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 Miss and were eliminated in the Super Regional round by the national champion Oklahoma Sooners.
Under Myers’ watch, the Tigers blossomed from the SEC’s cellar to the league’s elite and saw four players advance to the National Pro Fastpitch league, an increase of 400% of the Tigers’ previous number of representative players in the league.
Prior to Auburn, Myers recorded more than 420 victories as head coach at Arizona State, a number that included the afore-mentioned pair of national titles.
In recent times, however, the Tigers have been marked more for off-the-field happenings than their on-field success. Then-senior infielder Haley Fagan’s much-publicized incident with Florida head coach Tim Walton surrounded the program with controversy during the conference season, while Fagan’s arrest on April 20th, along with pitcher Makayla Martin and another player, for drug possession brought even more scrutinizing eyes.
Undoubtedly, the biggest off-field story from the Plains, though, involved the resignation of associate head coach and Myers’ son Corey amidst rumors of inappropriate conduct with a player or players.
Not even two months ago, Clint Myers came to terms on a contract extension that would have taken him through the 2023 season as head coach. It followed a 2015 extension that had him under contract through 2020 at that time. Sources told JWOS, however, that the contract extension never went into effect as it was never approved by the board of trustees.
Image from Myers’ 2015 National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame Induction.
