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Saturday, March 1, 2008
Nothing Soft About It
Western Arkansas, AR
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Fayetteville’s Jason Shirey has piloted the last two state champions in Class 7A softball, but he’s claims he’s not a better coach than his wife, Amber Shirey, an assistant basketball coach at the University of Arkansas.
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Jason Shirey is 118-19 in his five years as a head coach at Fayetteville.
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HSSTM: Who’s a better coach, you or your wife?
Fayetteville softball coach Jason Shirey: Well I’m obviously going to defer to her.
HSSTM: Why do you say that?
Shirey: I’ve got to live with her (laughing). Obviously softball and basketball are different, but I see how she is with interacting with people and I’ve also always just given her the nod on that one.
HSSTM: Do you guys compare notes, talk about ways to motivate kids and stuff like that?
Shirey: We bounce things off of each other in terms of if something is working or not working or something motivational. And the reverse is true if something doesn’t seem to work. We share notes I guess you could say. I’ll draw up plays for her and she is real quick to tell me I don’t have clue.
HSSTM: Does she critique you?
Shirey: Yeah, she does once in a while with doing certain things and that’s only natural. She had an experience as a softball coach back in the day … slow pitch, but as a softball coach, so she has some advice for me from time to time.
HSSTM: How many kids do you guys have?
Shirey: Two.
HSSTM: What are their names?
Shirey: Ross is 6-years-old and Reece is 2. Ross is the boy and Reece is the girl.
HSSTM: Do you get to play dad more often than most guys because your wife is on the road a lot?
Shirey: Yeah, she typically leaves around noon and doesn’t get back until at least midnight the next night. She does a lot anyways helping with the kids. But it’s pretty much a double-edged sword because if she’s back here pretty soon, that means they had a bad season, so we hope they play as long as possible and we make due around here.
HSSTM: How did you get into softball coaching because obviously you didn’t play did you?
Shirey: No I didn’t, I played baseball in college. I played two years at a junior college Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, then at Southwest Louisiana, the Rajun Cajuns, I played down there. Then when I finished I had friends still playing which was kind of hard to watch. I guess it was kind of hard to let go of it, so I went and watched softball. It’s kind of similar, just something to get out of the apartment or whatever, and they were pretty good. The assistant left there, and the head coach wanted someone who had some baseball influence. She started hiring assistants who had played baseball and fit that bill, so I made myself available. Then one day she talked to me about maybe coaching softball and I said sure and that was the start of it.
What year was that? 1994
HSSTM: How did you end up at Fayetteville High?
Shirety: Well, I worked three years down there in Louisiana, then four years as an assistant at the UA. Then things changed so I spent three years as a volunteer assistant at Farmington with Randy Osnes. Then the Fayetteville job opened and I interviewed for that and was fortunate to get it and have been at Fayetteville for five years.
HSSTM: What are some of the similarities between baseball and softball?
Shirey: The things we try to accomplish, some of the aggressiveness and some of the fundamental techniques, the drills and stuff like that. I do think in softball if you have a good pitcher you can dominant a game, but that doesn’t stop you from trying things, hits and runs, stealing bases. I think for the longest time in softball you’d just hope for a base runner or hope the other guy misses us, so we have hopefully changed a few things in terms of the way we approach the game and focus on the offensive side of the game. Pitching is pitching, but I’d like to think we have a chance on the offensive side of the game.
HSSTM: What position did you play?
Shirey: Middle infielder.
HSSTM: Was it easier to hit a softball or baseball? You have tried both, right?
Shirey: I actually have had some experience playing softball. I had just got done playing down there, and the lady who ended up coaching softball came in and it was in the period between the season and regional tournaments. It was scrimmage time and it was no different than scrimmage in basketball. She would get a group of baseball players to be play against someone stronger and faster. The first I ever did it I thought, ‘Shoot, this is going to be easy,’ and the first pitch I almost hit it into the dugout I was so late on it. Then it became my job to put together a scrimmage team, and every time you think it’s going to be easy, but it wasn’t. “
It’s like what those ads say, ‘Softball, there is nothing soft about it.’
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