GETTING TO KNOW: NC State Softball Head Coach Lindsey Leftwich

NC State named Lindsey Leftwich as its new softball head coach on June 3rd. 

One month into the job, the long-time assistant coach has been making moves by way of hiring staff members, getting acclimated to her new home, meeting kids on the recruiting trail, and much more. 

Leftwich, who spent the last 12 years at LSU, has also coached at Northwestern State, Wichita State, New Mexico, and Florida International in her long career. 

Inside Pack Sports recently sat down with the newest member of the Wolfpack to discuss her career, her coaching style, her goals, and much more.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Where are you from originally? 

LEFTWICH: Midland, Texas. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: How did you get into softball?  Do you have a sports background within your family? 

LEFTWICH: My dad. He played [baseball] a ton. Then we moved a ton when I was growing up and I played everything. I played all the sports – soccer, softball, volleyball, and whatever, but then I started playing softball when we moved to Houston. I kind of got involved there and fell in love with it. School was kind of easy. I was good at it. 

Softball is the only thing that's ever really challenged me. It was the only thing that was hard. The ‘hard’ is what made me want to keep doing it and ultimately is what made me want to coach it. There's always a new problem to figure out. It was the only thing that was hard, so I kept doing it. 

I played for my dad for a long time. He coached my team growing up and probably made me a lot better fast because he hit ground balls harder at me than everyone else and held me to a different standard. It like pushed me a lot. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Were you a leader as a player? If so, was it vocal? 

LEFTWICH: I led with my voice, obviously. I'm loud and you're a vocal leader, fiery and whatever, but then I really more than anything led with my actions. I was the first one there and the last one to leave and I always thought that being first, I'm the first to congratulate you or the first to call you up or the first to do whatever was the way to lead them. And that was just something that I did easily. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: When did you realize that softball could be a lifetime thing as a career choice? 

LEFTWICH: In college after my sophomore year. I got hurt a lot. I tore my rotator cuff in my shoulder and had surgery, worked to get back, and started playing again. Then I tore my PCL in my knee within that same six months. I ended up with three ruptured discs in my lower back. At the time, my current coach asked me if I wanted to stay and If I want to be the student assistant. I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, I'll finish my degree.’. 

Originally, I wanted nothing to do with coaching. College softball was hard for me. I had four head coaches in five years, and 13 assistants. I saw all of the good, the bad, and then when I started getting hurt and couldn't get healthy, I was like, ‘I'm out. I'm done with this.’ 

I had an unbelievable lady in my life. Her name was Rose Long, she was our FCA director at the time, and she just kind of like grabbed me by my face mask. It was like, ‘This is what you're supposed to do and you were meant to do this.’ She just kind of spoke life into me at that spot. 

So then I stopped and looked at it. I am good at loving people. I am good at investing in people. I am good at teaching them how to do things. She kind of sparked that in me and it kind of took off from there.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: What were the things you had to learn early in your coaching career?

LEFTWICH: Right off the bat, the guy hired me to be a pitching coach. I was a catcher and I was a hitter. Everyone knows that pitchers are different. They have to have different mentalities to stand out on the mound and do what they do. That was interesting to take what I learned as a catcher and learn how to coach them through some of those things. The bullpen is sometimes a crazy place and you have to know how to coach them and get them to do what you want, but still let them be themselves and still let them like grow in those spots. 

That was hard right off the bat, being the pitching coach. Then from there, the skills and accomplishing the tasks were difficult but the people were easy. I think that's what made me keep coming back. I'm good at building relationships and I'm good at meeting people where they are. As a young coach, learning to balance that and knowing that they're not your friend, not everyone's gonna like you and you have to make some hard decisions. That was interesting for me as I grew in that. I was used to being the fun one, the one that people liked, and so that was hard. The longer I stayed in it, the easier it was for me just to be like, if I love and invest in you, I know that I can get you to do whatever I ask you to do. Then when we start to see results, you're gonna do even more of what I'm asking you to do, and that was cool.

Starting as a pitching coach forces you to learn right away and it forces you to throw everything that you thought you knew out the window. I've gotta figure out what way works the best. It makes you a better coach for sure.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Describe what you helped build at LSU.  Where it was when you got there, where you left, and how hard it is to leave that? 

LEFTWICH: We walked in the door, they had been good, but they hadn't been to the World Series in a little while. They just were down a little bit from a recruiting space and we took a not-good team with two really good pitchers to the World Series in our first year there. We did that solely because we had kids on that team that we invested in that didn't play every day. They willed us there with their heart. From there, it was just kind of growing the program where the three letters (LSU) on your chest are so important. 

Everything that we're doing is putting, like we used to say, LS over U, so from a selfless space of like how everything that I do is to this standard. If it doesn't meet the standard, then it's not good enough. We ended up going to the World Series four times in our first six years there. We did it through recruiting, but more than anything we did it through people.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: At what point in the journey did you feel you could be a head coach and lead a program?

LEFTWICH: I never wanted it at all. I wanted nothing to do with it. I knew what my strengths were and I knew I was a really good assistant for a reason. Um, I like in that time of us being at LSU and when we were at FIU, like, Beth pushed me to interview more than a couple of times at some, for some head jobs. They offered me the job at UNLV. I was a finalist at Maryland. I was a finalist at Penn State. I had some really good options in there and none of it ever felt right. 

I'm as right-brained as you can get. I'm super creative. I have a psych degree and an art degree. I'm on the other end of that. For the longest time, I thought that I only could be in charge if I was all of these things. 

I took this interview and I came here and I sat down with the administration – Carrie and Stephanie and Michelle – and they kind of sat with me and were like, ‘We like you. We want you to be exactly who you are. It's why you're sitting here. It's why we brought you in. Like we've heard all these things about how you love and care for people and about how you can grow the program from that space. We know that you're good at the softball things, we need you to be great at the people and that's why we brought you in.’ 

They were like, ‘We could have easily just gone and gotten a head coach, like a previous head coach, but the way that you deal with people and you love people and you grow that community, they're like, that's what we want here.’

I never saw myself being a head coach until a month ago. I never really thought I wanted to do it. I came in on the interview and I was like, ‘I can do this here because I can do it exactly like what fits me. I can be me in this space.’ I thought that was awesome.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: When you have success and win, is it a sense of achievement or simply a relief? How does it feel?

LEFTWICH: I think it's both. I think you spend so much time rolling the rock up the hill.  You push the rock and push the rock and push the rock. When you finally get to the top, only to find out that like, you have to roll it back down and start over. 

I think that's a cool thing. You need this resiliency and long-term perseverance to see what comes at the end and be willing to like work through the little things as you go. That's what's so cool. 

The success is awesome, but you wake up the next morning and you start again. All the times at LSU where we'd end up at the World Series and we'd win a couple of games, you end up back at home and next thing you know it's like, ‘okay, the season's over, we had this great year, but now I wanna figure out how to win it.’ What’s next? You start over and I think that's so cool.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: What do you think your coaching style will be?

LEFTWICH: Looking back, I played for four head coaches. I think that's one of the coolest things about me. I never really realized that.

The staff I'm gonna put together is really good at a lot of the things I'm not, so I'm excited about that. I think that, putting people around me that are good at what I'm not, then it allows me to be myself and then still be the boss.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: What is your offensive and defensive approach, meaning what type of style do you want your teams to play?

LEFTWICH: I want to put the best of all of it together. 

I want to hit the ball out of the yard. You can do that here. Our porch is short out there. I think that that matters. I also want to create chaos on offense. I want to steal a lot of bases. I want to lead the league in doubles. I want to do some things like that. When we square the ball up and we have great ball contact and the ball gets outta the yard, awesome. I think that that is important. 

Defensively, we're gonna be one of the better defensive teams in the country. That is a goal for sure. We're gonna hit a lot of home runs, but like, I want to make sure that we're throwing the ball around the field clean and simple. The more you do that, the less opportunity the other team has to score. Then you don't have to hit 12 jacks to win. I would like to be very balanced.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: What's great about Raleigh?

LEFTWICH: Oh my gosh, I don't even know all the things yet, but I got that sell and that kind of sold me too. I was like thinking about getting recruits in and I am 15 minutes from the airport. They're on your campus and they're doing the things. I think the cool thing too, and I don't know the number, somebody said it to me and I was like amazed by it. There are like 80,000 active alumni within the Raleigh area.

I think that's an easy sell. The weather's great. You can be outside for a long time.

I was actually writing an alumni email right now when you walked in. That's what I wanted right away. It's like my third task on the list –to connect with the alumni. There's some disconnect, and I want to do a good job of pulling that all back together. 

It makes you think that, I can take all of this energy and I can put it into my current kids. I can let them see why all these people chose NC State before them. There's a huge group of people that wanna be massive NC State fans and they want to invest in our current players and how easy it is to pull them back in and then put that energy back into your current team. I think that's so important.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: NC State is doing well in the Director’s Cup. What does that tell you about the athletic department and the wherewithal to win with the Wolfpack?

LEFTWICH: You see right away how much they wanna invest in women's athletics and that's exciting. You see all around here like women's tennis, soccer, cross country, and all of these women's programs that are just climbing. You see the investment in women's athletics and then on top of the fact that Raleigh wants to support women's athletics. That's exciting. Yeah, sure, let's be good at football because football is going to pay my bills, but you know, let's win because people care about female athletes, too.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Describe the support you've gotten so far in just a little brief amount of time. Have any of the other coaches contacted you? Any administrators?

LEFTWICH: The moment I accepted the job literally within like 20 minutes, every head coach had texted me and it wasn't just a one-word text. It was like a legit, ‘Hey, this is who I am. We've heard this about you. If you need help with this, this is what my staff is good at, or you name it.’ Every head coach texted me right away. It was awesome because it just made me feel like, okay, like these people care about me because like, they could have just texted like a one-liner like, Hey, congrats, glad you're here. But like, they spent the time to be like, Hey, this is who I am, this is where I'm from, this is what I can help you with. That was so cool. 

Then the administration has been awesome. They're like, ‘We understand that you've never been a head coach and that is like in the back of your brain.’ They're like, ‘We're gonna help you through all of it.’ They're like, ‘You be good at softball and people and we will make sure you're good at the business side of it.’ That was like such a relief to think, ‘Okay these people want me to be successful and they can help me and I can still be good at what I'm good at.’

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: What was the perception of NC State around the country?

LEFTWICH: Everybody's question is always like, ‘Why can't they win there? Why haven't they won there?’ Around the country, everyone wants to know. They have all these great pieces. It's in a great part of the country. You can play outside for almost the whole year. Why haven't they won? Is like, kind of, and so the perception is like if NC State is this like gritty blue-collar like kind of a program, why haven't they done more? And then you see the, you see like Navi kind of put him on the map and then Shawn gets him in this great spot and then there's like a little, there's a little lull in there and like, so I think that, that the perception is, we should be better than we are. People expect us to be better than we are. 

I've known Lisa Navas for a long time. When I came to this interview, I called Navi, right when I left, and asked, ‘What is great about this place? Why?’ And she's like, ‘You should go there.’ She's like, ‘You can win there.’ She was such a great advocate for NC State. It was cool. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Connecting with the high school softball coaches and the travel teams in North Carolina, what's your philosophy on that? 

LEFTWICH: Kids and players that want to stay home and are good enough to play at NC State, I think that matters. I think we should have the best North Carolina kids on our team every year, out of every class. I want to make sure that we're not only are we recruiting those programs, but then in turn through camps and things like that. We're also investing in those programs. Camps are a great moneymaker to supplement my staff salaries. Whatever, but at the same time, the more we grow camps here, the more it grows at NC State.

North Carolina softball, I want to do that right off the bat. We're going to do some free coaching clinics. We're gonna do some things like that. I think because it lets people get to know us, but then if I invest in you as a coach, then you turn around and get to invest in 20 players, that's way more people than I can touch in one camp. 

I want to recruit North Carolina and I want to recruit the whole Carolina area. I think that's important. It just infuses life into your program.

The more that we can keep kids local and the more their parents are in the stands, everyone's happy. People are juiced about what's happening at NC State. I think that's cool. It's going to take me some time to get to know the North Carolina teams, but I want to make sure that we are investing in North Carolina softball as much as possible.

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Do you think you can broaden the recruiting outside of North Carolina with your contacts?

LEFTWICH: Definitely. I mean, the whole East Coast. I have great contacts in Georgia and Florida. I've spent plenty of time in North Carolina, South Carolina. One of our best players at LSU right now is from Franklin, North Carolina. 

I think I can broaden our reach while still trying to stay close to home, too. The east coast has great softball. Texas has a great base and then we'll go west when we need to. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna go get the kids that fit with our culture, like where we're headed, and if that comes from the west coast, then great, but I'm not gonna try and live out there. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: Are you someone who allows yourself to dream about what it will be like to succeed at NC State or do you not like to think that way? 

LEFTWICH: I am a dreamer for sure. 

I think you can't put a timeline on it. I'm going to coach these kids like, we get to do this forever, not like they only have four years to play for me. Like, I'm going to... I wanna put them in positions where they feel free enough to risk doing those things. 

What if I fail? Then we get back up and we do it again the next day. 

INSIDE PACK SPORTS: If you had a message for NC State fans, if you could speak to the fans directly, what would you tell them? 

LEFTWICH: I think we're going to make them proud because we're going to play hard.  I think they're never gonna come to a game and walk away from here and be like, ‘Oh, that was like, that was so boring.’ If they walk away from the game and we lost, they're gonna be like, ‘They played hard.’ I want them to walk away from every game here and be like ‘Holy cow, that team is exciting and they're full of juice and they're fun to watch.’  That's what I want 'em to walk away from this place. 

Eventually, all of that stuff is what puts you in the win column. If we take care of our people, if we love them, if we grow them, if we take care of our work ethic, all those things will stack. By stacking good moments, after good moments, all of a sudden you start to win and win and win. I think that they're gonna walk away and be like, ‘Something's different,’ and something's different because right off the bat the people are different. I think you win with people first, and by winning with them, then we're going to ultimately win softball games.