With the Griz starting softball from the ground up, I would imagine that their recruiting efforts would be focused primarily in Montana. For those of us who've been away for awhile, can anyone comment on the status of softball in Montana?
EverettGriz said:With the Griz starting softball from the ground up, I would imagine that their recruiting efforts would be focused primarily in Montana. For those of us who've been away for awhile, can anyone comment on the status of softball in Montana?
logchain20 said:Saw on Fox Montana that the 3 Finalist will be announced sometime this week. Looking forward to seeing who the candidates are.
the program should be competitive in the Big Sky right out of the gate by using a good combination of JC transfers, local incoming freshman and a few really good players from out of state.
wbtfg said:I don't know anything about the state of girls softball in the state of Montana....how many girls from the state generally go on to play d-I softball every year?
“This makes it real. Softball is coming to Montana.”
The sweeping declaration, courtesy of senior associate athletic director Jean Gee, accompanied the hire of Jamie Pinkerton as the first head softball coach in Montana history this week.
Pinkerton, most recently an assistant coach at Iowa State but a former head man at both Tulsa and Arkansas, accepted the job Monday. He will lead the Grizzlies in their inaugural season in spring 2015, almost four years after the UM Board of Regents approved the addition of softball to maintain compliance with Title IX gender-equity metrics.
Pinkerton – along with the two other finalists, Tom Gray of Oklahoma State and Mike Smith of McNeese State – appeared in Missoula last week for final lengthy interviews with athletic department officials and public forums. Pinkerton said he could already feel an overwhelming excitement as he left town last Thursday.
Things had gone very well.
“It was a very positive trip and experience,” said Pinkerton, who met with student athletes and community members during his brief 36-hour stay. “In my career, I’ve done several of these and I was very impressed, very excited when I flew back home.”
Though home for he, his wife and middle-school aged son will soon be more than 1,000 miles to the northwest, the excitement is sure to remain constant. Pinkerton will set up camp in Missoula within a few weeks and begin the process of building a Division I program where none has ever existed.
“To start a program and be able to build it (is exciting),” the Arkansas native said. “Everything: buy the first bats, the uniforms, the balls; be there to see the first pitch thrown in Montana softball history. It’s very intriguing. That was the draw, to be there for it all.”
* * * * *
Softball will become the 15th sport at UM – the ninth women’s sport – and the first addition since the last time the school made a Title IX compliance move in 1994. Women’s soccer took the field for the first time that fall.
Pinkerton’s collegiate coaching résumé is riddled with rebuilding projects – part of the reason he seemed to fit so well at Montana, Gee said. When he took over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane in 2001, his first head job, the team had not posted a winning season in its nearly decade-long history. That streak continued in Year 1 of the Pinkerton regime, a 13-42 campaign, but the program bounced back with fury in 2002 with a 48-16 record.
The 30.5-game turnaround between seasons has not been topped by an NCAA program since and ranks second in NCAA softball history.
“That was huge. Obviously as a search committee, one of the things we were looking for was candidates that had built a program or turned a program around,” said Gee, the department’s senior women’s administrator and a member of the committee dispatched to find Montana softball’s first coach.
In 2005, Arkansas hired Pinkerton away from Tulsa, and he led the Razorbacks to back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances in 2008 and 2009 – the first such occurrence in program history.
After an amicable split following that second tourney season, Pinkerton – also a USA Softball national team coach – signed on as an assistant at Iowa State. The infield and hitting coach had served in that position ever since, adding recruiting coordinator duties the last two seasons.
Pinkerton’s history of ship-righting stories helped him rise above the nearly 100 other applicants at Montana. What set him apart from his fellow finalists, though, was far less measurable.
“When they get to that level, they’ve shown that they have the experience and have the proven success record,” Gee said. “But once you get them on the campus, you need to be able to see how they can interact with our student athletes.
“He was so personable. He made everyone feel so comfortable around him.”
Under Pinkerton, Iowa State chased records at the plate. The Cyclones’ .288 team batting average in 2013 set a program record, as did their 40 home runs. The 284 runs scored broke the previous team high and the 253 RBIs were another program best.
* * * * *
During the next few months, Pinkerton will begin trying to fill Montana’s new uniforms with talent that will try to re-create that success. The Grizzlies’ first game is still a year and a half away, but the program needs a roster long before then.
“For sure he almost immediately needs to hit the recruiting trail,” Gee said. “They start having high school (club) softball tournaments in early September. We’ve got to get him outfitted with some Griz gear, get him to those tournaments and get him seen.”
A coach’s duty, by the simplest definition, is to coach, but Pinkerton said he’s looking forward to the wave of challenges he’ll face long before he gets the opportunity to do what his title implies.
“From a coach’s standpoint, this will be the first time in 20 years that I won’t have competition in the fall and I won’t have games in the spring,” he said. “There’s a lot of planning to do and that’ll be fun. Even though there’s not games being played, there’s going to be plenty of fun challenges.
“When you usually make over a program, you inherit a team,” he continued. “The coaching philosophies, the style of play might not fit as well with the players. What makes this unique is you get to mold the program, you get to build the program.
“It’s going to take time. The baby doesn’t walk the minute it’s born. I realize that, but I think that’s going to be the fun part, watching the baby grow.”
The baby may not be here yet, but with Pinkerton’s hire this week, Montana has already started arranging the nursery.
I don't have a number either, I would guess 1 - 2 on average per year, with another 2 - 3 that could play that go DII to stay closer to home or because of lack of visibility to D-I coaches from playing in Montana.wbtfg said:I don't know anything about the state of girls softball in the state of Montana....how many girls from the state generally go on to play d-I softball every year?
wbtfg said:Also, im curious how scholarships work. is it just a pool of money that they can give you out however they want or are all athletes on some sort of partial or full ride?
PeauxRouge said:My only question in his story was his amicable split with Arkansas on the heels of a tournament season. That seemed to be glossed over. I would think that UM covered their asses there but I would like a bit more detail.