Specifics vary, but the ritual endures. Hire a new coach and, after everyone praises everyone else on the podium at the introductory press conference, talk eventually turns to “changing the culture,” adjusting behavior to fit altered standards. In college this is accompanied by freshened enthusiasm or by returning players transferring to other schools, looking for what they believe will be a better fit.
Then, once in a long while, a coach gets to start the way Marissa Young did.
The wrappings hadn’t even come off the Duke softball program, the first women’s sport added at the school in some 20 years, when Young was hired in July 2015.