Considering the Saturday experience that my wife and I had with the softball team, my response to this topic is probably going to be exactly what one would expect. I would be a pretty ungrateful person to blast Scot and his staff after our Saturday experience and I simply would never do so. I will say, however, that what I witnessed up close Saturday confirmed my prior feelings about this staff – in a good way.

One HUGE disclaimer – I have ZERO softball coaching experience and will not try to weigh in on the softball coaching techniques items brought up by BowlingHokie. He and others on this board are way more qualified to address those issues than yours truly. I am simply a fan who bleeds burnt orange and Chicago maroon. Yes, there are sometimes in game decisions that leave me scratching my head, but I don’t know that there has ever been a coach in any sport where that doesn’t occasionally happen. If one makes a decision “by the book,” then they’re “too predictable;” if they go “against the book,” then “they don’t have a clue.” As a fan, I’ve said those exact things many times myself, especially after a loss.

I do, however, have over 35 years in the business world as a Human Resources professional. On the surface, I would think that coaching a sport is somewhat similar to coaching workers to their best possible performance. A big part of that task is creating a positive “work” environment. I absolutely, positively saw that in action on Saturday and will share just a few first-hand observations as food for thought.

Scot and his staff seemed to have a great relationship with the team and they had a really positive approach with each of the players. One could tell that Senior Day was very important to this staff. For example, Scot told me before the game that he “had” to find a way to get Kiara Ota into the game because it was Senior Day. He did just that in the third inning and she delivered.

Justin Miller serves as the hitting coach and he coordinated batting practice, which included video review of each girl’s performance the night before against Virginia. He seemed extremely detailed orientated and spoke to each one of them about how the UVA had pitched them the day before and what to expect on Saturday. A side note - last year’s team set a school record for homeruns under his coaching. I know nothing about “front of the box” versus “back of the box,” but I know they were crushing the ball in batting practice and thankfully that carried over to the game.

Angela handles the pitching, of course, and was also very detailed in her approach, charting every pitch (as you would expect) and meeting with each hurler after each inning about what she observed. The three coaches had a great rapport with each other and were truly working as a team. Certainly, Kelly Heinz leaving the team early really hurt us in pitching depth, but Scot sounded very positive about the players that were coming in during the next two years. Hopefully those classes will get us back to a full deck and to the top of the ACC.

Of course, the coaching business is certainly performance based. To that, I would simply point out that Scot has won almost 800 games at VT (779 to be exact) and has gotten us to the big dance 8 times. I don’t pretend to know how much each player develops while at VT, but if I had witnessed Saturday’s people interactions in a business environment; I would feel pretty good about the overall operation of that particular unit. Of course, it’s always easy to be positive when things are going good – and Saturday was REALLY, REALLY good.

It also should be noted that softball recruiting will be helped by the indoor facility that should be started soon. That should give us a huge recruiting boost and help us battle the Blacksburg weather that we all love.

While this year’s team may be having a disappointing year by Hokie standards, we are very, very young and I do think the future is bright. Could we be better? Possibly, but we could be worse as well. History shows we have had a pretty good run in softball over the years and I think we have good years ahead of us.

As several others have accurately pointed out, we have way more critical issues with baseball and woman’s lacrosse and that’s where I personally want Whit to be focusing. Let’s get those on the right track first and see where we end up.

GO HOKIES!!!!