UAA Women's History: Black Female Softball Coaches Meet in UAA Softball for First Time
Friday’s UAA series opener between Carnegie Mellon University and Emory University will mark the first time in UAA history when two Black female head softball coaches will face one another. Monica Harrison has been the only coach in Tartans’ history, while India Chiles in is her first season at the helm of the Eagles.
Combined with NYU’s Now-Allah James, the UAA features three of just eight Black head softball coaches across all of NCAA Division III. The total number in Division III has doubled since 2020 when Harrison and James, the only Black male head softball head in the division at the time, made up half of all Division III softball programs with a Black head coach.
A Friendship Meant to Be
Chiles, the first team All-America selection and the first University of Tennessee player to win Southeastern Conference (SEC) Player of the Year honors, uses the word manifestation when talking about how this day came about. The two met when Harrison was recruiting and Chiles was head coach of a national team while running SlapperNation, a training company that specializes in teaching slap hitting in a clinic setting. “Monica and I have had so many conversations over the years about diversity in sports and how we get more athletes who look like us,” she pointed out. “I wanted to know how to get the student-athletes I was coaching to attend schools like Carnegie Mellon, and then educating my players on the process.”
Harrison relayed a story from her first days as a softball student-athlete at Bucknell University. “I was a walk-on and the coach told me the only way I was going to see any playing time was to be a left-handed slap hitter. I had never seen a pitch from the left side,” she laughed. “She had me watch this training video on slap hitting by (Tennessee head coach) Karen Weekly and India was one of the players in the video!”
L: Harrison at Bucknell; R: Chiles at Tennessee
Meeting Chiles on the recruiting trail was something Harrison remembers vividly. “We connected immediately. We have similar values and energy level, so we gravitated to one another. We saw things in softball that we wanted to fix and were determined to find solutions and to educate people that it is not ‘D1or bust,’ but that there are great things about attending a high-academic school,” she remarked. “We offer a broad experience at our schools and wanted to make sure that message was not only being told to those who could afford it, but for those who need to hear it the most who have not previously had access.”
“From the start, there was just a different level of conversation in talking with Monica. We weren’t just talking statistics and ability, but about things so much deeper than that. The level of care and interest in the player as a whole human being was something I was much more familiar with on the men’s side of recruiting. I had four older brothers who played college ball and coaches would come to the house and let my parents know they were going to take care of their son,” she explained. “I had not seen that with coaches of young girls. Monica is so much more interested in what a student-athlete’s life will look like at Carnegie Mellon and beyond. That mindset drew me in so much. I didn’t have that experience when I was being recruited.”
“I have the conversation all the time that we don’t want our student-athletes of color to just be a number. Many universities are playing the numbers game. We care about our players as people, not just for what they can do on the softball field,” Harrison reiterated.
Significance of Diversity
It wasn’t until April of last year that two Black female head softball coaches faced off in NCAA Division I Power Five softball when Tyra Perry of University of Illinois and Sharonda McDonald-Kelley of Michigan State University met for a series in Illinois.
“If you can see people in these coaching and administrative positions who look like you, you know that you have a pathway to do the same, to be part of a program that truly cares about you,” Harrison described.
Without any Black student-athletes on the roster she acquired, Chiles joked that diversity in the stands started with just her own family. “We have done a lot of work with the university, inviting different offices and clubs to our games, exposing them to our athletic department. It has been a lot of fun seeing diversity, the ‘rainbow’ in the stands. Everyone is celebrating that,” Chiles explained. “We have done a lot of things like playing different kinds of music at our games, making sure it is representative of everyone. The whole tone is more cultural, upbeat, and fun.”
Both coaches stress the importance of diversity in athletic departments well beyond what is seen. “An unintended consequence of having diverse coaches is they think and do things differently. We naturally perceive things certain ways and are perceived in certain ways. Other coaches may not even have to think about the things we do daily,” Harrison commented. “We offer a different experience, so those around us have more of a worldview when they meet people who are not like them. We want to make the world a more palatable place for future generations. Having more diversity within staff and programming helps people think differently. That is ‘Diversity 101’ on why it matters so much.”
Chiles’ first year in Division III and the UAA has been a positive one. “I feel already in my time in the UAA that the student-athlete’s entire experience is what matters, what happens before and after the game, not just how they do in softball. I am loving coaching at the D3 level and am super excited and humbled that the UAA is bringing attention to this matchup this weekend.”