HEADED TO REGIONALS – A Q&A WITH GAMECOCK SOFTBALL COACH JANA MCGINNIS

Can we clone Jana McGinnis? The long time Head Coach of JSU’s softball team came to JSU in 1988 as a freshman and helped resuscitate a moribund women’s basketball program. In 1992, at the age of 23, she began coaching softball at JSU. The results have been nothing short of spectacular. Under her leadership, JSU won the OVC in 2005 and 2008, and the Atlantic Sun Tournament title in 1996. She has been conference coach of the year four times.
In 2009, the success continued. The Gamecocks posted a 39-13 record and won the OVC regular season crown. After a disappointing OVC tournament, the softball team became the first JSU sports team to receive an “at large” bid to post-season play.
JSU will play in Knoxville, Tennessee as the #2 seed. They are joined by Nebraska, James Madison and UT, currently ranked #14 in the Country. On the eve of their trip, Coach McGinnis sat down with Gamecockillustrated.com and shared her thoughts on the Regionals, the season in general and what makes JSU a great place.

Q: Are you excited to be headed to Knoxville?
A: We are excited, especially the way our season played out. We had one of the most successful years since I have been coaching and for it to end the way it did to get upset in the conference tournament- I really thought we were done. We were ranked 34th in the Country but I still didn’t know if that would be good enough because when it comes down to selection time the bigger programs get looked at more. I thought that [it] would weigh heavily with us getting beat out of our own tournament. But, we were fortunate enough that over the years our program has built a good reputation and what we did last year along with our RPI ranking, I think it definitely helped.

Q: When are you going?
A: We are leaving at 5:00 [Wednesday]. We will have a practice at 1:10 tomorrow. Each team is allowed an hour and ten minutes. Everything is structured. I tell the girls we are now on the big stage.

Q: You’ve been on the big stage before- will that help?
A: I hope it helps a lot. We have a lot of the same girls back that played at Regionals last year. Every year is different but it definitely helps with our experience. Last year was great. Our girls were excited and [had] fun. I want them to maintain that same mentality. Earlier this week, I heard our seniors telling our freshmen this is the funnest thing you will ever do- and that’s true- the competition is great, the environment is great. It’s what you work for throughout the year. I don’t want our girls to lose the excitement and the fun of this tournament, because its there in the air.
I remember Coach Burgess the first year we advanced to the NCAAs to play Washington, I remember him telling me: “Enjoy every minute of it because a lot of coaches work their entire career and never get to play in an NCAA championship.” So last year, I had flashbacks [to that] and said I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. I’m not going to get stressed out. I am going to try and take in every little thing, from every press conference to every practice and I want our kids to do that too.

Q: What do you know about the teams you will be playing?
A: We are playing Nebraska [first]. Nebraska [has a] great tradition. I think this is their 15th year going to the NCAAs in softball which is very impressive. They will be good. They are very well coached, high energy, very fundamentally sound. They have one [very] good pitcher that they rely on and also have some speed at the top of their lineup.

Q: What about UT?
A: Tennessee is very good. They have speed and they have power. They don’t have Monica Abbott, the Olympic Pitcher, they had for four years that took them to the world series. They don’t have her, but they are a very solid team. Their coaches do a great job.

Q: You beat James Madison [another team in the Knoxville regional] earlier in the year, do you view that as an advantage.
A: I think so, but they now have a new #1 pitcher that we did not face. This girl’s ERA is like 1.4 they may be a different team with her on the mound. But, it’s like I tell our girls, from here on out there’s not a bad team in the tournament. The teams there win and are used to winning. We just need to raise our level and go out and execute.

Q: That’s the scouting report on the other teams; tell us about JSU’s team.
A: Pitching and offense has been our strong points. Our defense is solid. But I would say that if people were giving scouting reports on us, the key to our success was our pitching staff. We have good depth. We have Karla Pittman who was Pitcher of the Year in the Conference. We have Ashley Eliasson, last year’s Freshman of the Year, and she helped carry us to the championship [game] of the Regionals last year.
So I would say this game starts in the pitcher’s circle and we have two good pitchers, but our hitting has also gotten us to this point. We need that to continue if our season has been extended.

Q: You have a hitter named Nikki Prier, hitting 409, tell us a little about her?
A: Nikki is only a junior. She has been very consistent for us throughout her three years. She is a good hitter, a good kid, we rely on her. That was one of the problems in the conference tournament we only had one hit between Nikki and Allie [Barker] that’s just untypical. I don’t know if it’s because the pitchers were honing in on them or what. Throughout the year, they have been very significant. Even if one was off the other would be on. In order for them to be successful, we need them to play their game and hit like we know they can.

Q: Tell us about your big pitchers, Pittman and Eliasson.
A: Pittman is not your typical D1 athlete. If we stretch her she’s probably 5-5, but I have had so many coaches say “Wow, I like that pitcher, she is a bulldog.” A lot of people call her a bulldog, but I jokingly say: “You are our fighting Gamecock.” If she was six feet tall, I don’t know if we would have ever had a chance at signing her. She is very good. She has the best changeup in the game. When her changeup is on she is hard to beat.
Ashley Eliasson is a pitcher that throws a good curveball. She has very good control. When she is on she can very easily start frustrating hitters.

Q: In this format, you play a lot of softball in a short period of time who do you look to after these two?
A: Probably Melissa Dowling or Kayla Collins.

Q: Do you have any significant injuries going into this tournament?
A: No, we are very thankful. We seem to be all well and good to go.

Q: What is UT’s fan support like?
A: It is good. There is a lot of good softball up in Tennessee. They have very good support and very good facilities- its state of the art. You can see the tradition that they have. When you walk into the facility, there is a huge mural of them playing in the World Series in Oklahoma City. They have a life size poster of [former Olympic Pitcher] Monica Abbott in the middle of the facilities. There is just a lot of tradition.

Q: Is there going to be any TV?
A: We won’t know until Thursday. ESPN will tell us when we [have] the head coaches’ meeting.

Q: How was it for a Spring Garden girl to be interviewed on ESPN in primetime last year?
A: I really didn’t realize what it was! The week after the tournament everyone was calling me and saying I saw your interview. [Jana joked that the ESPN technology took out some of her southern accent.] It was fun. A lot of people saw the games. It was amazing how much publicity our University received out of that. We had people all over the country talking to us about it. Our first tournament we recruited at [following the Regionals] there was a Texas team and an Arizona team playing and one of the coaches said: “Congratulations Coach we watched you guys play on TV!” I don’t think our University could have paid for the publicity that we received out of that. It was a big deal.
I also had more emails from alumni that are not even associated with athletics or softball that watched the game. One of the emails said it’s been since the D-2 days since I have had as much pride in JSU as I had in watching the game. So if things like that help build us up that’s great.

Q: What do you think caused the setback in the OVC tournament?
A: I don’t think we overlooked anybody. Our team has not done that, but I don’t think we were prepared for the intensity and the level that the other teams [played at] because if you looked at our scores I think we 8 run ruled everybody in the league except for EIU. [You have to] give the other teams credit they came in and raised their level of play like you should do in the tournament. You could really tell they were trying to salvage their seasons. We didn’t play the level we were capable of playing, but we had some hard shots that [the opposing teams] made great plays on. They came in and raised their level- every team in the tournament that I watched was definitely playing at a higher level than what I saw them play at in the regular season.

Q: Jana, you beat FSU last year, you beat Ole Miss twice this year. What is it that you all have accomplished that has allowed JSU softball to compete at a national level?
A: One thing that our softball team has is a lot of pride in our school. We don’t have a lot of athletes sitting here mad because they didn’t get to go what we call “big time.” The majority of our kids wanted to be at JSU. For instance, Allie Barker, our catcher. She grew up on JSU, her dad [JSU legend] Butch Barker played at JSU. Allie could have been successful as a catcher in the SEC, but she wanted to play at JSU.
But those that don’t know our program- when they get here- we have traditions that we do. It doesn’t take long before our players gain pride in JSU. One thing that we do- all newcomers have to learn our fight song. There are little things that we do to instill that pride in our school. It’s the pride we had back in the D2 days that JSU had, and it didn’t matter, we knew that when we walked on the field we were going to win. We never let our girls say we are not supposed to win this game because we are a smaller school. We never let them make that as an excuse.

Q: Tell us a little about your recruiting philosophy?
A lot of our kids are not what you call high profile recruits. What we try to do is try to find good athletes with good character that are winners. It seems to work out for us. [Sometimes with high profile athletes], we may steer away from them because they don’t have the attitude or personality that fits into our program. I learned a long time ago [based on] advice from Coach Abbott, recruit the kids that fit your personality and the personality that you want your program to have.

Q: What do you sell about JSU in the recruiting process?
A: It’s the people! The people and we have a beautiful campus too. When we bring our recruits in and we take them around campus, they meet Ann Cohen, at our academic center. They get to meet the people in our athletic department and [after doing that] many of the players and their parents say things like: “We really feel comfortable at this place” or
“we really feel like this place cares about our daughter and its not just about softball.” I think that’s our selling point. While our facility may not be the nicest one that they can play in, it goes far beyond that. We just try to develop the trust that we are going to take care of your daughter. It’s not just about wins. We want [our kids] to get their degree.

Q: Speaking of degrees, what have you done to have such an outstanding academic record?
A: It starts with signing good kids that are good students that have a goal of getting a college degree. We ask them that before they ever [arrive]. We try to sign good kids with good grades from the start.
We [also] have a wall of excellence outside of my office. You can make the grand slam club, the home run club or the rbi club. The rbi club is 3.0 to 3.49, the home run club is 3.5 or higher, the grand slam club is 4.0. After each semester, their names go up on the wall. Believe it or not, kids like to see their names up on the wall. Pittman, for the first time ever, made our wall last semester. That’s the first thing she said when I arrived at practice was: “Coach my name’s going to be up on the wall!”
We also divide our team up into academic teams. The team that wins gets [incentives] like getting to make out the practice schedule. We don’t care what they put in there. You will be surprised, [the girls] are very competitive with it. The players on the academic teams will challenge each other [to do well academically]. It’s that inner-competition in the classroom. This year we only had one D on the entire team.

Q: I notice you all have a new scoreboard what are some things that you want to do to improve the facilities?
A: Well we love where we are at. It’s the prettiest place on campus. At the tournament we just hosted, we received so many compliments from the other participants. They said [things like]: “this is the best atmosphere for softball.” The fans could sit up in the outfield are in the bleachers. One dad from California said: “This is absolutely beautiful. I don’t know many places you can play softball and look up and see mountains, but then you can also look out and see a little bit of campus.” We love that spot where our softball field is.
My wish list is to one day have wrap around stadium seating and sunken dug outs and possibly a players facility with locker rooms and a training area. But, until then, I’m just going to try and do it with private donations. We are going to dress it up from the outside in to try and make it a D1 facility. Last year we bought a big wrap for our batting cage with Gamecock softball on it. We also have the new scoreboard. It really makes our field look so much better. I also want to do little things, like banners commemorating some of our success and getting some photos of current or former players. If the school is not going to do the seating or the dugouts, we can do little things to dress our facility up. [Editor’s Note: Can’t we use some stimulus money to reward the success of this group of winners?].

Q: As a long time JSU coach and player what can we do to increase fan support?
A: We need to market [all of our successes]. [It would be great to have] billboards for our rifle team that finished third in the nation, our tennis team won the OVC championship and went to FSU for a regional, our baseball team has [been] dominant in the OVC, they beat the #1 team in the nation this year. Our golf team is [very good]. Our team this year had close to a 3.4 GPA, we should flood the market with the positives of JSU.

Q: What do you like to do when you are not coaching softball?
A: I like to relax with my family! I like to sit back on the creek bank by my house. I also run every day.

Q: Give us an update on your sister?
A: She’s doing great. She’s helping her husband Coach basketball at Spring Garden. They have won three state championships. They are working on their future. Last year was the first time in eight years they did not advance to the final four.

THANK YOU COACH MCGINNIS AND THE WOMEN’S SOFTBALL TEAM FOR YOUR GREAT PERFORMANCE! GOOD LUCK IN THE REGIONALS.