The list of softball coaches with multiple National Championships on their resume is already a short one. Even smaller is the number of coaches that won a ring during both their playing and coaching careers. St. Mary’s head coach Donna Fields is among this rare breed of program leaders, and she is one of three coaches selected for induction in the National Fastpitch Coaches Association’s Class of 2020.
Sporting 938 career wins in her career, Fields enters 2020 in her 23rd season at the helm of the Rattlers’ program. Her victories total ranks eighth among active Division II coaches, and her squad owns eighteen conference championships and fifteen NCAA regional appearances.
Already a member of the St. Mary’s Hall of Fame for more than three decades following her 1988 induction, Fields recounted how she was made aware of her election to the NFCA Hall of Fame: “I was actually in College Station, where my daughter plays volleyball for Texas A&M, and they had just beaten Rice University in order to go onto the Sweet Sixteen, and I received a text from a former coach at St. Mary’s that said, ‘Congratulations’, and I just said, ‘For what?’ And she told me that I was going to be inducted in the class of 2020, and I’m thankful and blessed, but I really wanted it to be my daughter’s day… [the election]was very surprising for me.”
Humble as ever, even with time to process her forthcoming induction without encroaching on her daughter’s accomplishment, Fields hesitated to dwell on her own successes, instead choosing to laud her peers that are some of the game’s greatest coaches.
“When you have a moment to sit and reflect, you think about the number of coaches that have gone before and who I will stand next to in this Hall of Fame, and it’s just phenomenal,” Fields said. “People that I’ve looked up to throughout my career, that I’ve gone to the NFCA [Convention] and listened to their knowledge and what they’ve shared with all of us coaches… I’ve always felt like a student of the game instead of someone in front of the crowd, so to be recognized by my peers is definitely an honor and something that I’ll absolutely cherish.”
“You know, I remember a year, probably my first or second year of going to the NFCA [Convention], and they talked about Margie Wright and she had just reached her 1,000th win,” Fields added. “And I remember thinking, ‘I’ll be lucky if I reach 100 wins.’ And to think where my career has gone and where I am today… it is kind of hard to grasp. You just kind of live life and do it to the best of your ability, and it brought me to this point in my career and I’m very blessed.”
During her playing career at St. Mary’s – during which time she played basketball and volleyball, as well as softball – Fields earned All-American honors as an outfielder in 1987, and a year earlier helped lead the Rattlers to the NAIA National Championship on the diamond. After a decade as a high school teacher and coach, Fields returned to lead St. Mary’s, beginning with the 1998 season.
“”I’ve never been anywhere else [at the collegiate level],” Fields mused. “So I don’t know what that feeling is like, to be at another school, but I know that when I came back to St. Mary’s, the passion was just innate. As athletes, we had that passion to be the best that we could be, and then when you become the coach at *your* school, that passion is just that much greater… you want your team to succeed, and to continue to be what it was when you were a player, and I think that really helped and drove me. The alumni base that we have, it’s been wonderful; my old teammates have been my biggest supporters through the years. And I think that’s what has made twenty-two years not necessarily a job, but something that I can enjoy as I come to work every day.”
Fields’ inaugural – and, as yet, only – national title as a head coach came in 2002, when her Rattlers emerged as champions of both the Heartland Conference and South Central Region, boasting a 58-11 record en route to being crowned national champions. Making that achievement even more impressive, in addition, is that the Rattlers had only joined the Division II ranks two years prior.
Asked to describe her coaching style, Fields took some time to ponder before arriving at her response. “I guess the easiest way to explain it is that I was a multi-sport athlete,” she said. “And so I developed under many different coaches from the elementary level all the way up through college, and every single one of those coaches had an impact on me and my life. And I think that the way I coach my athletes is the way that I would like to have been coached and how I’d like to have been treated.”
Noting times during her early career when family work schedules meant she needed help picking up her children from activities and leaning on her firefighter husband, Andrew, for support on many different occasions, Fields again showcased her humility, saying, “This award, while I know that I’m the one receiving it, would never have happened without a lot of people that, if they weren’t there to help me, a lot of things would never have gotten done, and I can’t thank them enough for that. This is definitely not something that I can say ‘I did this on my own’, because I didn’t.”
