From Competing to Coaching

Written by Rose Harrelson

For this article I got the amazing opportunity to interview Blaire Luna, Kaitlyn Washington, and Carrie Simpson. Kaitlyn Washington played softball for UT and tied the doubles record when she played. Blaire Luna also played for UT as a pitcher, and she has the 9th best strikeout ratio of all time. After College she got to play NCAA Pride professionally, and she got to play internationally. Carrie Simpson played for Capella University, was a coach, and now gives pitching lessons.

Being on a softball team isn’t all about playing for yourself, a good team has a sense of community, and that’s exactly what the UT team has. We talked to Kaitlyn and Blaire about their experiences at UT. “We would hang out together, go out together, so we weren’t just teammates. We were also friends off of the fields’’ says Blaire. To succeed a team needs to like each other and they need to get together, that’s what makes a team perform.

Loving the people you play with is just a part of the game, and it’s one of the things that makes UT’s softball team so special. “I think my favorite part was probably my teammates. When I say I miss it now, what I miss most is having that comradery and having teammates, and going through everything with them” says Kaitlyn. Knowing your teammates have your back is what compels people to play better, because you aren’t just playing for yourself, you’re playing for the people around you.

The coaching staff is everything. A coach can make or break a team, but that isn’t a worry at UT. They have an amazing coaching staff loved by the players. “I loved her, you know, she kind of started the program” says Kaitlyn referring to former coach Connie Clark. A love for the coach can elevate your playing so much and make excelling for the team feel so much better. “[The coaches] did a really good job of having open communication with us, and I think what I liked most about them was I had good relationships with all of them” says Blaire. Having that connection with your coaches is so important, and UT nails that.

Softball can become your whole life, and the time after college can be a hard time for a lot of “I remember when COVID hit, that was my senior year, and that made me realize ‘damn it’s gonna be all over in a second and you don’t even expect it’” says Kaitlyn. Being a college athlete means training every single day and usually means you’ve been playing for over a decade, so having to let that go after college can feel like a huge loss. “I definitely missed softball and competing,” says Kaitlyn Washington.

A lot of players choose to coach after college to keep the game in their lives. “I wanted to find a way to stay in it, and I wasn’t going to keep playing, so that was the other path to staying involved in the sport,” says softball coach Carrie Simpson. Kaitlyn and Blaire felt the same way, and they both became coaches as well.

Kaitlyn actually got an offer to be a coach by a different former UT player, Nadia Taylor. “Nadia actually called me when she found out she was gonna leave for Michigan State and she said ‘hey I trust you to take over’, so for me there was no doubt in my mind that I wasn’t gonna do it” she says. The UT team being so interconnected and such a community is what gave Kaitlyn this opportunity.

Having a supportive coach is so important in a team’s success. Knowing that your coach has your back is what makes a player want to play well and care about the outcome of their plays. “I get really excited. So I think probably some of my ridiculousness in celebrations is a little motivating because it’s really funny to watch a 40 year old woman jump around and scream and clap and holler” says Carrie. It sounds silly but it works, because seeing how excited your coach gets for you drives you to keep getting better. One of the main reasons people become coaches is because they can find joy in other’s success. Coaches hold onto the memories of their team playing well even when they aren’t the ones playing.

Coach Carrie’s favorite coaching memory was from a high school team she coached.

“When I took over that team, they had gone one and 28, the year before I got there. The first year I was head coaching. We were playing a team that was ranked like 11th in the state. And we beat them. And it was like we had won the World Series. I mean, no one could believe what happened. The people in the stands were going absolutely nuts. The girls were crying like it was just a remarkable execution. They did absolutely everything through the entire game. That was the game that got me the award of coach of the year. So probably that would be my favorite coaching moment,” says Coach Carrie.

Finding success in other’s achievements is what makes coaches love to coach and players love to play. “I think my favorite part of being a coach is when the things that me and the player are working through finally clicks for them, and they have success on the field” says Kaitlyn. Blaire likes giving lessons because she likes being a part of the developmental process for pitchers. “I just really enjoy building relationships with younger pitchers, and helping them develop and being a part of that development, sharing my knowledge, watching them grow, accomplish their goals, get scholarships and all of that. It’s really cool to kind of be a part of that process.” she says. Blaire being such an incredible pitcher with the 12th most strikeouts in the nation and having the 9th best strikeout ratio, she’s obviously very knowledgeable in pitching and gives very helpful lessons helping a lot of young pitchers. Her advice to pitchers is that, “pitching is very much of a process. It’s not going to be an overnight phenomenon. It’s going to take work, it’s going to take growth, and to just you know, be patient with yourself, but ----- don’t give up”.

Blaire also got the unique opportunity to play major league softball before the league got shut down. There were only four teams in the whole league that played each other. “We didn’t always get the following I feel like we deserved, so sometimes it was hard because you’d have more people in the dugout than you would in the stands, but you know, it kind of makes you find the love of the game again” said Blaire.

After playing for USSSA Pride, she went on to play in New Zealand and Italy. “I would say that overseas was definitely my favorite, just because I got to learn different cultures and different people, and I met people that I never thought I would meet,” said Blaire.

Here is a picture of Blaire Luna pitching for the UT softball team