The Wayne State College softball team has made a swing at success with their growth in the past few years. Thanks to Head Coach Christy Warnock, last season saw a major turnaround for the team.
Coach Warnock accepted the job and joined WSC in early July of 2022. She is currently in her fourth season of helping the team grow. Her coaching has led to improvements not only in skill and practice, but in the friendships between players.
Emilee Marth, a WSC junior who plays outfield, tells stories about the strong bond many of the players have with Coach Warnock. In many cases they come to her with their problems regardless of if they pertain to the field.
“She’s just like our second mom,” Marth said.
When she first met the team and staff, Warnock said she believed the school and athletic department were exceptional, and she was looking forward to becoming a part of the athletic programming here at WSC. She believed at that time that she had what it took to take a more divided group of players and teach them how to work together positively.
“It felt like taking the team in a new direction and reviving this program was a challenge I was eager to undertake,” Warnock said.
Since Warnock’s involvement with the WSC softball team, she has emphasized a philosophy of failure recovery, which essentially means accepting your failures and learning how to move on from them so you can find success. Warnock makes a point to teach her players that failure is a necessary part of the game, and incredibly common in softball.
Implementing this coaching strategy encourages the players to accept not only their own failures, but the failures of each other with grace and a simple glove tap. She credits this method of training with some of the recent success of the WSC softball team.
“You’re going to fail more than you succeed, and when you do succeed it cancels out the failure,” Marth said.
Marth further said the team as a whole has really learned to embrace this way of thinking and change their state of mind since Warnock has been coaching them.
Payton Kincaid, a current junior at WSC who plays infield, expressed gratitude towards Coach Warnock and her work coaching at Wayne State College. Kincaid said she believes Warnock is a very technically skilled athlete who has the ability to properly teach them how to improve their own skills.
“She has a different connection with each of us and knows the ways we all need to be coached,” Kincaid said. “She works with each of us to make us not only better players, but better people.”
Warnock has said that she thinks highly of her players and truly believes in their ability to grow and keep succeeding as a team. Though she’s too gracious to really take credit for the change, the team has thrived under her guidance.
“They are exceptional young women with great drive, work ethic, and character,” Warnock said. “When you can combine great humans with great talent, you’re in for a fun ride.”
With the improvements made by Coach Warnock, the WSC softball team has a promising future if they stay on the track they are treading now.
“My staff and I can implement as many different systems and beliefs that we want, but if our student athletes don’t buy into it or they don’t commit to it, then it will all be for nothing,” Warnock said. “They truly are the reason this program is heading in the direction that it is.”
