Nicole Quigley-Borg and CSM’s 2022 State Softball Champions

The runup to victory was even longer than those eight years for Quigley-Borg, the Bulldogs’ softball coach since 2006.

“It took a lot of tries, a lot of heartache,” Quigley-Borg said. 

She is a CSM alumna, having played for the Bulldogs out of San Bruno’s Capuchino High School. A two-sport athlete, Quigley-Borg pitched for the Bulldogs’ legendary Tom Martinez—winningest coach in California community college athletics—and played basketball with Coach Michelle Warner.

She earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where she pitched for two years, earned a bachelors’ in sports management with a minor in business, and coached a one-year internship that gave her a valuable head start.

“Toward the end, I had a pretty severe injury to my elbow. I was limited to 50-70 pitches a day. I had time to be hands-on with my teammates. We worked with [1996 Olympic champion pitcher] Michele Granger out of California. She would fly out to Tennessee every other week. When she wasn’t there she would video in,” and Quigley would supplement Granger’s coaching with in-person work.

After Tennessee, Quigley-Borg went to St. Mary’s College in Moraga for her graduate degree and became pitching coach at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. She also was working at a health food store. “I did this for 2 ½ years. When I got my masters, Tom retired. I was hired in 2006.”

Then Martinez became ill. He was diabetic, and his kidneys were failing.

“I became interim head coach here with one year under my belt,” Quigley-Borg said.  Only 23 when she began—nearly the same age as her players—she learned, she said, “to be friend-ly, but not their friend.”

“I think I was trying just not to mess up, to be honest,” she said. “My biggest fear was that I wasn’t going to be able to fill Tom’s shoes. I had all these gentle reminders from all the other coaches about Coach Martinez and his legacy. I knew I wasn’t going to fill those shoes, but I felt confident that I could fill my own shoes and not try to be Tom.”

“He was still very much part of the decision-making in the three years he was sick. We were on the phone every day. I was scared to not be successful. I thought, ‘He’s counting on me.’ I didn’t want to let him down. That carried me through the first five years of coaching. I matured. I grew into myself.”

She learned, she said, from early mistakes: “Not outcoaching the other coaches. Not doing enough prep work before the game. Not being in command of the situation. An example: If, when I’m calling pitches, I see a hitter and I know I can strike this kid out, but maybe the pitcher doesn’t have the same toolset as I did.”

“One time we were playing Santa Rosa. Their top hitter was at bat and my assistant coach said, ‘Walk her.’ I said, ‘We can strike her out. We’re up by two runs.’ Sure enough, she hit the three-run homer and we lost the game.”

“Tom said, ‘Never pitch to the best hitter.’ That was the last time I pitched to the best hitter.”

In 2011–12, Quigley-Borg said, the Bulldogs’ championship mettle began to materialize. In May 2012, CSM hosted super-regionals and won, expecting to come back the next day for another victory. It was not to be.

That night, Quigley-Borg went into labor 10 days early with her first child, her son. “We always talk about that,” she said. “I went home after the game and went straight to bed.”

“The next day, the pitch caller was different. Just the overall feel was different. It was a shock to everybody. The players said, ‘It was a day of mourning without you there.’”

Then the 2015 Bulldogs, with an undefeated regular season, were widely reckoned to be the ones to win CSM’s first state title. Quigley-Borg called that 2015 team—which lost to Palomar in the tournament final—the foundation of the team’s subsequent success. In September, the team was inducted into the 2022 CSM Athletics Hall of Fame.

“It set the precedent for the direction the program was heading,” she said. “For the coaching staff, it raised a level of expectation that we could do it year after year. We kept almost reaching the top of the mountain. The mindset really shifted that year. We said, ‘We can do this. This is not just a maybe.’ Every team that followed carried forward that mindset.”

“We carried that into recruiting. We could tell players, ‘You could be part of the first team to win a state championship.’”

At the 2022 state tournament, the Bulldogs dropped the first game of the championship series on Sunday but then rallied.

“Our pitcher Chloe Moffit really stepped up,” Quigley-Borg said. “She was in a rut hitting at the beginning of the 2022 season. [Then] her bat came alive. It was great to have it happen in that moment.”

“We had players hit home runs in the state championship that didn’t hit a home run that whole year.”

Graduating players have gone on to scholarships at four-year schools including Cal State East Bay, Chico State, Oregon State, William Jessup, San Diego State, the University of Utah, UCLA, and La Sierra University.

In addition, the 2022 Bulldogs boast a 3.4 team grade-point average.

Returnees include all five players named to the 2022 all-tournament team: left fielder Lafu Malapeai, the tournament MVP; infielders Leila Velasquez and Celeste Casillas; outfielder Bubba Fa’aita and pitcher/utility Chloe Moffitt.

Among Malapeai’s many honors, she was named the California Sports Information Association’s Female Athlete of the Year, the first softball player to be so honored.

She and her teammates are back to “attending classes, practicing and playing” in the nontraditional fall season, Quigley-Borg said. They played their first fall 2022 game Sept. 17 against Extreme.