Consider the life experiences of new UL softball head coach Alyson Habetz.
As a high school athlete, she fought the Louisiana law that said girls couldn't play baseball — and won.
She went on to play baseball at many of the country’s most historic fields, pitching twice at Fenway Park as well as at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown while rubbing shoulders with Stan Musial and Yogi Berra.
She was buddies with former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, allowing her to take batting practice at Dodger Stadium and attend spring training in Vero Beach, Florida.
Eventually, Habetz became a 1,000-point scorer in basketball at UL, helped the Cajuns’ softball team reach the Women’s College World Series for the first time and played three years of professional women’s baseball .
She then stumbled into a 25-year career as a college softball coach and helped Alabama win a national championship.
And in the year since retiring, she’s flown across the country to motivate people. She even met the Pope himself in Rome.
And yet nothing has given Habetz more genuine joy than returning to her country home in Acadia Parish last summer to reunite with her family and friends.
“My family is my backbone,” Habetz said. “I loved my experience in Alabama. It was incredible. But my family was always here, so my heart was always torn. This is home because this is where my family is.”
Habetz surprised many last summer when she retired from coaching to take care of her mother, Deanna, in Crowley.
“That has been wonderful,” Deanna Habetz said of the past year with Alyson. “She is so good to me. She just can’t do enough for me. I have enjoyed it so much.”
Mom had gotten weaker physically and emotionally after losing her husband of 64 years in March of 2022.
“Aly’s gotten mom so much stronger,” Habetz's sister Monica Teare said. “Aly came in and didn’t take no for an answer. She’s just so full of life, she’s nuts … so full of motivation and joy, which has just been great for mom.
“She takes mom to physical therapy … She brings mom to my girls volleyball and softball games, which mom couldn’t have done before.”
Youngest of eight children
Even while she was coaching at Alabama, her family weighed heavy on Habetz's mind.
If you ever watched her pulling on her ear while coaching first base for the Crimson Tide during a TV game, Habetz wasn’t giving signals to her players. It was a message to her parents that she loved them.
“Oh, it was very special to me,” Deanna said. “I always waited for it. She said, ‘I love you’ to me so many times. I guess everybody thought she was giving a signal.”
In the Habetz family, Alyson actually had more than one mom.
She was the youngest of Leonard and Deanna’s eight children, and her oldest sibling, sister Keven Ann, was 12 years older.
Keven Ann Duhon can still remember baby Alyson crying during Christmas dinner eight days after she was born and her mother saying, ‘Keven, your godchild is crying.’ ”
It wasn’t an unusual occurrence in big families. After all, at one point, mom had five in diapers at the same.
“She was like my child,” Duhon laughed. “I can remember being in high school and going grocery shopping for mom, and Alyson was on my hip.
“To this day, she’s my godchild along with being my sister.”
Love of baseball
In addition to their intense love of family, there were two passions in the Habetz household — church and baseball.
“My mom and dad influenced all of that," Duhon said. "We were always in church. Even in high school when we’d stay out late, I can remember my dad pinching our toes in the morning and saying, ‘If you can stay out late, you can get up and go to church.’”
Leonard Habetz coached the Knights of Columbus softball team for years, as well as all four of his sons on Crowley recreation teams.
Alyson took note.
“When Alyson came along, she always wanted to be where he was practicing with the boys,” Deanna said. “That’s what she loved. She loved that baseball.”
Teare, who was child No. 7 and closest in age to Alyson, didn’t love baseball like her little sister, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t play a role in her career.
“Aly was the spark of our family,” Teare said. “She was the baby. I literally grew up at the baseball park watching my dad coach Aly … from T-ball all the way up to American Legion. That was our lifestyle.
“When she was out practicing her pitching, I was there catching her out in the front yard. I got many bruises, because I was not a catcher. But I was there and I was at every one of her games with mom and dad.”
Even when young Alyson was all alone, she practiced anyway.
“She’d throw the ball up in the air and hit it in the rice field and the dogs would go and get it and bring it back,” Duhon remembered. “She’d throw that rubber ball against that bottom brick of the house on the carport and catch ground balls — backhanded or whatever.
“One of my fondest memories of her was one day I walked into the carport and she’s there asleep with the dog with the ball in her hand.”
Baseball controversy
Though Habetz played ball with boys since her T-ball days, that changed when she got to high school.
The Louisiana High School Athletic Association said girls couldn't play baseball. And though the Notre Dame Pioneers have won many softball titles since then, in 1998 there was no softball program.
“She was absolutely devastated when they said she couldn’t play,” sister Monica Teare said. “That’s all she knew.”
Habetz fought the law and was initially denied. Her fight made national news.
ABC’s "Good Morning America" came down to cover the controversy and eventually the Habetz family won on appeal.
“When they showed up at school, I remember thinking ‘Oh my, this is so embarrassing,'” Teare laughed.
'Dad is huge smiles right now'
Habetz' father died on March 16, 2022, at age 89. Habetz was in Tuscaloosa.
"That was devastating,'" she said.
"She left the day Dad died," Duhon said. "She was on the phone and I had it on his heart (when he passed)."
That experience was key in Habetz deciding to retire a year later.
"I didn't want to come home to watch Mom die," Habetz said. "I wanted to come home to help her live."
“Aly was very, very close to my dad,” Duhon said. “Dad was so proud of her coaching at Alabama. He’d be ecstatic to see her here at UL as the head coach.”
When Habetz reconciled the thought of returning to coaching at UL in her heart, her family smiled really big. They knew how much that would please her dad.
“The absolute cherry on top for all of this is that this is absolutely what my dad would have wanted,” Teare said. “That’s all he wanted was for her to come home, coach right here at UL and he could go watch her. My dad is huge smiles right now.”
The family is more together than it’s been in decades. While Rick Habetz is still in Ohio, Duhon, her husband, Tim, and two teenage daughters, Alyson and Madyson, moved back to Crowley five years ago after two decades in California.
While they had followed her career from afar — "My house was rocking and rolling when Alabama softball was on TV in California” — Duhon said it doesn't compare to being together the past year.
“The impact that she’s made on my daughters is just … now she’s around them all the time,” Duhon explained. “She’s there for emotional support and she’s there as a role model. School and sports and friends … she’ll interact with their friends. She’s riding on the Polaris with them and doing fun games and just so creative. She has such a creative mind. She’s like a kid — she’s so full of life.
“My husband and I talk about it often. We’re good parents, but Aly has taught the two of us so much about parenting, especially about parenting female athletes and she’s not even a parent.”
And come February, it’s going to be much like it was decades ago with the Habetz family going to the ballpark to support Aly.
“When this (coaching at UL) came up, I was so excited,” Duhon said. “I was like, ‘She needs to do this.’ She has so much talent to give back and she’s great at giving back and it’s in an area where people know her and appreciate her.”
Once again, each one will be introduced as “Alyson Habetz’s sister or brother or mom” with love and pride.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Monica said. “We’re fired up. Look, for Aly to come home and just have the best of both worlds. She’s got all her family here, we have her here and we get to go watch her coach… what a blessing.”