UTC managing change

It has been a summer of change for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga softball team and coach Frank Reed.

After directing the Lady Mocs to the Southern Conference regular-season championship in 2010, Reed saw his entire coaching staff leave for other opportunities in the past two months.

In mid-July, assistant coach Brad Irwin resigned to take over as the new head coach at East Tennessee State. Less than a week later, pitching coach Shaina Ervin left UTC to take a similar position at Georgia Tech.

“It was a challenging summer,” Reed said in his office last week. “I had hoped to take some time off in July, but that wasn’t meant to be.”

Finally last week, volunteer assistant Jeff Martin was hired as a paid assistant at Lee University.

“Jeff’s always wanted to get in the game, and he’s a good coach,” Reed said. “So he had an opportunity to get a paid job on that staff and get some valuable experience in that role at Lee.”

While Reed is happy for his former assistants and their new opportunities, he was left with the task of building a coaching staff from scratch with weeks to go before fall-semester practice.

Moving quickly, Reed has rebuilt his staff for the 2011 season by hiring former Appalachian State head coach Amy Herrington-Woodard to work with the team’s batters and bringing back former UTC volunteer assistant and director of softball operations Lee Dobbins to work with pitchers and catchers.

Dobbins also has collegiate head coaching experience, coaching at Lander University in 2006 and helping start the Texas A&M International program in Laredo, Texas, in 2008.

Hiring Herrington-Woodard from a SoCon rival was a big coup, Reed said. The two coaches were well aware of each other’s work, and Herrington-Woodard said she was excited to have a chance to join the staff at UTC.

“I’ve had a lot of respect for Coach Reed from playing against them,” she said. “I’ve always felt like it was a classy act and a high-caliber program. Really, when he asked me, it was no doubt. I wanted to do it, so it was an easy move.”

Reed said Irwin’s departure for a head-coaching job wasn’t totally unexpected, and hiring Herrington-Woodard was a move he had been considering and fortunately was able to pull off on short notice.

“She was under a timeline and I was under a timeline, and it all worked out,” he said. “That told me it was meant to be.”

Herrington-Woodard said she thinks she can bring a new perspective to her job working with the Lady Mocs batters.

“One of the unique things is being a female in this role,” she said. “In the past he’s had men in this position. So I think I can bring a new perspective to this position and be a role model to the players.”

For Dobbins, who spent last season as an assistant at Austin Peay, the chance to come back to UTC was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

“It made sense being a Chattanooga native and working with Coach Reed before,” he said. “Chattanooga softball is one of the gold-standard programs in Division I. And that’s not just on the field, but also what they do in the community and academically.”

Dobbins will face the challenge of preparing the UTC pitching staff after the departure of ace Brooke Loudermilk, who ended her college career in 2010. The Lady Mocs return a strong corps of pitchers, with former Soddy-Daisy standout Nikki Waters, Kandice Irwin and Michelle Fuzzard, who is expected to return after missing last season with knee injury.

“It’s tough to replace a Brooke Loudermilk, but we have three quality pitchers coming back. ... That will add up to a very good pitching staff,” Dobbins said.

Reed said he believes his new assistants bring the experience needed to help continue the Lady Mocs’ success on the field in 2011.

“Not to take anything from the staff we had [last season], because we obviously had a great staff,” Reed said. “But to improve the staff by adding two former head coaches and bring that kind of talent level in is great.”