BUTTE VALLEY >> Butte College’s athletic program achieved great success throughout 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, but much of it wouldn’t have been possible without a key behind-the-scenes figure who helped keep the Roadrunners’ athletes on the field.

Fran Babich did not take it easy on her athletes in the training room, but she wanted what was best. She used workouts in the sand and in the water to help with their recovery. She wanted rehab to be harder for athletes than what they were doing on the field, so that they didn’t want to fake an injury to be able to relax.

Anyone who knows Babich knows that ice is and was her favorite thing.

“I never wanted to be injured at Butte. I loved her and I loved the crew she had together, but it was going to be hard work getting better,” said former Butte College offensive lineman Ed Pelfrey. “She was focused on all of us being prepared and getting better. It was all laughing and fun, but it was going to be tough. She had a way to get everyone to work hard and enjoy doing it.”

A favorite saying of both Babich’s and longtime Butte College football coach Craig Rigsbee’s was “You can’t make the club in the (ice) tub, and you can’t make the field ‘till you’re healed.”

On May 13, Babich will join former Butte College football player Larry Allen and former United States Olympians Jack Yerman and Emily Azevedo as part of the 50th Chico Sports Hall of Fame class at the Chico Sports Hall of Fame and Senior Athletes Banquet at Manzanita Place. Tickets are available for the banquet until May 9 and are $65.

It is not the first Hall of Fame Babich has been inducted into as a trainer who helped athletes at nearly every level possible. She’s a member of the California Community College Athletic Association Hall of Fame, the California Community College Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame, the Far West Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame, the C.K. McClatchy High School Athletic Hall of Fame, and the Butte College Athletic Hall of Fame. However most notably Babich is a member of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame.

“These honors and awards are fabulous, don’t get me wrong, but success for me is when you’re sitting around years later and my name comes up and a smile comes across your face and a story, and maybe a little laughter,” Babich said. “That’s success to me. The impact that I had on the students and them being able to remember I was a good person, I was a fun person and I meant something to them in their lives, that’s something.”

Babich trained athletes at elementary basketball camps at College of the Siskiyous; taught junior high school at Chico Junior; did athletic training and substitute teaching in Chico as well as being an athletic trainer at Sabino High School in Tucson, Arizona; taught and was the athletic trainer for many years at Butte College; was the first certified athletic trainer ever hired at Division III Pomona College in Claremont (where she worked with current San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich in his first coaching job); worked at the D-II level at Chico State as a student, athletic trainer and graduate assistant; served as a graduate assistant at the University of Arizona in the women’s athletic training program and also as assistant softball coach; and at the professional level, has worked with the Justin healers sports medicine as an athletic trainer for professional rodeo at the Red Bluff Round-Up, the Reno rodeo and the Redding rodeo.

Despite all the opportunities, she found a love for Butte College and the community college age group. The male athletes at Butte College would tell her they’re a man, but she would tell them that they were a man cub.

She loved that she was able to teach full time as well as being the athletic trainer. She taught classes such as athletic training, sports medicine and adaptive PE.

“It was cool to be wanted, but I felt wanted enough at Butte College to stay,” Babich said. “When I was at grad school at University of Arizona, one of the questions they asked early on was if you could have any job anywhere, what would it be. These people are going IU, Notre Dame, I say that I want to go to Butte College. They say ‘what?!’ That’s where I wanted to go. There it was three years later.”

Where it started

As a dual-sport athlete at Chico State playing volleyball and softball and a three-sport athlete at Sacramento City College (volleyball, softball, field hockey), it wasn’t until Babich’s senior season that women were allowed in the athletic training room. Not as a student-athlete, not as an athletic training assistant. Female student athletes were on their own, and if they got injured the coaches had to take care of them.

That changed Babich’s senior year. Women were both allowed to be treated and could be student assistants, and Babich took advantage of both. She was going to school to be a PE teacher and a coach, but before that had interest in being a nurse.

Then-athletic trainer Tom Little wanted student-athletes as his assistants because they had experienced sports. Little’s trust of Babich became clear, because years later the two married and are together to this day.

Babich began substitute teaching and was planning a career as a teacher. However, while assisting in the athletic training room at Chico State, one of Babich’s friends wanted to get a master’s degree in athletic training at the University of Arizona, which at the time was considered one of the best schools to do so. Babich’s friend visited Arizona over Christmas break, saw the school, and came back and told Babich “This is the place you want to be. This is what you want to do.”

Babich was reluctant. But lo and behold her friend had two paper applications that were stuck together. Babich filled one out and got accepted — one of just four women in the United States to do so.

After graduate school and receiving her first job at Pomona College where she worked for two years, she was back in Chico visiting her then-boyfriend Little. Little and Babich were at the bank getting money for Babich to go back to Pomona, and a coach from Butte College approached Little and asked if he was sending someone to them for the job opening for athletic trainer at Butte College. Little or Babich had no clue the job was open. Babich had been applying for jobs around Butte County, and had one more resume, one more letter of interest and one more letter with classes she had taken. It was also the last day to submit an application.

One month later she got the call that she got the job at Butte College, and the rest is history.

One of Babich’s favorite quotes is, “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Butte College was a prime example of it, and Babich spent the rest of her career in Butte County because of that.

A number of firsts

In 1980 Babich was hired as the first certified athletic trainer at Butte College and the first woman hired as head athletic trainer within the community college system in California, and has been a trailblazer making many other firsts throughout her career as an athlete, teacher and athletic trainer. She was one of the first female student athletic trainers at Chico State; she was the first athletic trainer at Pomona College; from 1990-94 she served as the first president of the California Community College Athletic Trainers Association; she was the first female to work as the athletic trainer for the Men’s American Basketball Association; and and the first female Butte College Athletic Director (interim) in 2005-06.

While many in Babich’s shoes could be intimidated about being the first in so many different fields, Babich didn’t think about it at the time. She just saw it as her job. It’s a similar standpoint to how Babich looks at so many other Chico Sports Hall of Famers she knows, such as Rigsbee, Sam Simmons, Puck Smith and now Larry Allen.

“It’s funny because I know all of them and I go way back with all of them,” Babich said. “They were my friends, so that’s how I looked at them, and I knew they were good at what they did, and I knew I was good at what I did.”

As one of the cofounders of the California Community College Athletic Trainers’ Association, Babich helped establish guidelines on how to properly cut weight in wrestling, what do teams need on the sidelines for medical use, what is considered a doctor (MD/chiropractor etc.) and ambulance rules all in the early ’90s. On the national level she sat on the College and University Athletic Trainers’ Committee with mostly D-I athletic trainers, and helped write a rule of using the helmet as a weapon.

“That changed the whole outlook,” Babich said. “That committee looked at the health and safety, CPR for coaches, CPR for athletic trainers, so that committee was a very important committee I served on.”

As an athlete she was in the first group of female athletes at C.K. McClatchy High School and amongst the first at Sacramento City College and Chico State.

The trends of first and successful women are something that runs in her family, having grown up with four sisters and two brothers. One of her sisters was one of the first Fish and Game Wardens in California who made it up to chief. One is a nurse and the other is a lawyer.

The support Babich always received was important to her growth, and she shared a funny story while she was working at Pomona College. Pomona’s football team was visiting St. Mary’s College in Moraga, and Babich’s dad had played football for St. Mary’s in the 1940s. Babich’s family went to the game, a player got hurt, Babich ran onto the field to address the player, and Babich’s family began screaming and ringing cowbells seeing Babich doing her job for the first time.

“I said, ‘guys that’s so cool, but you can’t do that!’” Babich said. “As far as having the parents being involved all the way through, that was fabulous.”

Fostering friendships

While it is widely known is that Babich’s athletic training room was one to work hard in and get out of, the friendships and memories gained were memorable.

“You can’t get the same connection in the classroom than when you’re taking care of that athlete when they’re at a time emotionally as well when they’re hurt,” Babich said. “I liked that. I could create lifelong relationships just because of my job.”

Two of many players who Babich made lasting impacts at Butte College with were the offensive lineman Pelfrey, defensive lineman Moke Simon and another member of Babich’s Chico Hall of Fame class, Larry Allen.

“It wasn’t a bunch of people lazying around the training room. In Fran’s we were working, and I think that makes a big difference,” Pelfrey said. “No question it was key to the success of the teams. She was as tough as our coaches, tougher than most of our coaches, and it was that tough love.”

Simon, who went to Middletown High School on an Indian reservation and never had an athletic trainer at Butte College, was thankful Babich was at Butte College. To this day Simon and Babich meet up a high school football game on the reservation where he coaches the defense.

Babich also spoke about her relationship with Allen. Babich pushed Allen to be in shape in his time at Butte College before Allen’s Hall of Fame career in the NFL, and their friendship continued throughout his career. Babich visited Allen when he played for the Dallas Cowboys, and attended Allen’s NFL Hall of Fame induction.

“What’s so cool is the relationship you make with your athletes just by doing what you do and getting them where they need to be, that carries,” Babich said. “Years later other athletes come in and say it’s great because they’d say when things were bad you were like a mother to me. It started out friend, sister, mother, and before grandma came in I said I’m out.”