Saturday night marked the debut of This Is Us, the team made up of former Scrap Yard Dawgs players. Following Monday night’s controversy, the players walked out on their former organization, and within just a few days’ time, the group of athletes had rebranded themselves into a unit known simply as This Is Us. When they took the field against the USSSA Pride on Saturday night, This Is Us players sported new jerseys. Reflecting their new team branding on the front, the backs of the jerseys gained significant attention for one particular reason: Each of the players’ nameplates displayed the…
Author: jmcleod
Kathy Riley has retired as the head coach at Longwood, the school announced on Friday morning. Riley spent twenty-three seasons as the Lancers’ head coach, collecting more than 700 career wins during her tenure leading the program. The Longwood softball program never finished a season with a record below .500 under her guidance, and reached the NCAA tournament five times in the last decade. Shepherding the program through the reclassification process from Division II to Division I in the mid-2000s, Riley was named the Division I Independent Coach of the Year in 2005. She owns three Big South Coach of…
Megan Bartlett will be named the new assistant coach at Texas, sources confirmed to JWOS. Bartlett will join the Longhorns program after spending the last five seasons as the head coach at Ball State. From 2017-19, she led the team past the 30-win plateau in three consecutive seasons, and the Cardinals earned the MAC West Division title in 2018. During her tenure in Muncie, four Ball State players earned all-Region honors, including Stacy Payton during the 2019 season. At the end of the abbreviated 2020 season, the Cardinals were 18-9 on the year. Prior to her tenure at Ball State,…
You might say that Furman head coach Wally King went the extra mile for his softball senior class on Memorial Day weekend. The extra 2,200 miles, to be more specific. That’s roughly the distance that the Paladin skipper drove, simply to be able to present his program’s seniors with their parting gifts, with each stop granting a final face-to-face interaction between the head coach and one of his graduating roster members. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, King had a meeting with his seniors. The group of five young women predated even King’s tenure with the program, and had certainly been a…
June 25th marks two years since the passing of Alex Wilcox. While an innumerable amount of people have left a legacy on the sport of softball since the game’s invention, few did so as quickly and as vibrantly as Wilcox. Wilcox passed away in 2018, just days shy of her 19th birthday. She put up an incredibly brave fight against ovarian cancer, even working with her team in the fall of 2017 despite going through radiation treatments at the same time. Wilcox’s courage, even as a teenager, was and is utterly awe-inspiring. Alex Wilcox played in eight games for Mississippi…
During the collegiate season, Michaela Transue serves as the volunteer assistant coach at Missouri; she works with the Tigers’ outfielders and coaches first base. Transue graduated from Hofstra in 2018 after a four-year playing career with the Pride, and followed her head coach, Larissa Anderson, to Mizzou, where she initially served as a graduate assistant before being promoted to the volunteer assistant’s role for the 2020 campaign. This summer, Transue is one of seven individuals serving as head coaches for the inaugural softball season of the Florida Gulf Coast League. Transue, along with assistant coach Camille Morgan, leads the Myakka…
Utah has hired DJ Gasso the program’s new assistant coach, the school announced on Wednesday. Gasso takes the position vacated by program legend Hannah Flippen. Gasso spent the last two seasons as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma, serving on staff with his mother, Oklahoma head coach Patty Gasso, and brother, OU hitting coach JT Gasso. In a school statement, Utah head coach Amy Hogue said, “I am not going to lie, replacing Hannah and hiring a new assistant coach has not been a lot of fun. This is a very important position on our staff so we really did our…
Arizona State is set to name Jimmy Kolaitis as the Sun Devils’ new assistant coach, sources confirmed to JWOS on Wednesday. Kolaitis spent the last two years as the head coach at UAB, collecting thirty-four wins during his tenure. He led the Blazers’ offense to a .290 batting average in his first season in Birmingham, a mark nearly 30 points higher than the previous season. The Blazers sported a 15-11 overall record when the 2020 season abruptly ended. Prior to taking the helm at UAB, Kolaitis spent five years as the hitting coach at Oregon, and was part of the…
Monday night marked the first game of the USSSA Pride and Scrap Yard Dawgs’ summer series of matchups. It also likely marked the last of the teams’ partnership. During the game, Scrap Yard Dawgs general manager Connie May posted a tweet on the Scrap Yard Dawgs’ team Twitter account. Alongside a photograph of the members of Scrap Yard’s roster that was taken during the national anthem, the tweet read, “Hey @realdonaldtrump Pro Fastpitch being played live @usssaspacecoast @USSSAPride Everyone respecting the FLAG!” In 2016, then-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem, an action that inspired a number of…
Riley Hecklinski, an alumnus of the Indiana State softball program, has been hired as a scout by the Cleveland Browns of the NFL. According to various media reports over the weekend, Hecklinski is joining the Browns’ scouting department on a full-time basis. Hecklinski is one of two females newly hired to scout for the team, and the only full-time scout, according to Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com. Hecklinski comes a family stepped in football tradition; her great-grandfather, Russ Deal, is a member of the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame, while her grandfather, Mike Deal, was on the Hoosiers’ 1967…