HISTORY OF “ECHOES”

BY KARI (WHITE) VILES 

We actually started as a rag-tag East-Central Omaha team thrown together.  We were the Blue Bombers and most of us had never played before.  We soon learned that with a little guidance and fundamentals, we were not all that bad and could actually play!  We tried a different league the next year and quickly pursued the other one again, where we dominated all but one team, the Lady Cornhuskers.  That next year, both teams went up and played select ball in the A league.  We learned a lot during those years, and watched a tremendous amount of upper-level ballplayers, including the women and men!  This brought team unity, self esteem,  and camaraderie, all through the focus of Coach Tim White.

Echoes' has a long-standing tradition of instilling values and character in female student-athletes to develop self-esteem, through the teaching of fundamentals of fast-pitch softball.   The coaches and players possessed a love of the game  and a desire to develop the best possible fast-pitch softball players, and more importantly, human beings.   This tradition was not a focus, but was a life-style for many of the young women who began playing together in 1980-1981 and was displayed by dedication to pitching in basements (with a mattress as a backstop), hitting whiffle balls in the basement (the "drop" drill), attending the Women's College World Series as a team (yes, this was held in Omaha at Seymour Smith field each year), and team practices on each off day when games or tournaments were not scheduled.    The Echoes' teams were known for gathering together as a team to practice, when even their coach could not be present, although this was a rarity!  Coach White was everywhere with his team!  We became a family.  This was the era long before indoor facilities were available and High School softball was sanctioned within the schools.  Later, most pitching took place in an elementary gym or at Boystown, Creighton or UNO Fieldhouses, with the team catchers actually catching the pitchers, not the pitchers' fathers sitting on inverted buckets.    

Echoes' was formed by Tim White at the close of the 1985 summer season, around his pitching -catching battery (Patty Stodola and Kari White).  Having formed relationships with Ron Osborn and legend, Herb Dudley,  Coach White continued to obtain, analyze, apply  and improve upon the available information on the fundamentals of throwing, pitching, hitting, catching, and every aspect of the game, while mentoring the young women of Echoes' through very difficult life situations and applying these lessons on the field and off.  He was a firm advocate that self-esteem must be earned; it is not something that can be provided by a players’ Dad or Mom, it cannot be stolen, purchased or traded, and when it was attained, it cannot be stripped or taken from you.   This philosophy when into each training drill, talk, and lesson provided by Coach White!  The training of Echoes' players was so precise, they were utilized to train the OSA Umpires for upcoming seasons, requested by OSA to participate in Summer Softball Clinics for children, and the warm-up drills, hitting drills, and sliding techniques were borrowed and implemented by college programs.  Coach White's catchers are still some of the only trained catchers who were capable of calling a championship game, without the assistance of the coach!  To this day, many of the local college coaches recognize and respect Coach White, who went on to coach at College of Saint Mary  (where his original pitching/catching battery attended), where they defeated Div. I Kansas University in a Fall Exhibition, and nearly upset both Creighton University and UNL the same year.  He later led the Flames to the NAIA Nationals in 1991.   Coach White's philosophy was (and continues to this day to be) to empower  young women to develop that self-esteem and become the hard-working, productive , contributing members of society, while obtaining the precise knowledge and application of the fundamentals of the game so that each and every player would be in a position to coach and teach others.  He would still like to see many more former Echoes' coaching!

Everyone always asks about the name Echoes.  They have for 25 years.  There were many names suggested, but the final two came down to “Silver Bullets” or Echoes.  Coach White was the tie-breaking vote and we became Echoes, which by ancient folklore, were “sirens” that drew seamen into rocks of destruction.  The name was suggested by Coach White’s wife, through her completion of crossword puzzles and also of the song by the same name by artist, Pink Floyd.  Roger Watters of Pink Floyd has stated the intention of the song was to recognize "The potential that human beings have for recognizing each other's humanity and responding to it, with empathy rather than antipathy."  It made sense to him then and still does, today!  Without the traits emphasized by Echoes’, one  will never have a unified team and cannot possibly develop the necessary self esteem, as was the philosophy of Coach White.

 There are a ton of stories and so much more history involved, particularly as it involves Coach White.   He was really the brains and execution behind Echoes’ and continued in that fashion, helping more than just the Echoes’ members!  By my last “guesstimate” count,  thousands upon thousands of young female athletes have been helped by Coach White, through Echoes’,  as he also held coaches’ clinics around the Midwest, received phone calls from around the nation, and was consulted by even college coaches!   Without his philosophy, eye for detail, and ability to break it down into the simple fundaments, and thereby his unprecedented ability to teach young ladies of all ages (8 through 40+), Echoes’ would not have been what it was.  (I’m really not biased; I’m his daughter, I cannot be biased!).  J