PartI
ArkansasRazorbacks.com has developed a multi-part series on new softball coach Courtney Deifel, which will be posted in individual parts over the coming weeks. The series begins with her upbringing around the game in Central California
Just about every father wants his children to follow in his footsteps. That desire always seems to be a bit stronger when it comes to sports.
Ron Scott was a starting catcher for the Miami Hurricanes in the program’s first ever College World Series appearance. He helped lead UM to the championship game, but came up short in a 7-3 loss against Southern California in 1974.
When he walked off the field and began an illustrious coaching career as the winningest baseball coach in Northern California, there is no way he could have predicted that he would have two daughters that would exceed his accomplishments and reach the pinnacle of college athletics.
But that is exactly what happened.
24 years later, Scott’s oldest daughter, Amanda, led Fresno State to the Women’s College World Series. Amanda Scott was a dominant pitcher that posted a 25-4 record and 0.79 ERA in route to the securing the Bulldogs first National Championship in 1998.
Just four short years after that, his youngest daughter, Courtney, would lead Cal to the Women’s College World Series. Courtney was a catcher, just like her father, and a team leader that helped the underdog Golden Bears earn the 2002 National Championship.
There is no doubt that genetically, Amanda and Courtney were blessed with exceptional athletic ability. But that’s never enough to put any athlete over the top.
“His coaching style is that he’ll teach you, but then he will let you go,” said Courtney Deifel, the 34-year old daughter of Ron Scott and new head softball coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. “He trusts you. You’re going to make mistakes and you have to be okay with that.”
So despite the God-given talent advantage Ron Scott’s daughter enjoyed, they learned from a very early age that there were going to be failures and those were part of the process towards eventual success.
And that is exactly how Coach Scott taught his daughter the craft – his craft as a player – of being a catcher.
“We would meet before my games and develop a game plan,” said Deifel. “Then he would let me go out and call all the pitches for an inning and then he would call the next inning. After each inning we would come back together and discuss what worked and what failed, regardless of the outcome he never stopped trusting me. He never took away that opportunity to call an inning.”
“Courtney was a very determined player,” said Scott, just a few days after his youngest daughter became the fourth head coach in Arkansas history. “She was hard on herself when she wasn’t successful. But as she started to mature as a player, I think she realized that there is a lot of failure in softball. How you handle that determines who you are.”
Perhaps no story better illustrates the attitude of ‘how you handle failure determines who you are,” than the story of her college decision as described by DiamondbackOnline.com.
Deifel’s uncle had attended [Stanford], and her father considered theirs a “Stanford family.”
“Even though my parents told me not to put all your eggs in one basket, I was so set on going to Stanford,” Deifel said. “That’s where I wanted to go; I just kind of knew their program.”
Deifel’s hopes of attending Stanford took one step closer to becoming a reality when she raised her SAT score and earned acceptance to the prestigious university.
Roughly 48 hours later, however, Stanford coach John Rittman called her father.
“Hey, I got really bad news,” Scott recalled Rittman saying. “We can’t get her in. I had to make a decision between Courtney and another girl, and I went with the other girl.”
Ever the coach, Scott made sure this denial was a life lesson she experienced first hand, according to DiamondbackOnline.com.
Rittman wanted Scott to pass along the news to his daughter, but Scott told Rittman he needed to be the one to tell her.
“When I got that call, it was heartbreaking,” Deifel said. “As much as you make plans, the plans that you make have nothing to do with what actually ends up happening.”
Deifel did not let the rejection derail her success. She landed a full-ride scholarship at Cal, where she was a four-year starter and helped the program reach the College World Series every year. They also won a national championship, a feat that Stanford has yet to achieve.
“I think sometimes now you see athletes face a major obstacle or mistake and that turns into a bigger problem because that’s all they’re thinking about,” Deifel said. “They don’t have that confidence, because they don’t understand that failure is part of life and the game.”
Now as a head coach, the lessons imparted by her father are everywhere in her program. Some are even copy and pasted.
“I like when our catchers call games because they need to learn and need to be invested,” said Deifel, who is admittedly bucking a national trend of staffs calling every pitch from the dugout. “You have a different level of investment when you are calling the pitches and thinking about the strategy while working with your pitcher. That’s the type of catcher we will recruit at Arkansas.”
Ron Scott just completed his 27th season as the head baseball coach at Fresno City College. Scott’s teams have advanced to the postseason and finished in the top three in conference play each of his 27 seasons and just this past season he eclipsed 900 career wins.
So does the winningest coach in Northern California baseball have any additional advice for his daughter?
“Hire her father as her hitting coach,” he joked.
“I would tell her to remember what it was like as a player,” he added. “I would remind her to remember who she is and what her goal is and she’ll get there. It’s not going to be quick fix in the SEC to take a team to in the upper echelon. It’s a process, but if she can be patient and remember who she is it will all come together.”
And what are the hallmarks of her father’s style that she will continue to implement in Fayetteville?
“I think we both are very straight forward but more than anything, very consistent,” Deifel said of her father. “I want to have the type of relationship with our players where they know I care about them and that I’m invested in them. For 27 years at Fresno City College, he’s invested himself in his student-athletes and the success on and off the field speaks for itself.”