WHEN LOYALTY GOES UNREWARDED

After years of service in FAU’s softball team, FAU’s Athletics did not choose Chan Walker as head coach after Joan Joyce’s death.

Cameron Priester | Sports Editor

Chan Walker was a shoe-in. She spent 23 years through multiple championships with Florida Atlantic University’s softball program, two as a player and 21 as an assistant coach. She led the team through an unthinkable tragedy less than a year ago, and was the protege, daughter in a sense, of the program’s architect.

When the job of head coach became available following last season, many around the program thought there wasn’t any question who would lead the program moving forward.

However, the university didn’t offer Walker the job. In fact, she wasn’t offered to return to the program in any role and she has now been reduced to her current position as assistant director of student affairs.

“I felt like I earned that opportunity,” Walker said through tears.

Walker began her career in 1993 playing softball at Spartanburg Methodist College in Saxon, S.C. Donning the number 18, in honor of former New York Mets outfielder Darryl Strawberry, she played center field for two seasons at Spartanburg, while also playing volleyball.

During her second season at Spartanburg, 10 hours south of Saxon, FAU was in the process of building their own softball program. To do so, they recruited the help of one of the sport’s most recognizable names.

Before even arriving in Boca Raton, Joan Joyce was a softball pioneer. As a multi-sport success, Joyce began a 19-season career in the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) in 1954, during which she also played two seasons of basketball for the United States women’s national team. With the help of tennis-star Billie Jean King, Joyce helped found the Women’s Professional Softball League, in which she co-owned, and played for, a team herself.

Joyce also had a very notable professional volleyball career, and at age 35, while still playing softball, she took up golfing—and went on to play on the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour for 19 years.

Her professional golf career ended, however, in 1995 when Joyce signed on to become FAU’s first head softball coach, and essentially, build the program from scratch.

Nine months before the Owls took the field for the first time Joyce began laying the groundwork for the program. Part of that process was recruiting Walker.

With Joyce at the helm and Walker in the outfield, FAU almost immediately found success. They finished with an overall record of 33-18 in their inaugural season in 1995, qualifying them for the Atlantic Sun Conference (A-Sun) Tournament—which they did again the following year.

It was during Walker’s second year at FAU in 1996, when her mother and grandmother passed away; and in the wake of that, Joyce took her in under her own roof for more than 25 years, until her death.