During the spring softball season, Lindsay Fico serves as the head coach at Santa Fe College, a community college in Gainesville, Florida. In her first season leading the program in 2019, Fico’s squad nearly doubled their conference win total from the season prior. A former travel ball and private coach, Fico’s name is familiar to softball fans in Gainesville, as she is an alumnus of the Florida Gator program.
Then Lindsay Norfleet, she played in more than 200 games during her playing career at UF. An NFCA Scholar Athlete in each year of her career, Fico was a middle infielder who also spent some time in the outfield and on the base paths for the Gators. She was an SEC Freshman Honor Roll member in 2003, and was elected as a co-captain of the Gators’ squad as a senior in 2006.
Fico is currently serving as the head coach of the Bradenton Lynx in the inaugural season of the Florida Gulf Coast League. She recently sat down with JWOS to talk about her own introduction to the new league, her coaching philosophies, and more.
Justin’s World of Softball: How did you first hear about the FGCL, and what made you decide to coach in the league?
Lindsay Fico: I have a friend, Jason Nowling, who is president of the Inferno travel ball organization. And Ryan Moore, the director of the [FGCL], reached out to Jason and asked if he knew any current college coaches who would be interested in being part of this; Jason gave him my contact info, I had a conversation with Ryan, and it went from there.
JWOS: You’re the head coach at Santa Fe now, and your assistant in the FGCL is also your assistant at Santa Fe, right?
Fico: She is! I brought her with me. You know, when you find someone that you like, that knows you and knows how to read you and how to handle you, it’s hard to leave that person behind. After I heard the details of the league, I told her ‘this is something that you want to be a part of’ because this could be huge, and I think it will be.
JWOS: Now, obviously, the initial plan was to play your college season and then you’d join the FGCL, but obviously that didn’t happen. Did the extra “off” time affect your preparation and planning coming into the FGCL?
Fico: Really, the answer is yes and no. I still came into this with the mindset that, when it comes to my team and their experience this season, I want them to get out of this league what they wanted to. Because it is in the summer, it’s naturally going to be a bit more laid-back. Of course, everybody wants to win, and whenever you’re dealing with college athletes of this caliber, they’re used to excellence and being great, but everybody was honestly just excited to get back on the field. When it came to preparation, though, our biggest thing was that I wanted to be sure that my assistant and I were doing whatever we needed to to prepare these girls to have a positive first experience with this league.
JWOS: That leads into a question that I wanted to get your thoughts on, too; what’s your approach this summer as you coach these players? When you’re at Santa Fe and somebody needs a tweak, you’re going to go in and tweak that. Tell me about your approach to working with players who are yours for six weeks, and then go back to being someone else’s players.
Fico: We went in prepared with a questionnaire that asked the girls something like 6-8 questions. We asked what they like to do defensively, how many times a week they wanted to hit outside of games, that kind of thing. We wanted to get to know them as players before we start chanting ‘this is what we’re going to do’ and all of that. We’ve tried to consistently tell them that we want to help if they want to be helped, if there’s something specific that they’re working on for next year in college or anything like that… it’s definitely more of a managing thing than a coaching thing this summer. It’s been more of learning what they need as players and whether they want feedback in early hitting sessions, or right then and there in a game. When you’ve done this as long as I’ve done it and been around the game as long as I have, you learn what players want to hear it and what players don’t; what players need a pat on the back and who needs a stern talking to. We have been blessed, though, in that I think we have one of the best all-around personalities from a team standpoint.
JWOS: How similar or different is it for you to be a head coach in this league, when compared to your “day job” at Santa Fe?
Fico: There are definitely similarities on the field, because I’m not going to change the way that I coach just because I’m in a summer league. It’s definitely more laid back, though. I’m more focused on if these girls are getting what they need to get out of this league to be prepared for their college seasons than I am on whatever my record is… If these girls are meshing well together, then the record doesn’t really matter to me. I think we’re still learning each other, and I think we will peak when it matters to peak. I told them on day one, I’m not going to change just because I’m wearing these colors and coaching in the FGCL; I’m going to approach it the same way that we approach it at Santa Fe. But I’m also not here to run bootcamp and make them miserable.
JWOS: From your perspective, why is a league like this important to the game of softball?
Fico: It gives young female athletes the ability to play this game as long as they possibly can for the amount of time that they can. Nothing like this has really existed unless you’re representing your country, really, and that’s just a very select group of extremely talented athletes that do that. The fact that college softball has gotten as big as it’s gotten, on every ESPN channel when the season is going on… this just gives young girls another thing to look forward to when they’re 10, 11, 12; there’s something beyond just representing your school. We’ve got some girls in the league who will be seniors next year. And there’s no travel ball league that is open to that many players of that age to play in their offseason. So many of these girls are just playing because they love it. They’re not playing because of their scholarship or because they’re stroking their ego; they play because they absolutely love it and they want to play as often and for as long as they can.
