Pitching coach Gale Bundrick, tutoring Janelle Christman, is one of two volunteer coaches at CDO since the mid-80s.

chris richards / arizona daily star

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What do a former UA football player-turned-Pima County natural resource superintendent and an astronomer/ex-Navy pilot have in common?

This isn't a witty joke as much as it is an introduction to two men whose vastly different career paths, strangely enough, led them to become two of Southern Arizona's most successful high school softball coaches.

The funny part is neither Gale Bundrick nor Clark Enterline, both of Canyon del Oro, has ever been in charge of a high school team.

Well, at least not officially.

"Every athletic director talks to both of us about it whenever we have an opening," Bundrick said. "They've tried, but Clark and I formed a pact, saying that we think it's best for us to stay in a helping role."

Bundrick and Enterline are the backbone of CDO's championship legacy, mainstays during a period when coaching turnover has been as high for the Dorados as for suffering programs.

They joined the Dorados staff in the mid-1980s when the team struggled. Since then, CDO has won three state crowns, 10 region titles, gone through seven head coaches and asserted itself as one of America's elite teams.

The two coaches have seen their reputations soar in that time — Bundrick as Southern Arizona's pre-eminent pitching guru — and could have run other other programs if they had chosen.

But their loyalty to the school their children attended has been the Dorados' saving grace.

"If they left to coach somewhere else, it would be the best thing to ever happen to the other school and the worst thing that could happen to us," said CDO head coach Amy Swiderski, a Dorado from 1998 to 2000.

Bundrick, 61, played linebacker for Arizona in the 1960s after a high school career in Coolidge. For several decades he was a key figure in parks and recreation, and a hiking trail at Colossal Cave Mountain Park bears his name.

In 1987, he and Enterline — a UA grad and former pilot who works as a manager for the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy — started their first ASA softball team, called the Wildbats.

Bundrick came to CDO in 1985 and Enterline, 60, followed in 1988. The team's head coaches since then all left in good standing, but the two coaches and hitting coach Kevin Glynn — who joined the staff in the mid-1990s — have kept the Dorados on top.

And they've done it the whole time as unpaid volunteers.

"We all enjoy coaching softball, and this is our way of giving back," Enterline said. "What we feel is important is that the girls leave the program better than when they came into it, they have a good experience and that the program continues to improve. We've been fortunate."

Said senior shortstop Kate Wilczynski: "Everything has been the same, no matter who is the head coach. Things stay the same, so the players can just keep on at the same pace and do what we've always done."

The outfield fence at CDO is adorned with 15 circular signs devoted to the team's various championships and 23 more in honor of former players who went on to play Division I ball. All those signs have been hung since the arrival of Enterline and Bundrick.

Those are perhaps most indicative of their impact on the Dorados' success.

"You look at that fence and those two men can tell stories about it all — about players they saw in the '80s, or regional games we won in the '90s," Swiderski said. "They can look at the girls and say, 'Our program has all these great memories and tradition, and I was standing right there when it happened.'

"We're so blessed. They don't ask for anything, but they have given us so much."