In a move that is sure to take the college softball world by storm, Auburn head coach Clint Myers announced his retirement tonight. Myers, who led Arizona State to two national championships before joining Auburn prior to the 2014 season, turned around the Tiger program in short order, leading the Tigers to back-to-back 55+-win seasons in 2015 and 2016 and advancing to the Women’s College World Series championship series in ’16. The Tigers won back-to-back SEC tournament championships in 2015 and 2016, the first-ever in the school’s history. In 2017, the Tigers failed to three-peat thanks to upstart eventual champion Ole…
Author: jmcleod
Tennessee legendary pitcher Monica Abbott will be one of eight ex-Vols to join the school’s Hall of Fame later this year. Abbott, an Olympic gold medal winner and the program’s most-heralded alum, was a four-time all-American during her time in the orange and white and was named the National Collegiate Player of the Year in 2007. The SEC’s Pitcher of the Year in three consecutive seasons from 2005-2007, Abbott also helped the Lady Vols reach the Women’s College World Series in each of the same years. When her career in Knoxville ended, Abbott held four NCAA career records, including the…
Arizona legendary head coach Mike Candrea has agreed to a five-year contract extension that will keep him in Tucson through 2022. Candrea has spent thirty-two seasons at the helm of the Wildcats, collecting more than 1,500 victories along the way. He boasts a .796 career winning percentage and is the all-time wins leader at the Division I level. A 12-time conference coach of the year, Candrea’s program’s accolades include eleven conference championships and ninety-nine all-American players, as well as five National Players of the Year. The head coach of the US national team in 2004 and 2008, Candrea led the…
Ole Miss and head coach Mike Smith have agreed to a contract extension that will keep the 2017 JWOS Coach of the Year in Oxford through 2021. The deal meets the state of Mississippi’s maximum with the four-year extension, and lets the Rebels hold on to the coach who led them to their first-ever SEC tournament championship, NCAA tournament national seed, and Super Regional berth, all of which happened during the 2017 season. Smith, who in 2018 will begin his fourth season in Oxford, engineered a remarkable turnaround for his squad, taking the program from a point of missing the…
Who is she? Shelby Babcock, a former pitcher for the Arizona Wildcats. What is she known for? Babcock was among the line of star hurlers to go through Tucson and was named to the conference’s all-Freshman team in 2011. Her finest season arguably came in 2012, when she put together a 21-10 record and 164 strikeouts in 197 innings of work. Here’s something interesting… Shelby played her high school ball at Legacy High School in Colorado. Her high school coach was Dawn Gaffin, the mother of former Tennessee star and current SEC Network analyst Rainey Gaffin. Quotable quote: “My favorite memory from my…
Jeff Cottrill will be the new Oklahoma State pitching coach, the school has announced. Cottrill replaces Charlotte Morgan on the Cowgirl staff and takes the helm of the program’s pitching staff that put together a 3.51 cumulative ERA in 2017. The position is “officially” Cottrill’s first as a collegiate assistant coach, though he did spend a month leading the Cowgirl pitching staff in 2016 when Morgan took a health-related leave of absence. He has served as the program’s Director of Operations in the two years since. The Cowgirls finished the 2017 season with a record of 38-25 and won two-thirds…
Former Ole Miss all-American Lauren Grill will be inducted into the school’s M-Club Alumni Hall of Fame later this fall. Grill, the only all-American in program history, is one of six former Rebel athletes who will be inducted in a ceremony in early September. A three-time all-SEC selection, Grill presently holds five Rebel program records, including in hits (223), RBI (143), and slugging percentage (.669), among other categories. Her 132 career walks also pace the Rebels record books. Named to the all-conference freshman team in her first season, Grill followed that distinction up with three consecutive all-conference nominations and two…
Jamie Pinkerton has been hired as the new head coach at Iowa State. The second head coaching hire in fourteen months for the Cyclones, Pinkerton succeeds Jamie Trachsel at the helm of the program after Trachsel accepted the head coaching position at Minnesota. Pinkerton had been head coach at Montana since 2013, building the program from scratch and leading the Grizzlies through three seasons of play. In 2017, Pinkerton’s squad won their first-ever Big Sky conference tournament and advanced to play in the NCAA tournament, an achievement that helped earn Pinkerton the conference’s Coach of the Year award. It was…
First-year Stanford head coach Jessica Allister has filled out her inaugural staff, bringing longtime assistant Jessica Merchant over from Minnesota and adding Cardinal alum Tori Nyberg. Merchant had been Allister’s top assistant at Minnesota for seven years and was a part of the Golden Gopher coaching staff that led the squad to a Big Ten championship and #1 national ranking during the 2017 season. A Michigan product and two-time all-American as a player, Merchant spent time as an assistant coach at UMass and her alma mater before moving to Minnesota. Nyberg, a former teammate of Allister’s at Stanford, moves to…
Former Stony Brook great Alyssa Struzenberg Breres will be inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame later this fall. Struzenberg, a three-time all-region selection, three times earned a nomination to the all-conference first-team. A member of the all-Northeast region second team in her sophomore season, Struzenberg was named to the all-Mid Atlantic region team in both her junior and senior campaigns. The America East Pitcher of the Year in 2008, Struzenberg set a program record with twenty-four wins that season and collected a 2.01 ERA with 244 strikeouts. She ended her career with a 2.11 career ERA and seventy-six career…