Back in 1976, Elmwood started a softball team. It was before the days of Divisions and was the first year of the WIAA holding a State Tournament. Despite their size, Elmwood went toe-to-toe with the best, making a run all the way to the title game, where they would finish as the runner-ups behind Madison West.

Now, 50 years later, that team was honored by the WIAA at the State Softball Tournament.

“They treated us all very special. It was a pretty memorable moment to have us recognized like that,” Vickie (Cady) Lehmann said. “We haven’t seen a lot of [our teammates] in many years, so it was just getting together to reminisce.”

These days you would never see two schools so far apart in enrollment play each other in the postseason, but one thing about that Elmwood team was that they never backed down from a challenge.

“I don’t know if we really thought about it. We just got out there and did what we can do. In the end it was… wow,” Lehmann said. “They made us feel like we were the pioneers of where we have gotten today.”

The team was coached by Bill “Cubby” Huber, who passed away in September. The team was loaded with underclassmen, with a single senior on the team at the time. On the roster were Jackie Krause, Barb Grant, Tammy Yauch, Jill Baier, Vickie Cady, Diane Weber, Joan Hartung, Julie Kerg, Cathy Fox, Wanda Doughty, Debbie Doughty, Nancy Bauer, Jean Weber, Renee DeMarce, Sandy Huebner, Teresa Turner, Lori Lechner, Barb Shields and Tammy Buesing.

The team tore its way through the conference, beating Somerset 19-11, Plum City 15-13, Pepin 13-0, Spring Valley 15-1, Colfax 15-8 and Boyceville 16-8.

In the postseason, the Raiders went on to beat Arkansaw, Seneca Black River Falls and Superior to make it to the title game. According to a 1976 article from the Elmwood Argus, Debbie Doughty pitched the full seven innings and hit a home run in the 13-5 win over Superior in the State-Semi-finals. The seeding for the State four-team bracket was determined alphabetically, with the first team playing the third and the second team playing the fourth.
“We had coach Huber that first year, and he pretty much put us all in our positions and we went from there,” Lehmann said. “That first year, we were told to get a red T-shirt with a number on it. That was our uniform with whatever shorts that we wanted… When they realized, hey, these girls are going to be representing us at the State level, we have to get them uniforms. At the State Tournament, at the last minute as we’re getting ready to play a game, they’re handing uniforms out to us.”

In the finals, Doughty, the team’s lone senior, hit two more home runs, but it was not enough in a 27-8 loss.

Arnie McKernon, who ran the boys little league program, started a softball summer program the summer of Lehmann’s fifth grade year, and that motivated the team tremendously.

“The boys probably took it for granted, they always had little league growing up,” Lehmann said. “We were all in other sports. The WIAA didn’t recognize any girls sports until my junior year.”

Lehmann said the same girls at the time were pretty much all competing in the same sports, so they really grew close over the years.

Lehmann is the first of three generations of softball players to make deep postseason runs, as her daughter Tory was a part of another Elmwood run to State and granddaughter Siera made the Sectional Final with Menomonie in 2025. Lehmann returned to State, this time under coach Jerry Cognetta for a second year. Cognetta was also the coach when her daughter went through the Elmwood softball program, which meant a lot to her.

“Now we’ve got another granddaughter [Harper] just starting,” Lehmann said. “It’s been just fun to watch our children and now our grandchildren play and enjoy as much as we did.”