Patrick Murphy
5/10/2002 12:00:00 AM | Softball
Patrick Murphy
Head Coach
*10h Year at Alabama
In today’s world of collegiate athletics, where coaches change jobs and take on new programs with increasing regularity, not many can claim to have been there at the beginning. Not many can say they were there at the origin of a program, having been there from the very inception to where it stands today. And certainly nobody can claim to have brought a program further, and in shorter time, than Crimson Tide head softball coach Patrick Murphy.
From a humble start to becoming a model of success and consistency, Murphy has taken Alabama to the top of the college softball world. Beginning with his days as an assistant in the very first years of the Alabama softball program, Murphy has been the face of a team that has grown under his leadership to become one of the most consistently successful programs in the nation.
The accomplishments are there for everyone to see. Four College World Series berths, an SEC title and nine straight NCAA Tournament bids are just a few of the team honors Murphy has brought to Tuscaloosa during his tenure.
The individual honors are just as impressive. Tide players have earned All-American honors no fewer than 43 times under Murphy’s watch. He has tutored 44 All-SEC performers and over 30 All-Region honorees. His teams have been just as successful in the classroom, with five Academic All-Americans and 63 Academic All-SEC players to his credit.
Even more impressively, Murphy has led the program to a surge of popularity among Tide fans. Alabama has become a regular atop the nation’s attendance standings, with an ever-growing group of loyal fans who fill the stands at the Alabama softball facility throughout the season. In 2007, the team set a new benchmark by selling over 1,200 season tickets and is on pace to eclipse that impressive mark in 2008. Those numbers are what every softball coach in the nation would do anything to achieve and stand as a tribute both to what Murphy and his team have achieved and to the willingness of Tide fans to support a program that does things right, both on and off the field.
Now in his 10th season as the head coach of the Crimson Tide, Murphy has turned his program into an absolute model of consistency, having guided Alabama to nine consecutive NCAA tournaments, including appearances in the 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2006 Women’s College World Series.
In 2006, Murphy and his staff were named the NFCA South Region Coaching Staff of the Year for the third time after leading Alabama to its first SEC Championship and fourth trip to the Women’s College World Series. The team finished with a 54-11 record and a 25-4 mark in the SEC.
Since taking over prior to the 1999 season, he has compiled a winning record in all nine seasons. He has won 45 or more games in each of the past eight years with a program-best 66 victories in 2000 and 63 wins in 2005. Murphy has also won over 20 games in conference play in seven of his nine seasons in the SEC. The 2006 campaign marked the second time he had posted 25 conference victories, matching the 2000 season in which the Tide went 25-5.
Murphy’s ability to build and maintain the impressive level of consistency places him among the nation’s elite. He has a career mark of 495-169 in 10 seasons, including one year at Northwest Missouri State. His winning percentage of .745 ranks him sixth among active coaches who have coached at least five years at the Division I level. He has a .748 winning percentage as the head coach at the University of Alabama and has been just as successful in the always competitive SEC with a 178-61 (.745) record.
It is his desire for perfection that has led the Tide to the upper echelon of the softball world. Murphy’s desire and hard-nosed work ethic has led the Tide program to as high as No. 1 in the national rankings, reached for the first time in program history during the 2007 regular season. The Tide has finished ranked in the top 10 in the final polls in each of the past three campaigns.
Entering his 17th season as a collegiate coach, Murphy officially acquired the title of Alabama’s head coach on July 12, 1998. He spent the two previous years as an assistant coach on the Crimson Tide coaching staff. In his first season as the head coach he took the team to its first NCAA Tournament with a 39-26 record. The Tide lost to No. 1 UCLA and No. 23 Missouri in the Los Angeles Regional.
In his second season, he took the program to the next step, leading Alabama to its first-ever Women’s College World Series berth after the best regular season in school history. That 2000 team won a school record 66 games (66-14) and 25 SEC games (25-5). They finished ranked in the top 10 for the first time in school history after earning a 6-4 victory over DePaul for the school’s first win in the WCWS.
Alabama continued its success in 2001 when they hosted the NCAA Regional for the first time. The Tide ended the season ranked No. 10 with a 50-11 record and 24-6 SEC mark. In 2002 they went 46-21 (22-8 SEC) and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.
Murphy took the Tide back to the Women’s College World Series in 2003. After winning his first SEC Championship as a head coach, the team swept the NCAA Regional to advance to the WCWS where they lost two close games, 3-2, to No. 1 Arizona and 6-3 (9) to No. 4 Oklahoma. Alabama finished ranked No. 7 with a 49-21 record (22-8 SEC).
The 2004 team posted a 45-20 mark but had to travel to No. 4 UCLA for the NCAA Regional and lost twice to the Bruins. However, the next season they were back at the Women’s College World Series. The 2005 squad tallied the second most wins in school history with a 63-15 record and 23-7 SEC ledger. They won the school’s third SEC Tournament Championship with a 2-0 victory over Georgia. and swept the NCAA Regional to earn the right to travel to College Station for a two-game sweep over No. 5 Texas A&M in the Super Regional. In the WCWS, they earned a 12-inning 2-1 victory over DePaul before they were eliminated with a 4-0 loss to Tennessee.
A product of Waterloo, Iowa, one could almost say he was born to be around the game of baseball. In the third grade, young Murphy put on his first baseball glove and took to the little league fields. Five years later, fresh out of the eighth grade, he made Fayette (IA) High School’s varsity baseball squad and played the next five years for five different coaches.
“I always knew I wanted to be a coach,” he said. “My high school was such a small school that I got to play varsity baseball in eighth grade and, every year, I had a different coach and, every year, it was something different I learned, either good or bad, from that coach. My senior year, I tried to put everything together I had learned from all the different coaches and came up with a good coaching philosophy.”
After hanging up his spikes on his prep career, Murphy made the trip to the campus of the University of Northern Iowa where he spent the next four years. Murphy took his first job doing what he had always wanted to do, however, on a smaller scale, when he became a little league head coach.
Three years after taking that job, he graduated from Northern Iowa with a bachelor’s degree in History Education, and then loaded up in 1988 and began his trek into the real world, only to find that it brought him right back where he had started.
Even with his youngest players not being much younger than himself, Murphy concedes that his first job as a head coach was where he learned the most - about himself and the game.
“Those kids were baseball nuts,” he said. “They played baseball on the town tennis court because that was the only place in town that had lights. The lights would go off automatically at midnight so that is when they knew they had to go home.
“They taught me so many things about the game of baseball. They played because they loved it so much.”
It took just two years for Murphy to become a success as a head coach. After leading the Sumner High School boys to a 22-3 record in his first year as head coach, he led the Aces to the state championship game the next season.
Following a short stay at Sumner, Murphy continued his education as a graduate student at Southwestern Louisiana. While at USL, he broke into the collegiate coaching ranks as an assistant softball coach while finishing his master’s degree in communications in 1992.
“The head coach at USL knew I had coached baseball in Iowa and she told me about the job,” Murphy remembers. “It only paid six thousand dollars, but I was in grad school there and she asked me if I wanted another duty. So I said ??Sure, I’ll try it.’ That’s where it all started and I just got hooked.”
Prospering with the Ragin’ Cajuns through a five-year record (1990-94) of 239-46, including a trip to the 1993 Women’s College World Series on the shoulders of former player and current Alabama assistant coach Alyson Habetz, Murphy moonlighted as head coach of the Independence (IA) high school baseball team from 1992-95.
Due to the high recognition of his duties as an assistant coach at USL, along with the solid success of his duties as a high school coach, Murphy learned of and got a job as interim head coach at Northwest Missouri State in 1995. Although he was officially hired just three weeks before spring practice in 1995, Murphy led the Bearcats to a 28-20 record.
At every stop, then, Murphy has proven himself to be a leader capable of recruiting and developing talented players who perform on the field and in the classroom. Combining that with the lure of athletic tradition at Alabama and the nation’s finest facilities, the Crimson Tide softball team remains poised to be among the nation’s best for the foreseeable future.
Murphy’s Career Record
School Year W L Pct.
NW MIssouri State* 1995 28 - 20 .583
Alabama 1999 39 - 26 .600
Alabama 2000 66 - 14 .825
Alabama 2001 50 - 11 .820
Alabama 2002 46 - 21 .687
Alabama 2003 49 - 21 .700
Alabama 2004 45 - 20 .692
Alabama 2005 63 - 15 .808
Alabama 2006 54 - 11 .831
Alabama 2007 55 - 10 .846
Career Record: (10) 495 - 169 .745
*-Interim head coach
Murphy Among the Best Winningest Active Coaches by Percentage
Coach, Team
Yrs.
Pct.
1. Mike Candrea, Arizona
21
.832
2. Stefni Lotief, La.-Lafayette
7
.812
3. Yvette Girouard, LSU
27
.762
4. Patty Gasso, Oklahoma
13
.754
5. JoAnne Graf, Florida St.
24
.747
6. Patrick Murphy, Alabama
10
.745
7. Lu Harris-Champer, Georgia
11
.743
8. Margie Wright, Fresno St.
28
.737
9. Karen Weekly, Tennessee
11
.735
10. Ralph Weekly, Tennessee
11
.732
(Minimum five years as a Division I head coach; includes spring varsity fast-pitch record at four-year colleges only.)
After nine seasons as head coach, Patrick Murphy has achieved unbelievable success:
- Three College World Series appearances (2000, 2003, 2005,2006)
- Nine straight NCAA Tournament app. (2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999)
- 2006 SEC Championship
- Two SEC Tournament Championships (2003, 2005)
- Most wins in school history (467)
- Best winning % in school history (.747)
- Most wins in a season in school history (66)
- Most wins in the country-66 (2000)
- Consecutive Top-10 ranking (2007, 2006, 2005, 2001, 2000)
- Three-time South Region Coaching Staff of the Year (2000, 2003, 2006)
- 20 NFCA All-Americans
- 23 Easton All-Americans
- 33 All-South Region Selections
- 43 All-SEC Selections
- Most SEC wins in a season in UA history (25)
- Five Academic All-Americans
- 5 Academic All-District Selections
- 75 Academic All-SEC Selections
- Nine NCAA Regional All-Tournament team selections
- One World Series All-Tournament team selection
- 36 SEC Player of the Week selections
- Youngest coach in SEC history to reach 100 wins
- One of 12 finalists for the 2004 United States Olympic team head coaching position
- Coached 2001 team to school record 27-0 start and No. 3 national ranking
- Hitting coach for Canadian National Team in 2004 Olympics
THE MURPHY FILE
Born: November 28, 1965
Birthplace: Waterloo, Iowa
High School: Fayette High School
College:
Northern Iowa, 1988 B.S. in History Education
Southwestern Louisiana, 1992, MS in Mass Communication
Coaching Career:
- Head Softball Coach
University of Alabama, 1998 -present - Assistant Softball Coach
University of Alabama, 1996 - 1998 - Interim Head Softball Coach
Northwest Missouri State, 1995 - Head Baseball Coach
Independence (IA) HS, 1992 - 1995 - Assistant Softball Coach
Southwestern Louisiana, 1990 - 1994
Sumner (IA) HS, 1988 - 1990
