Softball: Pitt coach helps program grow

Seven-year-old Holly Aprile loved watching her father play softball at the local park when she… Seven-year-old Holly Aprile loved watching her father play softball at the local park when she was growing up in the small town of Aston in upstate New York. But watching the action from the sidelines wasn’t what Aprile and her older sister really desired.

They wanted to play.

“My sister and I were just kind of like little field rats,” Aprile said. “We picked up the game from watching the men play, so we just started running around in the field.”

When Aprile’s father signed her up for organized softball the next year, she was hooked.

Aprile — who is now entering her fourth season as the head coach of the Pitt softball team — worked her way through the ranks playing and coaching her father’s sport.

Aprile’s players subscribed to her coaching philosophy and goals as she put together three consecutive winning seasons at the helm of the Panthers’ program,

Pitt junior catcher Holly Stevens said she believes Aprile’s biggest asset as a coach is her ability to motivate the team in any situation with a positive attitude.

“Even when we’re struggling, she’s a really positive person and wants us to be mentally tough,” Stevens said. “She’s one of the best coaches I’ve ever had.”

Aprile agreed that she focuses on being positive but admitted she wasn’t that way during her more than 10-year playing career.

“I’ve learned that it’s not about what happened, it’s about what’s on the horizon,” she said. “It’s important to be able to be resilient, but I wasn’t always that way as a player — I definitely wasn’t Miss Upbeat then.”

Upbeat or not, Aprile, 42, enjoyed a noteworthy career on the diamond at both the collegiate and international levels.

After committing to play college softball as a pitcher and outfielder at the University of Massachusetts — Amherst, she helped the Minutewomen secure four consecutive Atlantic 10 conference titles from 1989 to 1992 and was a strong contributor to the team that earned the school’s first trip to the College World Series in 1992.

For her role in the Minutewomen’s success, Aprile received the conference’s Player of the Year honor three times and was named an All-American.

“My time there was really, really good,” Aprile said of her career at UMass. “My senior year we got it all together, and it was a tremendous experience.”

With a playing style she describes as versatile and tenacious, Aprile’s performances in college caught the eye of the United States Softball Women’s National Team — the highest level in the game.

“I think they liked me because I was what they called a ‘five-tool player,’” she said. In baseball and softball, the five tools are the ability to run fast, field well, throw hard and hit with both a good average and power.

Aprile accepted the National Team’s invitation and made appearances in international tournaments off-and-on for the next seven years.

Simultaneously, she began a career in coaching.

Starting off as a graduate assistant at Eastern Illinois University in 1994, Aprile was surprised when she received an offer to be the pitching coach at the University of South Carolina the next year.

“I went to Eastern Illinois to get a graduate degree in political science, so I was thinking about law school,” she said. “But then a friend from South Carolina called me and asked if I wanted to be the pitching coach there. I thought, well, I could keep doing this.”

Eight successful years as an assistant with the Gamecocks followed, as Aprile helped lead South Carolina to seven NCAA Regional appearances and one trip to the College World Series.

Looking for a new challenge and the opportunity to move closer to home, she accepted another assistant coaching job offer from a friend. Michelle Phalen, the first head coach in Pitt’s short softball history, invited her to Pittsburgh to help guide the new Panther program’s growth.

Pitt softball played its inaugural season in 1998 and joined the Big East the next spring. Althought the program consistently improved during its early years, the Panthers didn’t achieve a winning record in conference play for a decade.

When Aprile arrived prior to the 2004 season, she knew building a national powerhouse at Pitt would be a challenge. But it was a challenge she wanted to face.

“When I got here, the field was basically a cut-out of dirt and it definitely wasn’t spectator-friendly at all,” she said. “However, when Phalen first started the program they were playing at local parks, so it was definitely an improvement over that. I knew the program was building and I wanted to be a part of it.”

After five years coaching the pitchers, Pitt offered Aprile the head coaching position when Phalen decided to pursue opportunities outside of softball. Aprile didn’t have to think twice about whether or not to accept.

The Panthers have flourished under Aprile.

Pitt has recorded three straight winning seasons for the first time in the program’s now 14-year history, and the Panthers have slowly established themselves as one of the better softball programs in the Big East conference.

Aprile hopes that this season — Pitt’s second playing at its impressive new home at Vartabedian Field in the Petersen Sports Complex — could be the breakthrough year for Panthers softball.

“We’re focused on winning the Big East,” she said. “We’ve established ourselves in the conference and now we have to be able to show up and beat the better teams in the conference on a more consistent basis.”

Senior infielder Niki Cognigni, who joined Pitt softball the same year Aprile was named head coach, said Aprile’s continuous belief in her players and the program inspires everyone to play to their full potential.

“She cares about us so much and we work that much harder to succeed knowing she wants us to be the best we can be,” Cognigni said.