By Emily Wiley, Editor-in-Chief
The man who just beat the record for the most wins of any four-year collegiate softball coach didn’t even plan on coaching.
Phil McSpadden received the distinction Friday when he won his 1,458 game at OCU.
McSpadden was inducted into the National Fastpitch Coaches Associations Hall of Fame in 2014 after already being in the Oklahoma Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame and NAIA Hall of Fame and the OCU Athletics Hall of Fame. Under McSpadden, the softball team has won eight national championships, the most in NAIA history, according to ocusports.com.
“I don’t say that I have won the championships,” McSpadden said. “I am more comfortable standing behind the players. I am just the bus driver and the person who gets the field ready to play on. Those young women won those, I didn’t.”
McSpadden is from Alva, Okla., where he played baseball and football at Alva High School. He attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., and earned a degree in business management while playing baseball at the collegiate level.
After graduating in 1977, he attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, and earned his master’s in business education. After leaving OSU, McSpadden went to work for a funeral home after a friend told him they were hiring.
“It’s funny because I never really saw myself coaching softball, or coaching at all for that matter,” McSpadden said. “I mean none of my family was coaches. My father was a banker. But I did grow up in a baseball family, so sports were always in me.”
McSpadden left the funeral home to be the head baseball coach and assistant football coach at Dewey High School in Dewey, Okla. While there, his teams won the school’s first three titles in any sport. McSpadden coached at the high school level for eight years before he got a call from OCU’s athletic director at the time, asking him to coach the softball team.
“I turned down the first offer,” McSpadden said. “When they called again, I thought to myself, ‘Well maybe God is trying to tell me something.’”
McSpadden joined the athletic department in 1988, and has led his team to the national tournament every year, except in 1991.
He had never seen a fast pitch softball game until he became a coach.
McSpadden has coached 75 all-Americans, 35 NAIA scholar-athlete award winners, 10 CoSIDA academic all-Americans, five NAIA players of the year, three NAIA pitchers of the year, four NAIA catchers of the year, three four-time all-Americans, and four Olympians.
“I feel unworthy,” McSpadden said. “They work for this, and I am just the person who stands there and hopes the best. I was always just winging it.”
McSpadden said he enjoys coaching softball because women play for different reasons than men do.
“They work harder,” McSpadden said. “They work for their team. When I was growing up, they didn’t have sports for girls to play. Now that they do, I see that these girls play for more than themselves.”
Senior Pitcher Maria Gomez said she thinks McSpadden is a great coach.
“He always makes sure that we are okay and are ready to play,” Gomez said. “He teaches us life lessons that we wouldn’t learn from anyone else. I really can’t imagine not learning from or playing for Coach McSpadden.”
McSpadden recieved the title after the doubleheader victories against Southwestern Assemblies of God on Friday at Ann Lacy Stadium.
The final score for the first game was 13-1 and 8-0 for the second game.
The Stars’ next game is against Southwestern Christian at 5 p.m. April 16 at Ann Lacy Stadium.
Leave a Reply