Wheeling Jesuit (D2) head coach Sara Pelegreen stopped by to visit with our crew in Oklahoma City. On her first trip to the WCWS, the third-year Cardinals coach chose the trip for her bachelorette celebration and spent some time with us to talk about the experience.
On experiencing the WCWS for the first time… “My friends and I are here for my bachelorette party, and I don’t think I’ve ever had cold chills in 80-degree weather before, but I walked in and immediately started tearing up. This has been a dream of mine for so long, to be able to come here. I have my friends here that I’ve been friends with for seventeen years, college friends, friends from every walk of life here experiencing this and it’s indescribable. I don’t have words for it; I just know I had chills in 80 degrees!”
On celebrating her bachelorette weekend at a softball field… “To be honest, my friends and I went to Nashville for another of my friends’ bachelorette party and I told my friends that I really didn’t want anything extravagant, really didn’t want to spend a lot of money… I got engaged and the next day, I was sitting on my porch with two of my friends and we were just like ‘What if we went to the World Series for the bachelorette party?’ and I was immediately like ‘Absolutely yes. Done. Let’s do it…’ It wasn’t originally intended like this, but it worked out and there’s no more perfect way for me to have a bachelorette party than to be at a softball field, because that’s who I am. This is definitely top-3 favorite moments in my life.”
On now playing her alma mater – West Virginia State – as a conference opponent… “I graduated six years ago, so is it weird… I would say that… yeah, it’s weird! The assistant coach who was there when I played there is still there, and we talk a lot. The head coach was my teammate, a year younger than me, so it’s always cool to get to go down to Charleston and get to spend time down there and play on our field. I always tell me Wheeling Jesuit team that ‘hey, we’ve got to go in and kick butt today. This is my alma mater, so we’ve got to give them a good game.’”
On her team in 2020… “Going into next year, there’s going to be a lot of rebuilding. I had my eyes opened up a lot this past season. We weren’t as successful as I had hoped, but I learned a lot about myself. A lot about the way that I want to build a program, the way I want to lead my team, and it comes down to commitment to the game. I think when we focus on commitment to the game from here on out, we’re going to build a program that we want to build. My goal in life – and I know I’m only three years in – but I want to build a good D2 program. Whatever I’ve got to do to get there, I’m going to take those steps, and going from year three to year four, commitment to the game and making everybody on the team a better person than when they came to Wheeling Jesuit.”
On the quick progression of her coaching career… “When I first took my GA job at Wheeling Jesuit, I had no intentions of coaching. I just wanted to be around softball for a little bit longer, and that was just my way to do it, to be a GA, and then I went to my first convention and my eyes were opened up as to how much love and passion I still had for the game, and that was what really kick-started me into wanting to coach. Then I thought ‘yeah, I’ll go and be a head coach one day,’ but I thought I’d go and learn as an assistant at a few places first. But when the opportunity came for me to apply [for the WJU head coaching position], I just said to myself, there was no one who was going to love this program any more than I did, and while somebody else might have more experience than I did, what they didn’t have that I did was the love and admiration for the girls that we had on our team that year… what I really hope everyone that leaves our program knows is that I love them through their bad at-bats and in the awesome moments, as well.”
