Northwestern softball coach Sharon Drysdale has beaten a lot of teams in her 23 seasons with the Wildcats.

The veteran coach has defeated faraway teams like Hawaii and teams as obscure as Adelphi countless times.

But Drysdale has defeated Illinois – a recognizable team within driving distance – only once in her coaching career.

It’s not that the Fighting Illini have a magical formula for beating Drysdale. It’s that she has coached against Illinois only once.

This is the Illini’s first year of Big Ten competition after years of being a club team. They played at the varsity level last year, but didn’t see any Big Ten action.

Drysdale and the Cats (13-15, 4-4 Big Ten) will have their second shot at Illinois – the first coming decades ago – in a doubleheader Friday at Eichelberger Field in Champaign.

And even though the two programs are on opposite ends of the diamond when it comes to Big Ten experience, Drysdale can relate to Illini coach Terri Sullivan and her freshman team. Drysdale has also built a program once.

She didn’t quite start from scratch, but she may as well have. When she arrived at NU in 1979, the Cats had been around for three years and hadn’t seen a single quality victory.

“They had a little ways to go,” Drysdale said. “They hadn’t won any Big Ten games yet. They were losing to University of Chicago.”

Drysdale tried to remedy things by bringing in junior college players, but the first three seasons were still a struggle. NU went 3-13, 16-17 and 19-27.

But in 1981-82, Drysdale’s fourth season and the Cats’ first in NCAA play, things started to go her way. She was able to corral a strong recruiting class for the fledgling program.

“You had to sell them on a dream,” Drysdale said, “on what could be and the special contribution they could make to help us turn the corner.”

Drysdale may have hit a grand slam with her freshman class, but it took a while for the ball to make it out of the park. In the fall of her fourth season, the Cats’ young hitters lived around the Mendoza line. But once spring came around, NU’s sluggers found their stroke. Behind .300-plus averages, the Cats posted a 31-9-1 record, including an 8-0 conference finish and a Big Ten tournament title.

The 1982 Cats had set up the diamond for those who would come after them.

“It was a special year because it hadn’t been done before,” Drysdale said. “They didn’t have role models or people that had paved the way before.”

In addition to its play on the field, NU’s amazing turnaround had a lot to do with the people at the top.

“The difference then was that NU has always supported women’s athletics, and back in the 1970s and 1980s that wasn’t the thing to do,” Drysdale said. “That gave us a really good head start.”

Illinois will have a much easier time duplicating the Cats’ rise to the top. The Illini already have a budget large enough to compete.

They also have a lot of games under their belt. Illinois is 33-17 overall and 3-5 in Big Ten play.

Even with all the games the Illini have played, NU will need to see the newborn program on the diamond before coming to any conclusions.

“We don’t have any clue what they’re going to do,” Drysdale said.