All-American Flashback: Carrie Moreman (1997-99)
10/22/2015 12:00:00 AM | Softball
In honor of Alabama softball's 20th anniversary, rolltide.com will be catching up with our 20 former All-Americans in a series of feature interviews. Our second feature is on Carrie Moreman (1997-1999), who earned NFCA All-America honors as a senior at Alabama.
Before his time at Alabama, Patrick Murphy was an assistant coach under Hall of Fame head coach Yvette Girouard at Southwestern Louisiana, now known as Louisiana-Lafayette. When he arrived in Tuscaloosa in 1997, the connection with recruiting in Louisiana helped bring Alabama's second All-American Carrie Moreman, now Carrie Ashley, from the Ragin' Cajuns to the Crimson Tide.
"Patrick Murphy was the assistant coach at Lafayette and recruited me to go there," Ashley said. "He left after my freshman year and when Alabama became a program, I naturally wanted to follow, so I transferred. I didn't feel like I would have a great opportunity to play at Lafayette since I was a third-string catcher at the time, so the fact that Murphy was there and I would have had a better chance of more playing time made it an easy decision."
Ashley played three seasons in Tuscaloosa, starting in the program's debut 1997 season. During that first season, Alabama played its games at Bowers Park, a far cry from the nationally-renowned Rhoads Stadium the Crimson Tide calls home today. At Bowers Park and later Sokol Park, Ashley remembers a very hands-on routine for practice and game day.
"Not only did we get to practice and play there, but we were the field crew," Ashley said. "We had to pull the tarp, put up the outfield fence and do a lot of those kinds of things. Looking back, we were able to help build the program to what it is now and that's pretty neat. At the time we didn't know any better because everybody did it then in the SEC. It wasn't like we were the only school that was doing it.
"The first thing we would do before practice is set up the outfield fence. They would load up the fences in a truck and set that up. Somebody else would load up the string to draw the chalk lines, another person would carry the bases. Things like that teach you more than just the game. It teaches you how to grow and build something. There's a lot of valuable life lessons that you didn't realize at the time but, looking back, you really appreciate. If we didn't go through experiences like that, the girls today wouldn't have what they do now."
After starting 58 games in her first season at Alabama, Ashley broke out in 1998 with a .374 batting average, 15 home runs and 62 RBI, all of which ranked second on the team only behind All-American freshman Kelly Kretschman. Ashley earned national recognition in her 1999 senior season as a Third Team NFCA All-American, hitting .314 over 63 starts.
"I think the improvement my last two years was just from working with the coaching staff," Ashley said. "Karen Johns was our catching coach, a former All-American and player on the national team, so that was amazing to have as a catcher. Murphy was our hitting coach and between the two, they really helped me improve."
One of her more memorable games came in that All-American 1999 season, when Alabama battled Arkansas to a 12-7 win in 19 innings on the back end of a doubleheader in Fayetteville. Ashley's eight hits that game remains an Alabama record that will likely go unbroken.
"We played in a 19-inning game at Arkansas and that game took five hours," Ashley said. "I remember towards the end, since we were missing lunch and supper, instead of chanting 'R.B.I.' we started chanting 'Arby's'. I don't know why that sticks out but it does."
From the little details to the larger lessons, Carrie Ashley has carried them into her life after playing at Alabama. Carrie has been married to her husband, Jason Ashley, for 12 years and they have an 11-year-old son named Jackson and a nine-year-old daughter named Reese.
"We like that Jackson plays football because the values you learn in a team sport are invaluable," Ashley said. "Things like teamwork and learning to play a role, even if you disagree with the coach, are important. You learn to do things for the betterment of the team even if it's not necessarily always fair to you individually."
Now living in northern Louisiana, Carrie and Jason are constantly on the traveling youth sports circuit, logging plenty of miles with Jackson and Reese to various events. With Carrie's softball experience and Jason's baseball experience, their children's main sport of choice came as a bit of a surprise to the Ashley's.
"My husband played baseball through high school and we thought one of our kids would look to pick up baseball or softball but neither of them want anything to do with it. Both of them love rodeo. We knew absolutely nothing about it so we've had to learn all about it the last few years. As competitive as my husband and I are, it might be a blessing honestly that they didn't play baseball or softball. We spend our time hitting the rodeo circuit a few times a month and Jackson plays football too, so that's what we do most of the time."
