Coach’s aid extended beyond the dugout

It’d be easy for me to write about what a great coach Sue
Enquist was. It’d be easy for me to write about the 11
national championships or all the Olympians and All-Americans she
coached or all the great games I saw that she was a part of.

Most softball fans will remember Enquist, who announced her
retirement on Tuesday, for all of the success, her fiery attitude
in the dugout, and her ability to wave in a runner rounding third
faster than anyone.

But Enquist was so much more than that. I learned this by being
around the team for four years. She was also a great mentor and an
ambassador for the sport.

Whenever you talk to former players about her, they always rave
about the lessons she taught them off the field first.

“Sue was about life as much as she was about softball.
What she taught superseded any fielding, hitting or softball
lessons. She made sure every player walked away with a degree and
life lessons,” said Stacey Nuveman, who set the NCAA career
record for home runs while at UCLA from 1997 to 2002.

“She was one of the biggest influences in my life,”
said Claire Sua, who played at UCLA from 2001 to 2004 and is now an
assistant coach at Cal Poly. “She was always more focused on
what kind of person you were going to be in corporate America. She
always focused on our careers outside of softball.”

I haven’t found a single exception to that rule ““
former and current players alike always go on at length about how
they became better people and learned life lessons before they say
anything about winning national championships.

As good of a coach as Enquist was on the field, it’s
better that she cared about her athletes’ well-being more
than she cared about winning. In today’s era of college
athletics, winning is often considered to be everything, but
college athletes are all young and just learning about the real
world. Enquist kept that in perspective.

“She’s a great motivator. She wants to always help
you grow on and off the softball field, as an athlete and a
person,” said Andrea Duran, who just finished her playing
career at UCLA and will serve as an undergraduate assistant this
year.

“She’s helped me grow as a person and feel more
confident in myself, and that helps in all aspects of life. The way
she ran her team was a way to run your life. She would always
reference “˜when you’re out in the real
world,'” Duran said.

“She was great at managing the girls,” said
Stephanie Swenson, who played at UCLA from 1998 to 2001 and is an
assistant coach at Long Beach State. “When we got too up or
too down, she’d put us back in our place. I couldn’t
speak more highly of her.”

Aside from being a great coach and mentor, Enquist also helped
the sport grow.

While the tendency for most coaches is to be very secretive with
information and do everything they can not to help people in other
programs, Enquist and another softball coaching icon, Arizona coach
Mike Candrea, have hosted clinics for players and coaches and have
helped develop equipment and software for softball instruction.

“I was shocked when I got into softball. People were very
scared to share information,” said Candrea, who is also the
coach of the U.S. national team. “Sue and I tried to be in
the forefront to share information with coaches. The game changed
because of her efforts. I hope people remember that about me when I
retire.”

Also rare is the fact that the coaches of the two biggest rivals
in the sport got along so well. Enquist and Candrea competed
against each other often, not only during the Pac-10 season but
also in the World Series and in recruiting battles. Yet Enquist
went out of her way to call Candrea about her retirement on Tuesday
night, not long after telling her team.

“Obviously, the first thing I did when I heard from her
was dig myself up from the floor,” Candrea said.
“We’re very good friends and we leave the game on the
field. She was with me when I lost my wife two years ago. The game
wasn’t bigger than life.”

It wasn’t as big as the lives she touched, but Enquist was
very good at the game itself.

Just as she taught her players to do, Enquist also had to
adapt.

In recent years, the sport has changed. All of a sudden, years
of Title IX being enforced and money finally being pumped into
programs around the country made for a higher quality of play
nationally and more competitive teams.

Also, the NCAA Tournament field expanded from 48 to 64 teams,
making it harder for teams to win it all.

UCLA teams started experiencing losing streaks and slumps. And
that’s where Enquist was at her best.

I’ve covered many different sports and teams at UCLA, but
the season that will always stick out for me was in 2005, when the
Bruins lost the second-highest number of games in the
program’s history but still made it to the championship
game.

Enquist had no senior starters on that team and a freshman
pitcher ““ normally a sign of doom for a team hoping to
contend.

That team would go for weeks unable to score many runs and weeks
seemingly unable to get anyone out.

Enquist never gave up on her team and got the Bruins back on
track for a great finish to the season. She had them ready for an
epic postseason, in which they won five do-or-die games and were
only a couple of innings away from winning a national title.

That was Enquist at her best ““ making a title run with a
team that had no business being there. And the lessons she taught
on that title run, as well as many others, are why she’s not
only a great coach, but a great person as well.

Life is more important than winning, but when you can excel at
both, it’s truly special.

E-mail Quiñonez at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.

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