The 1990s were especially good years for softball in the Mining City.

The 2000s and 2010s weren’t so bad, either.

Butte High and Butte Central started playing fast-pitch softball as a Montana High School Association sanctioned sport in the spring of 1991, and it didn’t take long for both to emerge as powers.

The Bulldogs won the state title in their second season in 1992. Butte High won the Class AA State crown again in 1995, and Butte High and Butte Central were both primed to win titles in 1996 before rain in Billings washed out those dreams.

(While the MHSA doesn’t officially recognize those titles, I do.)

Butte Central won Class A State championships in 1997, 1999 and 2000. The Mighty Maroons went 52-0 over those last two championship seasons.

Butte High won one more state title in 2011.

For years, I marveled at the talent, camaraderie and competitiveness of the players from those teams that won state titles for Butte — and those that gave everything they had trying to win titles.

At both high school in town, the softball teams were always something to be proud of, and there was no sport better to write about.

Players from both Butte schools expected to win, as if it was their birthright. In most cases, they were right.

Years later, I still marvel at the work of many of the players from those championship teams, but for a totally different reason.

The Copper City Softball Little League in Butte was built by many of the same women who used to star on the softball diamond for Butte High and Butte Central. They are women who did not like the fact that the numbers of local players fell off the cliff, so they stepped up and did something about it.

It is not that softball in Butte became an afterthought at the younger levels, but it was a shell of what it once was. We just didn’t have many young girls playing Little League softball.

Eventually, that decline impacted the Bulldogs and Maroons. The proud programs of Butte High and Butte Central — schools used to playing on Saturday of the state tournament — struggled for numbers.

Oh, they still had some great players, but they could not really stack up in the numbers game.

If you looked at the small number of girls playing in the Northwest and Mile High Little Leagues, those numbers were not looking likely to turn around anytime soon.

We needed a new approach.

That approach turned out to be the Copper City Softball Little League. The plan was to give the girls their own fields — at the old Longfellow Little League cite. The once aging facility is now a thing of beauty thanks to the league’s Field of Dreams imitative.

It is only going to get better, too.

That old park really is something the community can and should be very proud of thanks to the work of all those former softball players.

More importantly, the league leaders were full of women who had been there and done that. They were champions who knew what needed to be done.

Copper City Softball’s first year started a bit modest with 96 girls signing up to play. That still represented a huge improvement from the previous years, so you could immediately tell that things were heading back in the right direction for Butte softball.

This year is the league’s sixth year in operation, and 320 girls ranging in age from 4 to 16 signed up to play.

This past Sunday, the league held its Opening Day celebration, and the weather held off long enough for a great event. Softball players, young and old, just kept coming and coming. If you got a parking spot withing three blocks, you were one of the lucky ones.

The league honored some of Butte’s first Little League Softball players, who first took the diamond 50 years ago. I thought they would get like three or four of the former players to show up. They got more than a dozen.

The field on the south-east corner of the complex was full of coaches holding up signs for their players to find them, so they could get their team jerseys and get ready for the parade of athletes. Then, each team took a trip around the bases along with some current players for Butte High and Butte Central.

Hattie Thatcher, a member of Butte High’s 2011 championship team, presented Butte High senior Ashby Lee with the first Copper City Softball Scholarship.

I did not make an official count, but I believe at least one player from each of Butte High and Butte Central’s state championship teams was on hand for the special day.

The Maroons won in 1997 in large part because of a fantastic catch made by sophomore Kate (VanDaveer) McGree. Kate reached over the fence — which was no easy task for a player who stood less than 5 feet tall — to steal a two-run home run off the bat of Meghan O’Donnell, and the Maroons beat Billings Central 3-2 in a late Friday game at Stodden Park.

That catch is nothing compared to the work she has done with Copper City Softball.

In 2000, Alicia (Wheeler) Kachmarik took a line drive off the face, went for X-rays, returned and pitched the Maroons to victory in the championship game in Billings — as her eye was swelling shut.

I have talked about that performance for 24 years now. Even though I watched it with my own eyes, I am not entirely sure it really happened.

That performance takes a back seat to what Alicia has done with Copper City Softball.

In 2011, Jaimee (Paffhausen) Richards won the Gatorade Award for pitching the Bulldogs to the Class AA title. She absolutely dominated in the pitchers’ circle that season. She is the only Butte softball player to win that prestigious award, and a case could be made that she is Butte High’s best softball player ever.

Her work with Copper City Softball just might trump that.

The same could be said for so many other great former players who have done so much for the new league — either as a founder, a coach or a board member.

So many of these women were champions on the softball field in Butte, but they went on to do even better things in life. That connection is not a coincidence.

Perhaps the greatest thing they did was give the girls of Butte a league of their own.

In doing so, they assured that softball will be especially good in the Mining City for years to come.

— Bill Foley can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.