Coach Earl has been a varsity softball coach at Saint Joe for 15 years. Last year the softball team advanced to state after going undefeated in the sectional, regional, and semi-state rounds. After a 9-inning state game in the pouring rain, the lady Indians were able to take home the trophy. I caught up with Coach Earl to see what his plans were for the upcoming 2023 season.

How are you preparing for the upcoming season?

“Well we just started back up but we are making sure that the girls are working hard, which they always do. I love working with the girls, they always give us 100% and they know that’s the only way to get better. We as coaches are going to push them hard both physically and psychologically. Another main focus for this upcoming season is maintaining the chemistry that we had last year because that was above and beyond, and basically created a state championship team.”

What are your hopes for the season?

“We have a lot of high hopes for this year, we have seven seniors coming back that are all great A1 players, and we have pitching and a great defense, like I said if we just get back to the chemistry as long as we maintain that our goals are going to be to win the NIC, smoke Penn, to beat Marian, smoke anyone else that gets in the way, eventually win another state title.”

What does the team need to do to win another state title?

I think to win another state title we need to keep a lot of the things the same, you don’t want to get to the point where just because we had a little bit of success we don’t want our players to think that they have to do more, they don’t because we are blessed with a lot of talent. If everyone does their job can go as far as their talent will take us.”

Good luck this season ladies!