A car accident on Sunday in South Carolina tragically affected members of the softball community. Chad and Andrea Freeman, the parents of College of Charleston freshman pitcher Katie Freeman, were tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident in Summerville, South Carolina on Sunday. Chad’s mother, Meredith Freeman, also passed away in the accident. The trio were all traveling together and were involved in a two-car collision, according to local media reports. Meredith Freeman was 74, Chad Freeman was 49, and Andrea Freeman was 48. The Freemans leave behind three daughters. In a tweet on Tuesday, College of Charleston head coach…
Author: jmcleod
North Texas has signed head coach Rodney DeLong to a long-term extension, JWOS has confirmed. The new contract is set to run over a 5-year term, and will thus lock DeLong into Denton through the 2025 season. Sources confirmed to JWOS that DeLong garnered interest from multiple Power 5 programs with head coaching openings this summer, but ultimately chose to stay at North Texas. DeLong took over the Mean Green program prior to the 2019 season, and in his first year at the helm led the squad to a share of the Conference USA regular-season title and the #1 seed…
Courtney Schoolcraft is the kind of student-athlete that every coach wants to have on their team. Just ask her head coach, Sue Kunkle, at Southern Indiana: “Courtney is an amazing kid. The most high-spirited and wonderful person,” Kunkle said of her young backstop. Over the last several months, Schoolcraft has bravely fought a battle against cancer. During the summer of 2019, a ganglion cyst was removed from the top of Schoolcraft’s foot. Ganglion cysts are defined by the Mayo Clinic as typically round or oval lumps that most commonly develop around the tendons or joints of the wrists; hands; ankles;…
Over the last week or so, some big names have made headlines on the coaching carousel. A shake-up at Baylor; a former SEC and PAC-12 standout joining an ACC staff; and a couple of former coaches back in the game after some time away highlight this edition of the Assistant Coaching Carousel Update Annie Aldrete joins North Carolina as volunteer assistant Former Tennessee and Cal catcher Annie Aldrete has been named the volunteer assistant at North Carolina. Aldrete spent the first two years of her career at Tennessee, where she was named Co-National Fresman of the Year in 2014. She…
The Manatee Impact will return to the Florida Gulf Coast League for the 2021 summer season, the league announced on Wednesday afternoon. Savanah Webster has been named the team’s new head coach. Webster is currently an assistant coach at Winthrop, and will assume her FGCL duties simultaneously with that role. “I am extremely excited and humbled to be the head coach for the Manatee Impact,” Webster said in a statement. An assistant coach at Winthrop for the past two seasons, Webster previously spent three years on staff at Francis Marion, was a 2-time junior college All-American, and finished her career with…
Shay Knighten has been announced as the new assistant coach at San Diego. Knighten is the first staff addition for first-year head coach MJ Knighten, who also happens to be her sister. MJ was named the Toreros’ head coach earlier in the summer. During her playing career at Oklahoma, Shay Knighten became one of the game’s best-known names, helping lead the Sooners to back-to-back national championships in 2016 and 2017. During the 2017 title run, Shay Knighten posted a 12-game hitting streak that covered every game of the postseason. For her career in Norman, Shay Knighten batted .360 with 247…
Former South Carolina infielder Kim Schultze has passed away. She was 41. The Gamecocks program announced Schultze’s passing in a social media post on Tuesday. A 4-year letter-winner with the Gamecocks program, Schultze was part of the 1997 squad that reached the Women’s College World Series. She helped lead the Gamecocks to an SEC championship that same year, and an SEC tournament title in 2000, her senior year. Hall of Fame former Gamecocks coach Joyce Compton said, “Kim was a vital part of our team. She was well-liked by everyone. She was a fierce competitor on the field. Kim was who…
With the inaugural season of Athletes Unlimited now officially in the books, it’s time to look at the league’s performance through some different lenses. Here, we’ll look at the league’s viewership numbers during their ten games on non-premium television channels*. All thirty of the summer’s games were broadcast, with online streaming on ESPN3.com and the WatchESPN app as the primary avenue. CBS Sports Network also picked up a handful of games, while ESPNU and ESPN2 carried a combined ten games during the course of the 5-week season. On August 29th and 30th, the league’s opening weekend, four games in total…
Who is she? Chelsea Zgrabik, a former catcher and slugger for the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles. What is she known for? During her career as an Eagle, Zgrabik batted .333, with 42 career home runs and 153 RBIs. She committed just six field errors during her playing days, and posted a career on-base percentage of .422. A 2-time all-region honoree and 3-time all-conference standout, Zgrabik was named the ASun Co-Player of the Year in 2013. Here’s something interesting…Chelsea comes from an athletic family. Her dad and uncle were both drafted to NHL teams; Michael, her father, was drafted to the Maple…
When MJ Knighten was hired as the head coach at San Diego in late August, one of the key bullet points in her announcement was that, at 25, she would be the youngest active Division I head softball coach. That got us to thinking… by what margin does the former Nebraska Cornhusker now hold that distinction? In recent years, a number of schools and hiring committees have prioritized playing experience as a quality they sought in a head coach. Some programs went on the prowl for a young coach who, thanks to recent playing experience, could connect more easily with…