of the weekend have only further demonstrated that his goal—establishing Portland State as the dominant athletic program in the conference—is now within reach.