Gerry Glasco has made his selections to fill out his inaugural coaching staff at Louisiana-Lafayette, JWOS has learned. According to sources, Glasco will be joined by Ellen Renfroe-Reed and Joe Guthrie as assistant coaches.
Renfroe-Reed, a former all-American and one of the best pitchers in Tennessee Lady Vol history, will join the Ragin Cajuns from Bethel University in Tennessee. Renfroe-Reed was named head coach at Bethel in May and was going into her inaugural season at the helm of the Wildcats in 2018. She resigned from that post on Monday in order to accept the position in Lafayette.
Guthrie was also headed into his first season as head coach at Spring Hill College in Alabama, a position that he accepted earlier in the fall. Guthrie worked with Glasco on the coaching staff of the Scrap Yard Dawgs this summer in the NPF, a team that the pair helped lead to the professional league championship. Like Glasco, Guthrie is highly regarded as an offensive guru and figures to play a big role in the Ragin Cajuns retaining their historic home run hitting ways.
Sources also confirmed to JWOS that Renfroe-Reed and Guthrie would be joined by their spouses, Jon Reed and former Bucknell head coach Courtnay Foster, respectively, who will also take on roles on the Ragin Cajuns staff.
Renfroe-Reed spent a single season as the pitching coach at Memphis after graduating from Tennessee and also enjoyed a brief tenure with the Chicago Bandits in the NPF league. Guthrie’s resume includes stints at Bucknell, Penn State, and Marion Military Institute. We profiled Guthrie in From Soldier to Coach earlier this year.
Glasco was installed as head coach on Monday and will look to lead the Ragin Cajuns into 2018 through the controversy surrounding Michael Lotief’s firing and the reasons therefor, as well as the school’s poor treatment of the players on the current roster in the aftermath of that same scandal.
