89. Karen Slack

We are staying in the Softball world this week - today's guest comes to us expressly recommended by TPP alum Jamie Henk (ep.85) and when Coach Henk talks we listen! We've also got a Team Player Podcast 1st today, as our guest is our first one who is currently serving as both the Head Softball Coach AND Head Principal of Liberty High School! Welcome Karen Slack to the show!
- Growing up in Cajun Country, the small town of Jeanerette outside of Lafayette, LA with sugar cane fields and crawfish ponds all around you. It was in 5th grade however that Karen moved to Liberty, and she's been in love with that community ever since.
- Coach explains what is was like playing on the 1st ever Liberty High School Softball Team when the sport was offered for the 1st time in 1995, and describes how when she started at UH that there was no softball team. It seems crazy now given the extreme popularity of softball at the college and high school levels but Softball didn't even start at a major university like Texas until 1998.
- Karen is an outlier in that she is a coach who has ascended to the highest levels of leadership academically as well. During the course of her storied career she has advanced to serve as both a Department Chair and is currently serving as Head Softball Coach and Head Principal! We discuss how oftentimes coaches get a bad wrap in the classroom, but how in order to be a great coach you really need to be a great teacher, and how she has found that coaches are often amongst the best classroom teachers on her staff, and how there are some excellent classroom-only teachers that she would add to her coaching staff any day!
- Karen isn't our 1st TPP alum to win a state championship, heck she isn't our 1st to win multiple championships as Jessica Tully-Mitchell Bragg won 2 state volleyball championships at Denton Calvary Academy. But she is our first to win THREE state titles bringing home the gold in 2018 as well as back-to-back titles in 2021 and 2022! Coach tells us what has gone into the tremendous success of late at Liberty High School.
- Finally as someone who has dedicated their entire adult life to her beloved Liberty High School, we are treated to Coach Karen Slack's all-time Liberty Panther Softball Mt. Rushmore!!
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Art for the Team Player Podcast was created by Kaiser St. Cyr
Music for the Team Player Podcast is from the single One More/Good Enough by Avrion - available on all platforms