Martha Wilkinson-Kirouac had to ask for permission to compete for Cal State Fullerton’s first women’s national title.
Known as Martha Wilkinson then, she was a freshman at California State College, Fullerton, as the school was known then. She wandered the halls looking for someone — anyone — in a position of authority who would give their blessings for her to compete in what was then called the Division of Girls’ and Women’s Sports Golf Championships.
She received that blessing, then threw a curse on the rest of the field at what passed for a national collegiate championship in the precursor to the AIAW — which was the precursor to the NCAA. All of which was a precursor to Title IX, and a golf team at Cal State Fullerton. Wilkinson didn’t have to ask for permission to do what happened next — win Cal State Fullerton’s first women’s national championship in any event.
Wilkinson-Kirouac is one of five individual inductees and six members overall who comprise the Cal State Fullerton Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2023, which was selected over the summer. The class will be honored at a Nov 3 dinner in Brea.
Wilkinson-Kirouac joins the Cal State Fullerton 1979 baseball team, soccer goalkeeper Karen Bardsley, wrestler T.J. Dillashaw, trainer Julie Max, and soccer standout Eddie Soto in the 10th class of inductees.
Here are capsules on each of the inductees.
The 1979 Baseball Team
This was the team that put Cal State Fullerton’s baseball program on the collegiate map for good. The team that illustrated the managerial genius of Augie Garrido, the promising future of a first baseman named Tim Wallach and the scrappy, nothing-is-over-until-WE-say-it-is personality of the Titans’ baseball program.
This wasn’t CSUF’s first trip to Omaha and the College World Series; it went in 1975. But this is where the Titans’ baseball program became Cal State Fullerton baseball. The program’s first of four national championships over the next four decades. Behind Wallach’s .391 average, 23 home runs and a still-school record 102 RBI, the Titans went 60-14-1, including 23-4-1 in what was called the Southern California Baseball Association, the conference they played in at that time.
In the West Regional, the Titans lost their first game, then ripped apart the losers’ bracket, beating UCLA twice. In Omaha, they promptly lost their opener, 6-1, to Mississippi State — the last time CSUF would lose that season.
Behind a pitching staff that came into the CWS 45-8 and clutch closer Tony Hudson — who would be the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series for his three saves — the Titans reeled off four consecutive victories: 8-3 over Connecticut, 16-3 over Arizona, 13-10 over Arkansas and 8-5 over Pepperdine to reach the final game against Arkansas. With that final tied 1-1 entering the sixth, outfielder Sam Favata — who came into Omaha hitting .432 — reached first on an error, stole second and went to third on a throwing error. He’d come home on Wallach’s sacrifice fly — his 102nd RBI of the season.
Just like that, the Titans elbowed their way into the collegiate baseball elite. Wallach won the Golden Spikes Award — baseball’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. He’d be the 10th pick in the Major League Baseball draft, play 17 seasons in the majors and make five All-Star teams. And Garrido’s ability to push every motivational and tactical button at the right time would go on display for the next four decades.
Karen Bardsley
Bardsley was a graphic design major — an appropriate major for a goalkeeper who designed one of the best careers by a Cal State Fullerton soccer player in school history. She opened her career as the Big West Freshman of the Year in 2002, stopping 84.6% of the shots she faced.
After breaking her leg 28 minutes into the 2003 season, Bardsley returned to the net in 2004 and was named Big West Conference Goalkeeper of the Year — the first of three times she’d capture that award. That season, Bardsley allowed 0.71 goals per game.
In 2005, she set single-season program records for goals-against (a Big West-leading 0.64), victories and shutouts (10). The following year, she’d win her third Big West Goalkeeper of the Year Award, go 12-8-2 — with eight shutouts. Her 128 saves ranked second in school history.
Carrying dual citizenship, Bardsley earned 82 caps for England, competing in three Women’s World Cups and the 2012 London Olympics. She played for Manchester City before retiring in May 2022.
T.J. Dillashaw
He’s known far more for his two UFC bantamweight titles and a 17-5 MMA/13-5 UFC record. But back in the day when CSUF had a wrestling team, Dillashaw was the program’s poster boy who helped give the program needed gravitas at a time when it was struggling. After a freshman season where Dillashaw went 14-16 with a 10-8 dual-match record, he went to Ukraine in the summer of 2006.
Something clicked. Dillashaw went 17-14 and 11-4 in duals, going 5-3 in the Pac-10. The following year, he finished sixth in the University Greco Wrestling Championships. He was a three-time NCAA Division I National Qualifier and finished fourth in the Pac-10 in both his junior and senior years.
After graduating, Dillashaw accepted an invitation from former CSUF wrestling coach Mark Muñoz to join the Reign Training Center. That started his MMA career that ended just last year when Dillashaw injured his shoulder in a bout with champion Aljamain Sterling.
Julie Max
She was the first female student trainer allowed to work football games at Fullerton College, the first female president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association and is the first trainer inducted into the Cal State Fullerton Athletics Hall of Fame.
None of which surprises anyone who knows Max, CSUF’s former director of sports medicine and assistant athletics director. From 1979 until her 2022 retirement, Max oversaw the Titans’ training staff and sports medicine department, mentoring two generations of student and athletic trainers and bestowing on them the knowledge to not only think on their feet and stay ahead of the athletic training curve but serving as a role model and training talisman. When students, athletes and colleagues speak about Max, they do so using words like “integrity,” “respect,” “professional,” and “smart.”
Max is a woman of firsts, but the CSUF Athletic Hall of Fame is her second hall induction. Max was inducted into the NATA’s Hall of Fame in 2007.
Eddie Soto
To anyone who watched him play during his three-year career, it should surprise no one that Soto became a successful soccer coach. After all, Soto played the game like a chess master, always seeing the game several moves ahead.
A two-time All-American (1992-93), Soto ranks as the No. 2 scorer in CSUF history. He scored 96 points and 38 goals, including a still-school-record 18 in 1994. In 1993, he led the Titans to the NCAA semifinals for the first time in school history and brought them back to the quarterfinals the next year.
For the last five seasons, Soto has coached the Cal State Dominguez Hills men’s team, the latest stop in a 20-year coaching career — 17 at the Division I level. He led the Toros to their first 10-win season in 2021, reaching the conference semifinals in a season they were ranked as high as 13th nationally. Last year, they won the conference regular season title.
Previously, Soto coached the men’s team at the University of San Francisco, where he was the West Coast Conference Coach of the Year in 2017.
Martha Wilkinson-Kirouac
When Wilkinson romped through the 32-player match-play bracket at Seattle’s Sand Point Country Club, she did so as the lone Titan in the field. After beating Roberta Albers of the University of Miami, 6-and-5 in the 36-hole final, she not only won CSUF’s first women’s national title in any sport, she did so four years before there was an AIAW championship, five years before Title IX, 15 years before there was an NCAA women’s golf championships and 42 years before there was a women’s golf team at CSUF.
It was her only year at the school; her talents were far beyond what CSUF offered at the time. Wilkinson illustrated this three years later with one of the greatest amateur campaigns in golf history. She won five prestigious amateur titles, including the biggest one of all — the U.S. Women’s Amateur. She played on — and 34 years later, coached — the U.S. Curtis Cup team, the pinnacle team event for women amateurs.
One of the most respected figures in amateur golf and a rules official for eight U.S. Women’s Opens and eight Women’s Amateurs, Wilkinson-Kirouac lives in Georgia, where she is a member of the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame.
