In the Dugout with Head Coach Patrick Murphy
1/14/2009 12:00:00 AM | Softball
Jan. 14, 2009
Give most collegiate softball coaches 10-straight NCAA tournament appearances, five trips to the College World Series and three conference tournament championships and they will be satisfied with a career's worth of accomplishments. Although University of Alabama head softball coach Patrick Murphy can boast those exceptional numbers, he knows his work at the Capstone is not complete.
"It's almost like starting from scratch and you still want to reach the greatest height of it, which is to win a national championship," Murphy said. "Until you do, it feels like you haven't done that and finished the job."
After joining Alabama's staff as an assistant in 1997, which was the program's first year and a time when the team did not have a facility to call its own, Murphy was named head coach just two seasons later. Since then he has built a program that is consistently among the best in the nation and relies heavily on team unity and promoting a family atmosphere.
"When you come in and you don't even have a uniform, softballs or a bat and you start from scratch, it is a pretty unique situation," Murphy said. "Thanks to some great people at Tuscaloosa Parks and Recreation, we played at Sokol Park for a year then we played at Bowers Park for two years. We kept hopping around until we got our own place and we had to put the fence up before and after practice and take it down for games, then take it back down and put it back up. It was makeshift everything."
Since the days of being a homeless program, Murphy has seen the Crimson Tide rise to the top of the softball world and flourish at their stadium on campus. For two straight seasons Alabama has sold out of season tickets, the only program to do such in NCAA softball history. Murphy credits the home turf for establishing and maintaining the momentum necessary for building a successful program.
"Basically, the stadium did it all," Murphy said. "After that, it started to sell itself. Now it is, I wouldn't say easy, but it is getting easier to get kids to come here and play and want to wear the jersey. The current kids don't realize all the hardships and all the things we went through in the past but I know the majority of the alumni realize how far we've come and that's kind of a neat thing."
Although it may not have been easy to attract top talent in the early stages of his days with the Tide, Murphy is now able to garner players from all across the United States by selling them on the idea of his team being their family away from home. And it is not just a sales pitch either.
"We don't just say it, we mean it and we do it," Murphy said. "I think they feel that once they get here. We aren't going to use them for four years and tell them bye. We are really going to take care of them as a person, as a student and then as an athlete."
With family being such an important aspect of his team, it is no surprise that Murphy, an Iowa native, has a loyal following of family members throughout the Midwest. Every spring those far-away fans make the journey down South to support Murphy and his Crimson Tide.
"There is usually one weekend out of the season where lots of my family comes down from Iowa," Murphy said. "When we played Tennessee in the game two years ago there were 47 people from Iowa that drove down. It is neat that my family is basically all in Iowa but they still get to come down."
As for finishing what has been started, Murphy has his sights set on achieving the ultimate goal--winning a championship. And because he has brought Alabama's young program so far in such a short time, it is no surprise that he has been the target of a coaching search or two. Rest assured The University of Alabama is where Patrick Murphy wants to be.
"It's a heck of a lot more fun to play and coach in an atmosphere like ours," Murphy said. "We've had opportunities to go elsewhere but this has always been the place where I want to be and finish the job."
