Coaching is a gift. For many coaches, it takes years to develop the skills and strategies necessary to become head coach, or at least a truly effective head coach, and they should always be learning and adapting to the situations that they’re in.
Many coaches spend a few years as a grad assistant or assistant coach before moving onto a head coaching position. Sydney Sturner, Union University softball’s interim head coach, spent only one season as the team’s assistant coach before stepping into the head coaching role.
The softball team’s previous head coach, Mackenzie Sher, announced that she was leaving in June 2022. With the athletic department already searching for new head coaches for a couple of other programs, Sturner was given the option to become the interim head coach. She and her husband David talked through the decision and prayed about it before she made her final choice.
“I put a lot of thought and prayer into it, but ultimately, in the end, I was not able to think about not taking the head coaching role,” Sturner said.
Sturner didn’t have long to prepare for her new role, but she has taken all of the experience she has had so far to give the team a fresh start, one full of positivity and joy. This does not go unnoticed, especially for seniors like me and Idalia Alarcon, who are thankful that a familiar face is at the helm of the program in our final year.
“For me, it wasn’t trying to earn somebody’s trust into my last season here at Union,” Alarcon said. “It was a lot easier, I just felt like, for the team and for her to step in.”
Sturner has brought a simplicity to the game and what she expects from us. She doesn’t hang a bunch of consequences over our heads when we do something wrong but instead gives grace. One might think that would cause us to be lazy and take advantage of her, but it hasn’t. In fact, from what I’ve seen, in practice, we have performed as good as, if not better than, we did in my last three years.
In addition to working with us on softball skills, Sturner also sets aside time two days per week for weightlifting and one day per week for conditioning.
Fieldhouse Wednesdays are the toughest day of the week. Our strength and conditioning coach Jonny Wilson has us go through numerous sprint drills, a workout circuit, and endurance training.
During the first Fieldhouse Wednesday of the fall, we made it through the sprint drills. My body was tired but still functioning. If you had asked me to do this in high school, I would have told you that you were crazy.
Then came the workout circuit composed of burpees, sled pushes, sandbag deadlifts, wall balls and running around the fieldhouse. I was part of the injured group because of my shoulder. Each of us had varying limitations. My partner couldn’t push the sled in her turn since she was recovering from Tommy John surgery, so Coach Syd stepped in.
“If y’all are grinding, I want to be in the thick of it with you because we’re going to be in the thick of season together,” Sturner said. “Yes, y’all are on the field and it’s you twenty. But it’s me twenty-one and coach Ritchhart twenty-two. It’s all of us as this one unit.”
In the past, I don’t think I would’ve ever expected one of my coaches, let alone my head coach, to assist me with the workout, but she did. And she did it willingly and with grace. She gave it her all just like she expected all of us to do. I think that’s something that defines great leaders, being willing to do whatever it is they’re asking their followers to do and going as hard as they’re asking them to go.
In the few months that Sturner has led us, she has gained much respect and love from us through the balance she has been able to create. We are able to joke with her and have fun, but at the same time, we are able to learn from her and her experience and buy into what she is trying to do with this program.
“I look up to her,” Alarcon said. “She’s consistent in pretty much every aspect of her life, with her relationship with God. It pushes me to be more like her every day. She always has a smile on her face. She’s always having something positive to say about us. She’s the ideal.”
It’s interesting that every coach that I’ve had in my life has been different but that each has been what I needed in that moment. This is especially true since I’ve been at Union. Coach Mack was very involved in my life and helped me with technical stuff in softball and with struggles I was having off the field. However, change always seems to be waiting right around the corner, and by the end of my junior season, it had come.
In his Providence, God put Coach Syd in place in my junior year. I was able to form a relationship with her so that nothing was completely unknown entering senior season. She preaches having fun and playing free. That’s what I want in my final year. I want to play the game that I have always loved with the same free spirit that I had when I was younger, enjoying every moment and not agonizing over every single at bat. It’s a great feeling when you have a coach that looks at more than just what you can do on the field.
“I want the best for y’all,” Sturner said. “That’s you as young women, and the vessel of softball is going to allow me to help you grow in who you are made to be. It’s so much bigger than softball to me.”
