By Blake Colston
Sports Editor
Piedmont head softball coach Keith Coleman is the first to say that “it takes what it takes to win.”
Coleman should know about that. His teams have won three of the last four state titles in Class 5A, and the Lady Wildcats will begin this season as overwhelming favorites to bring home another crown.
But what exactly does Coleman mean by “it takes what it takes?” Simply put, time and effort. Here’s what that means in Piedmont.
Except for a three-month stretch in the winter, Piedmont’s coaching staff, players and parents are together playing, practicing or watching softball somewhere almost every week.
When the group isn’t busy with school ball, they’re competing with the Oklahoma Athletics, a travel team coached by Coleman and PHS assistants Coleman Hughes and Lisa Moss. Just about every player in the PHS program spends their high school offseason with the A’s, whether they play on Hughes’ 16-and-under team or with Coleman and Moss’s 18-and-under bunch.
“It’s a grind. But if this game is something you love and you want to compete, you have to want to do this. There are no shortcuts to winning state championships,” Coleman said.
By the numbers, those two teams will play the equivalent of nearly two full high school seasons in the spring and summer. So, when Piedmont shows up for its first high school practice of the preseason next week, there won’t be any need to ease into things.
“It lets us hit the ground running,” Coleman said. “We start in midseason form.”
Piedmont will still spend time on fundamentals in the preseason because, “You can never do that too much,” according to Coleman, but the Lady Wildcats’ can also focus more early in the season on areas of gameplay that other teams probably don’t put an emphasis on until much later.
“We spend a lot of time on game management. Situational team offense and defense, things like that,” Coleman said.
But is it all legal? The answer is, absolutely. There’s nothing in the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association’s bylaws that prohibits softball players from one school joining together to compete on the same travel ball team. It’s also completely within OSSAA rules for Coleman and his assistants to coach the Athletics.
“It’s not like I’m coaching in disguise,” Coleman said. “It’s all out in the open.”
The Athletics are successful, too. With one tournament remaining, Coleman’s team has a record of 47-21 with six Top Five tournament finishes, two tournament titles and two tournament runner-ups. Hughes’ 16U squad finished the summer with a 48-20 record, one tournament title, three tournament runner-ups and four Top Five finishes.
18U CHAMPIONS 🏆@OKAthleticsAcad Coleman#TulsaElite @Wilson Invite pic.twitter.com/bpC4htyzTc
— Tulsa Elite Sports (@TulsaElite) July 10, 2023
“A majority of the events we play in, we’re facing teams that are extremely talented,” said Coleman, adding that the top travel teams the A’s face have rosters made up completely of players committed to Division-I schools. “I want our kids going up against teams that are better than us. That forces us to find ways to be competitive with them.”
Coleman isn’t aware of any other high school programs in the state that have adopted a model similar to Piedmont’s, and he isn’t exactly sure why. It could be the time commitment required or, in some cases, financial constraints might be an issue.
Either way, it remains a crucial advantage for one of the state’s top softball programs.
“The teams we face aren’t in the trenches together year-round like we are,” Coleman said.
