Episode #136: Donnie Danklefsen

🥎🏆 Building Champions the Right Way | Coach Donnie Danklefsen 

What does it take to build a championship program—and sustain it for more than two decades?

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Donnie Danklefsen, Head Softball Coach at Trine University, a 2x NCAA National Champion and one of the most respected program builders in college athletics.

In Part 1, we dive into leadership, culture, and the standards required to win the right way. Coach Donnie shares how he’s led his alma mater through a transition from NAIA to NCAA Division III, built a nationally recognized program, and developed young women through discipline, accountability, and genuine care.

This conversation is about more than wins and titles—it’s about character, development, and significance.

🎙️ Episode Schedule

• Significant Coaching: Fri, Dec 26
• Significant Recruiting (Part 2): Mon, Dec 29 (Final episode of 2025)

👉 Learn more about Coach Donnie and his program:
 https://trinethunder.com/staff-directory/donnie-danklefsen/139

👉 Find recruiting resources, books, podcasts, and more:
 https://coachmattrogers.com/

If you’re a coach, parent, or athlete who cares about doing this the right way—this episode is for you.

🎧 Subscribe, share, and don’t miss Part 2 as we close out 2025 together.

Significant Recruiting Resources — Take the guesswork out of college recruiting with Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes, sport-specific Recruit’s Journals, and the Significant Recruiting Launchpad. Practical tools to help families research schools, stay organized, and build a smarter recruiting strategy. Learn more at CoachMattRogers.com.

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Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. It's hard to believe that we've reached our final guest and our final two episodes of season two. It's truly been an amazing year. I'm incredibly thankful for the 54 powerhouse guests who have shared their experience, wisdom, and passion for coaching, playing, and leading with all of us. After today's episode, our guests will have collectively won 34 College National Championships, along with one Olympic gold medal and one Olympic silver medal. We have been blessed with the wisdom of five Hall of Fame coaches, four university presidents, and another 13 coaches who already have Hall of Fame credentials. It's just a matter of when, not if they're inducted. Every single guest has played a role in changing the lives of thousands of student athletes. All while serving as true stewards of the sports we love. I'm deeply thankful for the 104 coaches, athletes, and leaders who have joined us in thoughtful, impactful conversations. Over our first two seasons, they've inspired me and reshaped how I view coaching and mentoring in ways that are hard to fully explain. I'm a better person because of their kindness and their willingness to share who they are, why they do what they do, and how they do it. To me that is the definition of significance to our listeners. I am so grateful for your commitment to this community. I'm honestly amazed by the analytics. Since moving to the Buzz Sprout platform just 18 months ago, we've had over 17,000 downloads and more than 10,000 streams. We now have listeners in 67 countries, all 50 states, and over 2,180 cities. Those numbers don't even feel real to me. But I'm incredibly thankful for every single one of you who has listened, commented, and shared the podcast with someone else. I wanted to build a community where ideas could be shared with families, athletes, and coaches. And because of your dedication, we've done that and more. Which brings me to our final guest of 2025. If you want to talk about rockstar coaches. Let's talk about Donnie Danson head softball coach at Trying University in Angola, Indiana. Maybe you haven't heard of trying. In 2008, the school changed its name from Tri-State University to trying University in honor of two of their trustees. Since then, it's become one of the top science tech and engineering institutions in the Midwest. And over the last five years, the Thunder Athletics Department has made the nation take notice earning four NCAA national Championships, including two titles in 2023, and again, this past spring in 2025, led by coach Donnie and his softball program. Coach Donny has led his alma mater softball program since 2004, overseeing the transition from NAI to NCAA Division three and building one of the premier programs in the country Along the way, he's won 684 games compared to only 206 losses. That's a 76.9 winning percentage as he enters his 22nd season at the helm. Under his leadership, the thunder have appeared in 16 NCAA regionals, including a remarkable stretch of 12 straight appearances from 2008 to 2019. From those postseason runs, he's earned eight regional titles and six super regional championships. I could talk about his accolades all day, but what stands out most to me is his character, his integrity, and the unwavering commitment he has to mentoring young women using discipline, compassion, and genuine care. He is a true gentleman of the game and another coach I would trust without hesitation to mentor my own son or daughter. He's a future Hall of fame coach, and without question, a Hall of fame human being. Thank you again for listening and for supporting me and the significant coaching and recruiting podcasts I wish all of you a merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanza, or simply happy holidays, however you choose to celebrate this season. I'll look forward to seeing you again in 2026. We already have another outstanding lineup of world-class coaches and leaders scheduled beginning January 2nd. Happy New Year to all of you. I'll be cheering for you. Alright, let's get after it. Here's my conversation with Coach Donnie Danon. Coach Donnie, so great to see you. I told you it seems like every time we text fishing comes up. I know it snowed three days ago. Have you been out fishing in the last couple weeks? We did go out about two weeks ago before the boat got winter ice and just caught a couple nice fish and then put the boat away and good ending. That's great. That's great. You've had such a great run. I wanna talk a little bit just about what's happening at trying, you and I talked about this a little bit beforehand. No national championships before 2023 at the university, right? Yep. Now you've had three in three years. Yeah. It's been crazy. So our president has been here for 23 years, resigned and then stepped down, retired, and then we won, basketball won, and then he came back. Came back for another year or two and we won. So now we gotta be part of one finally. But yeah, we have so much, we have four major projects right now going on campus. We have student research project going on for engineers. We have a 94,000 square foot dome going up right next to baseball softball field that are big enough for two indoor softball field to play games at one time. That's fantastic. We have a new weight room going on into the football stadium. That's gonna be massive almost four times as big one we have right now. And then the campus safety operations building is being doubled in size. So we, and then after that's done, our main athletic building that hosts majority of our teams is all being completely remodeled. That's like a 16 million project that's gonna have new volleyball stuff, all new locker rooms. It's gonna be awesome. It's just the oldest building on campus. So once that is done, every building. Since the original Tri-State University will be rebuilt, redone, no original buildings will be here anymore, so it'll be totally re redone. I told you when I'm I consult and I work with athletic departments and I always spend a lot of time with the president when I'm on campus and I try and talk to them about the fact that when you invest in athletics, what that does for your entire campus with the return on investment is it's so much easier to go to alum or a corporation and go, Hey, we need some help. We need an investment from you. And they can look at what softball's doing. They can look at what basketball's doing and see the national attention you're getting. It's a lot easier to write a check, isn't it? It is. Winning helps everything and they don't understand it's one program. Winning helps all programs eventually start to win. And it's just, it's awesome to watch all of our programs. You hockey's top 10 basketball won Champ, national Champ two years ago, so it's all our programs now are starting to rise to the top and it's awesome to watch everyone have success. I graduated my alma mater is co college. Okay. And any time I tell somebody that, they're like, what the heck are you? Seems like you're missing a word. Co. What? No, it's, the founder was Daniel Co. COE or whatever his name was. Trying doesn't have a national name. It doesn't have a national reputation. How is it that you think all of this is happening outside of hiring the right people? Is there more to it than just. Finding that, that great coaching staff I think it's just a president that really loves that academics, but also really believes in athletics. And we have a really good balance of professors and coaches that work together that want to give the students the best foer experience we can give them. Tri-state, the name Tri-State before we change the trine. Wasn't interesting known for engineering. And anywhere you go in the country engineering world, you say Tri-state or trying, we are nationally known. Yeah. So we have really good out of pulling really good athletes anywhere in the country. Here if they're engineers. So that was one really good thing we've always had. And now our other programs are PA r, pt. I think we'll have nursing in the next three or four years. We're setting that up. Criminal justice education department, and. School of business has grown. So now we're not just known engineering. That's a huge thing we did was we had to make other programs as dominant as engineering. We've done that. So now our name has really grown. And when you had the word tri-state you heard the word state, so Yeah. You thought state school or not. And there was 19 universities in the country. They had the word there were name tri-state. So Ralph and Sherry Trine, who are big donors, had done a lot for university, had donated a lot of money in honor of them. We changed the trine when we did that. We rebranded. We changed our colors and since then, it has just taken off. Our, I think there's 27 new buildings since I graduated here. And our facilities are top notch, our basketball arena. I've never seen that. It looks like a division one arena. It is beautiful. Our facility our softball field is awesome. I mean it's, everything here is top notch and that's so cool. The best robot, I think is our people. There's not anyone on our campus that wouldn't go above and beyond. To do everything can do for a student. And that's why I've always stayed here is because I think the product we're putting out is unique. I don't care if it's two in the morning, four in the morning, any of our employees would get out of bed and go to help a student, and that's just, you don't find that everywhere. And that's why it's always kept me here was it's always about the students first, and I think that's just very unique. Talk a little bit about what that culture was like when you were a student athlete there to where it is now. What does those 25, 30 years look like from you? What's that transition been like for you? It's so much different. We were in AI when I was here, right? There was less than 500 students on campus. Our facilities were terrible. There was no community relations with City Angola. It was just kinda like we're this little thing in here that was, tiny and no one really cared about us. And now, we are really partnering with the community. The community comes to our games. It's just grown so much. And like I said I think it just changed tremendously. The cool thing about, we've grown so much as a university, but what hasn't changed is classroom ratio. The one-on-one attention. You literally, like when I was stupid for saying I was terrible at math and I still am, I feel bad for my two sons 'cause I probably can't help 'em in third and fourth grade and I still can't help 'em, but I remember getting up from class and professor would be like, Hey, can you understand homework today? I was like, oh yeah, I got this. And he is show me. I was like, crap, I'm, I can't do this right. And we sit there for an hour and a half and he would, go through everything with me until I left and, end up getting a pretty good grade. And it was just. That's what made us special Then it's still same thing today. I mean our professors are awesome. And I remember one year, it was the first year ever that the NCA tournament wasn't during, or wasn't after final exams, so it was gonna be final exams. NCA tournament were the same week and it was the year we started six freshmen, right number two in the country and six those freshmen, four engineers. And during finals week, you don't call engineers, you don't look at 'em, you don't even talk to 'em. And I'm thinking, what are we gonna do? There's no way we have a chance to win a re I didn't say a regional with. All these freshmen in exams and all sudden my phone starts ringing emails coming, people knock on my office door. Coach, how do we help you? This could be a year you finally won a national championship. We don't want exams to be a problem. So I said, there's no way we're playing in Whitewater this year. We didn't put a bid in this one year. No way. We leave before, Tuesday or Wednesday, whatever it was, and they put us in a bracket with someone that came play on Sundays because of religious beliefs. So the tournament goes forward a couple days. And so now I'm like, oh, now what we can do now, even earlier. So I decided, hey, we won't practice up there. We'll just stay here. We'll go up late, get there, play the next day. Professors came to me and said, now that's not a good plan for you guys. We'll open up exams on Thursday. We'll open sessions on Thursday. We'll do exams on Friday if you want Saturday or Sunday. And so our kids got extra help on Sunday. Everybody's done with exams. We left Monday morning. We get up there, we get to practice. We set an NCA record with seven home runs at the time, seven home runs in game one. Wow. We win. We win the regional. We're the only team there not taking final exams. We're still in classes, so our kids are relaxed. They're enjoying the free snacks, just playing softball. That's the year the World Series in Oklahoma City. We've gotta go play in that. And I credit to our, our professors, they went outta their way to make sure our kids had the best opportunity to win. And you just don't find that everywhere. No, you don't. We need to scream that message across the country. That's how that relationship should work. Professors want the kids to put academics first. We want that student before the athlete. But when these rare occasions come along, when you get to go do something special and they get to have these life-changing experiences, that's so awesome that there's that collaboration and that care about the kids. There, there's nothing better than that. No. And I'm still to this day, if we don't do that, we're not winning that, that region. Yeah. No way. Coach, go back to when you started. Could you even imagine back then it's been what, 22 years? 23, yeah. 22nd year. Yeah. Can you even imagine the program that you have today? What were your thoughts back then when you took over this program? To put in perspective, I remember we won our alumni game in the fall and our kids were ecstatic. And I'm like, I remember asking 'em about the game why are we so excited? Last year that they beat us really bad. I said that alumni team beat you guys really bad. Two of 'em were pregnant, three of 'em were over 40 years old. I said, they beat you guys last year. And they said, yeah. And the ad was like, high five me. I'm like, wait we can't be celebrating this. That's not even a, that's not even a team. Like they, and so I knew right away we had some work to do. So from that moment till now, no, I never envisioned this. My vision was for us to become a team for us to. Set a standard to, to get better to create a culture where kids came in expecting to win, right? And just kinda lead them what hard work was and show them that, you can come in expecting to, to be victorious. And it went a lot faster than I expected. But we had a great senior class. I had a great freshman class. That first class came in. Was really a great class of kids that just wanted to win. And in three years we happened to win our first comp recital. We're still on probation from NAI to D three, so we couldn't go to the NC tournament and remember thinking, man, we might never do this again. That might've been the one time we ever went a conference recital. And what if that's it? Obviously, we were fortunate enough to do it a couple more times, but no. I believed in hard work. I believe we could eventually get to some point where we were, recognized. But often on the day we used to make phone calls and used to have to call, 500 kids to get 10. And I remember saying Hey, is Lindsay there? And you hear Lindsay in the back go, who try Tristate and hear him say, tell 'em I'm not home. And over again who, what white university? And if you could count the emails now we get compared to then and the phone calls it's. It's so much different now. It's never easy, but it's definitely changed a lot when you're in the mix of it like you've been for 22 years. And for anybody that's never coaches college level, it's hard to explain what we do as college coaches. Yeah. That it never really ends. If you get to go on a, get on a boat and fish for a couple hours or have a day where you get to be away or you get to go golf or a day where your phone isn't ringing it's really rare. When you look back, can you go up to 30,000 feet and go, these are some of the things I decided to do. These are the, some of the choices I made 20 some years ago that became the building block of where we're at today. Yeah, there's a couple stories that are good and bad. I remember that changed our program. Remember we had. Player of the year, and she was a senior. We were doing some dumb communication drill. And it wasn't even a hard drill, just they weren't communicating very well. And I thought that was something we had to do better. So we were doing it and they weren't doing a very good job with it. And I got frustrated with 'em and said, okay, take a couple laps. And they come around and I'll never forget the upperclassmen stopped and all the freshmen that my first recruiting class kept going and. Eventually the freshmen stopped. They wanted the we don't have captains never had captains. I don't think we're Dr. We're now driving boats. We don't need leaders. And leaders emerge. I've always thought that. So the leader goes, I don't understand why we're running. And I said, you don't have to understand. The comment was made to condition because you weren't doing well in the drill. I don't think we should have to run. I remember I walked in the dugout and I asked her is this your bag? Yes. Is this your bat? Yes. Is this your, I put everything in the bag and I walked out the dugout and we had back in the old field that was, a very poor rec league field. And I just chucked it over my head, over the dugout and I said, you can go get your bag. You're done. Your career has ended. Anyone else wanna question why we're running? And they all took off running. And a couple days later she came back to my office and apologized and she ended up being a player of the year and was in a great career. Now we get along really well but I think that was a big moment for our program. They understood that, we were gonna do things one way and it wasn't always gonna be their way. And once they got to a certain point, yes, it was gonna be their team, but they weren't there yet. Yeah. I think that was a big moment in our culture that they understood that it was gonna be a certain way until they were ready. Yeah. That's the way I coached. I think it's so important for kids to understand that, you're gonna get a job at some point and you're gonna be at the bottom of the totem pole. Yep. And if you want to get more money, if you want to get that pay raise than that, that accelerator that lets you have a better title, you've gotta earn. That you understand what you're doing, that you can be a part of that community, that you can be really good at what you do, and then you start having a voice and you start having the opportunity to lead. Can you do that today? Can you still coach that way? Yeah, I think you can. I think the biggest thing we have to do is make sure that we're not asking anything. We haven't done. So we can't sit up in the press box and ask 'em to, break the field. We can't ask them. We have to be down there with them. Yeah. Think that's the biggest thing, coaches that we have to make sure we're understanding that, we can't have, hey, go pick up trash on the field if we're not doing it with them. I think that's one thing our staff does really well, is all the things that we want done, we're doing with them. I think we have to maybe choose our words more wisely. These years maybe explain things more thoroughly than we used to have to do. And maybe just have more one-on-one with. Witnesses than we used to have to do. But you can still be hard love as long as you tell 'em, Hey, I love you and you know that, but my job is prepare you for life and my job is to get you ready. And if I don't do that, then I'm doing an injustice to you to help you grow as a person. And I got something that we do pretty well here is I would tell 'em, Hey, if you don't love this game, don't play here. You don't have passion to be pushed in every aspect of life. Don't play here. I don't want your best on the field, but you're average in the classroom, right? I want your best, everything you do. And if you can't only do that, then don't play here. But if you do that, when you leave here, you're gonna be a better person and you're gonna have a job someday, and you're acting like your boss. I'm gonna teach you one day that we're gonna put you in situations where you're gonna fail. I'm gonna teach you how to handle those situations. When you get in the real world, it doesn't cost you a mortgage. You can't pay, or a car payment. You can't pay because you got mad and blew up. So yeah, I'm not gonna be your best friend. I'm gonna be someone you don't like at times on purpose to prepare you for those life situations. I had to let go of my best player 19, 18 years ago, and it wasn't my choice. I gave it to the team, and the team's the one that said, Hey, you're not doing the way we wanted you to do it. We've given you choices and we don't want you to be part of this team anymore. It seems like today it's getting harder and harder for coaches to press their best players and say, Hey, you have to be the most responsible person. Excuse me. You have to be the hardest worker. You have to be the most committed person. Do you feel like that's where we're losing a little bit across the board from a coaching perspective when we're afraid to challenge those top kids? Yeah, I think that's it's definitely trending that direction. I think you'd look at the elite teams and the teams that are continuously winning. They're blessed with kids that still have that. Last year our team was we were really lucky that our best players, top to bottom were the hardest working. We had some kids that were just tremendous showed up, got everything ready. You say whatever you want to say to 'em, they were just that kit and we had a whole bunch of them and we could change the line up. We can, didn't matter how hard we worked them, they just begged for more. And that's what separated them. And a reason they had the sixth highest GP in the country last year. That's great. And they're pretty successful. Because they were just that kid. Yeah. And if not, they get weed out here pretty quickly. What do you expect from your upperclassmen in terms of the mentoring that they do with your newcomers? What, what does that look like when a new kid comes in? I think it's passed down from year to year. I basically, hey, I ask him, as a freshman. What'd you like, what you didn't like from your upperclassmen? And they, they give that long answer. Then you know exactly how you should treat them. And they kinda look at you like, you just tricked me. But it's not a trick. It's if you didn't like how you were treated, then treat them the way you wanted to be treated. It's a simple, goes back a hundred years. And then it's just about treatment of respect. We don't, we do not have a lot of rules here. I don't have this big rule sheet we hand out. It's basically you are an adult, we're gonna treat you like an adult. We don't do bed checks. We don't do room checks. I'm gonna trust you a hundred percent until I can, people ask, GPA wise, do you have study tables? No. Five years ago we dropped study tables. Our GPA has been the highest every single year since that because we, it's let kids be, be adults. And luckily it's worked out for us, but we have, we call the Ubuntu groups and it's basically accountability group where we pick 7, 8, 9, 10 leaders, whatever it is, and they have two or three kids underneath them. And it's their job to mentor those kids and keep an eye on those kids. And let's say you, me and one person in our group and you make the dean's list, you get so many points. But if I make it and other group make makes it, we get more points. If we could do community service, we get points, we take another group with us, it doubles, take another group, it doubles. So it's all about relationships and accountability. And at the end, somebody wins the Ubuntu Cup and it's all, it is like a shirt or t-shirt they get to make. And you think that things like, pot of gold. It's competition and it's creating relationships. Love it. Really, that's all it's about in our game in life, is creating relationships where you can create accountability. You can create something you, you trust. And I always tell 'em, if you have a test two weeks from now, a month from now, and you don't study one time, you go funk that test. Are you upset about it? Not really, because you didn't really study, you didn't prepare. But if you study every day for that test for four hours, three hours, and then you flunk that test. It hurts, right? It takes some pride out. It you, it hurts right down deep in your soul. And that's why in this game, you've gotta prepare. You've gotta create those relationships. When you fail, now you're upside people that you care about. That's a different kind of failure. Yeah. It's powerful. It's empowering the way you would hope a program would be. I love that, that there, there's so many good things in there, coach. You've won two national championships now. Has it changed you? Have you felt differently in terms of your confidence in I'd say changed me, hopefully not for who I am as a person, but confidence wise, yes. Hopefully people, I say always about my players always been about them, not me. But this last one was really special for me because when we get there, if you look at the teams that were there, all those coaches, majority of 'em are. Gonna be in the Hall of Fame or r It's amazing. Yeah. And I'm like, this is some of the biggest names in D three softball. Yeah. And the cool thing was a lot of us ate breakfast or spent time together just talking about families and life and there were no egos in this group. And it was like, it really taught me like, wow, these guys are the upper echelon, these female coaches, male coaches, all of them, and everyone got along so well. And then I thought, man, we can win this. Like that kind of puts you. At the top for a little while, just from a, personal standpoint of, hey, we belong. And you always kinda watch, some of these guys warm up and you wonder, Hey, is my warm good enough? Is our practice plans good enough? Is our way good enough? And after we won that one, my wife looking and she goes, Hey, your way is good enough. You just beat all these coaches that you always, you look up to. And so maybe now you can look in the mirror and see a little more, you do belong. 'cause I always go back and say I'm a basketball guy coaching softball. Yeah. This was never supposed to be my plan. I was supposed to be a college basketball coach and luckily I fell into this and I wouldn't change it for the world now, but, so yeah, from a personal standpoint, yes. This one really helped my confidence that you know that I am a softball coach and this is our way is good enough. That's so cool. I've become friends with Brandon Elliot and Wade Wilson and, all you guys, the love that you have for your kids and your desire to do it the right way and the respect that you all have for each other, it's really, it makes me miss coaching probably more than anything else. Because it's those relationships you have with your, the coaching staff across the hall, the football coach, the track coach, the soccer coach, the guys and gals in your league that you get to be close with. 'cause you, because you, you respect each other. 'cause very few people understand what you're going through. So for me that's so cool. Where. Division three softball is right now. It's in such good hands with coaches like you because you care about doing it right. You care about that Division III philosophy that we all grew up with and you, and maintaining that mission. So I love that right now it's my opinion. D three is the purest sport form left. Agree. There's no, there's some NIL stuff trickling in, but it's. Kids are playing why they love the game. Yeah. And it's about academics. It's about culture, it's about a lot of things. We tell all our kids this. Hey, priority list of trying is the Lord, family education, softball. Yeah. Yeah. And number four, we'll never top the top three. Yeah. This week we had a kid that called to, Hey, I know we have weights, we have stuff going on, but my dog had a stroke. Can I go home? We're gonna put down, can I be there? Absolutely. Yeah. You need to way home. We'll get you home. Nope. I got my dad's coming to get me. Okay. That's what life should be about. It's softball's a small part of our life. It should never trump a lot of things. It doesn't, it's bad that it gets mixed up a lot. Yeah. Let's talk about club a little bit. 'Cause there's so many good things about club softball and there's so many exciting things. It's, it's, so many kids have been able to kinda live a dream and play against great players and play everywhere across the country. And, a kid in Arizona might become friends with a kid in Ohio because they've seen so many, they've been to so many tournaments together. Are there things about club that you wish club directors would reevaluate? Yes. Loaded question. Yeah. You set me up here. I wish fall ball would be more regulated. It used to be one or two main tournaments and then kids actually were allowed to come to camps so we could see them. And now as well, I can't come to camp. I have fall football, but you're playing six weekends. So now they're missing home football games. They're missing volleyball tournaments. I had a kid that was, do I play my regional volleyball tournament? Or I go to a fall ball tournament and I'm like, that drives you crazy. What are you even thinking about? You go to high school, right? Or maybe go play a fall ball. I'm not gonna play a fall sports so I can play travel. No, you represent your high school. And the bad thing is it comes down to the money aspect of travel softball. So no, I wish there was less, less fall ball. I wish kids had a little more time to be kids. Yeah, because. They get through that and they get to the college level and now they have a little more freedom at times and they realize, oh, I kinda like that. And they're burnout. And you're seeing more burnout than you are 10 years ago because travel ball's taken so much more time than it used to. Is it important? Yes. I coach doing a good job parenting. Yes. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying it needs to be put back into place where it used to be 10, 15 years ago. And that's my only concern with division three because now it's really gotten bigger. You have more time in the fall with your girls than you'd had before, but there's still that break where you can't be with them. You can't be on the field, you can't be scheduling, hitting, and throwing. And I think that's what I see missing in, in travel ball too, is I'd love for there just to be that break for those kids if they want to be a volleyball player. They can do that from August to November, and they can be that Multisport athlete. Is the genie outta the bottle? Can we go backwards and fix some of this or do we have to deal with what's in front of us? I don't know. Because it mean like city of trail ball coaches now that realize they can make showcases and they can bring in big names and they can make money. So it's just, it's. They're not actually having tournaments, but now they're having these little showcases and these things. So it's, again it's getting harder to line things up and it's taking more time from the kids and Yeah, I dunno, it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Yeah, I wish there was more deadlines. Tracks me up is they're playing tournaments when D ones are in their, the blackout period, they can't come out, but you're still have all these tournaments, so who are you playing for? Because no offense, you're not playing for us. The young kids aren't. So it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard not to say you're doing this just for cash. Yeah. It's all profit. Prove to me that it's not profit. That's my point of it. We're gonna get into recruiting in the second segment, but I'm really interested in just your philosophy on program building. When you look at your roster at the end of every spring. What are you thinking about for the next 12 months and how you're going about saying, all right, we're graduating these six, seven kids. What is your plan of attack and strategizing that next team? Obviously pitcher's a pitcher. Catcher's a catcher. And then after that, really don't say, I need a, I need this, I need that position. We start with, Hey, we need athletes. Yeah. If you look at, you mentioned Brandon and Wade, they have a different philosophy than we do. Yeah. They're all about speed. They're all about stealing bases and we're not actually last year we were top 20, which is high as we've ever been. We're about hitting the ball hitting the ball a long ways. We basically go try to find the best five, six hitters we can bring in and worry about where they stand later. And if we steal a base, we steal a base. I think Wade and I have argued every year about, can you win at D three level by hitting the ball outta the park? Yeah. Yeah. And I say you can, he says you can't. And so it's always a fun argument 'cause we have two different, total different styles. I go out, I'm just trying to find the next big hitter. Yeah. My pitching coach is out trying to find the next pitcher, my outfield coach, trying to find his outfielders. But I just want athletes. Yeah. We go back to that first team and we could hit 10 bulls off the wall. They would've been singles because we were just so slow and we weren't very athletic. And so I think you go find your best athletes and then you figure out where they play and how they work together from there. And you play your best nine hitters, and then you get deep into the game and you put your best defensive players to finish and you go from there. Yeah. And that's what we've always done. And so you have to get kids that buy into your system. And I have crossed more kids off my list in warmups than I have in games. I can relate to that if you can't warm up for a game, preparing yourself to go. I don't want you true story. I drove four hours to watch the state finals. This is a long time. This, we weren't be very good when I did this. And a kid warming up and she had all kinds of big offers, but she was an engineer. We had a really good chance at her and she literally warm for the state finals. And this is back when the state finals were on the same day. So there's two games going on and she's warming up, pulls her phone out and is texting. I didn't even watch the game. I crossed her off my list, went to the other game. I didn't even talk to her. Went home, she calls and said, coach, I didn't see you. And I said I watched you warm up and I saw you on your phone. Did mom and dad get a car accident and things? No. They were there. I was just texting a friend. Okay. And I said, I'm no longer interested. And she ended up going to a good, decent D one. And guess what? She quit and were kicked off or something. Didn't last. Of course. Yeah. So I'll walk through a park and if somebody I just hear warming up correctly just being loud and being excited, I'll stop and watch warm up and then I'll watch 'em play. Yeah. 'Cause if I hear you being excited and see your feet move and see your glove being active Yep. It gets me fired up to watch you play and I'm just gonna watch you play. Yep. And so again, passion, athletic, athleticism, someone that loves the game. Someone I wanna be around. Yeah. I'm probably gonna watch you play and then see where you go from there. That's cool. Yeah. I think if you've been coaching long enough, you, everybody has that story about that kid. You're like, I went out of my way to come watch you play. Yeah. And you couldn't even prepare properly before the game started. What makes you think I'm gonna be excited about recruiting you? My other big one is if you're in the dugout and you yell back to mom and dad, mom, I need a Gatorade. I need here please. I need here a thank you. And the cooler is 20 feet away, right? You can walk out and get your own Gatorade. And that's a big one I've crossed more kids off for too. One funny story is we had this kid coming in and she was, we don't have a lot of slappers, but I mean she, and she was a fast, tiny little slapper. Mom was even smaller and she got that giant. Cart, right? It's got, four chairs in the big cooler and it's got fans and it's massive. It looks like the Grinch stole Christmas, right? With all the Christmas presents in it and mom's pulling it. And I said, come here. I said, I'm gonna see you the next two weekends, and if I see mom touch that cart or wagon one more time, I'm not taking you what? I said, whose stuff is that? It's all mine. I said, then you should be pulling it. So moving day comes and mom's coach, big hug. I didn't unload it. I didn't unload it. I didn't carry it the whole summer. I never touched it. It was awesome. Thank you. So my back felt so much better and the kid was like, I get it now, coach. It makes sense. So just little things like that just you know. Set me off that kids can do more than they think and that's part of our job is to make 'em do those things. That's right. Yeah. They really should change our name. It should be life coach. Yeah, or head softball and life coach. So yeah, those are the things that I want families to understand. There's so many great people in our world of sports. That care about what you look like when you're 22, who you are when you're 23, what your self-worth is, that, you have a work ethic and you believe in that work ethic. So I, I love all those things, coach. I could hear those stories all day long and it would just make my heart grow bigger. Talk a little bit about your staff and how you use your staff. What are your expectations of your staff and how do they help you get from point A to point B every year? I've been really blessed to have, I had the same staff for 12 years straight. Wow, that's great. Which is, very uncommon, unheard of D three world where neither of 'em are getting paid, hardly anything. I've had Coach Smith now for 16 years. He was he's an Iowa guy. From Dubuque he was at, he helped at Lower played men's Fast fish in Iowa for many years. So he is, got all kinds of stories about playing against some pretty big names out there. Wow. And then moved to Indiana a long time ago. I was an IPFW for many years and then came up here. And luckily he didn't tell me he was a Lakers fan. I probably wouldn't have hired him being a Celtics fan. But he's awesome. He's older now, but just you couldn't ask for a more dedicated guy and really knows his stuff. He's had our pitching staff in the top five in almost every category now for the last 10 years. Just the girls love him. Good example was the girls windows, his house last year, the pitching staff and stole his recliner and put it in the gym as a joke, and they stole all his, like all his left shoe and he thought it was me. So he stole all my right shoes. But they just, they pick out like crazy and like just really respect the guy. He's really awesome what he does. So honestly, when it comes to pitching, I do nothing. I let him pick out who he wants, he recruits who he wants, he has a hundred percent responsibility for all that. Now, he will ask, who do you wanna pitch or you wanna make a change? But I do not go in that lane at all. Like I have full faith in what he does. I'll go out and watch them and give my input and try to close the deal as the head coach, but that's all him. Last night at one o'clock my phone will beep and literally it's him. Hey, wow, this kid in the port. Wow. This kid, wow, this kid like him. He just, he lives and breathes softball. Can you imagine doing that as a basketball coach? If you were a basketball coach? Yeah. That that that's what's amazing to me. I can't tell you how many softball coaches I've talked to in the last couple years that have told me that same story. That their pit pitching coach takes care of the pitching. I love that. That's so empowering too. I think that's one thing a lot of coaches don't do as well as they could have is Yeah. You, if you hire 'em, you've gotta let them do their job. Yeah. You've gotta, you gotta put faith in them and trust them to do the right thing. Yeah. So I really try to stay in my own area. Coach Houston is new. He came in last year, so actually went down a convention last year and needed a new assistant coach. Met him there. And then he came in a semester from an a i in Florida and is up and packed up and came in. I called him on the phone, I hired him. I said, Hey, hello. I said, you ready? Win National championship. And he, I came, say his answer out loud. And he got on a plane a couple days later or drove up actually a couple days later and moved in and, it's been great. So he works with the outfielders and helps me with hitting. And same thing, like I basically, Hey guys, these four days we're gonna split for an hour. Outfield plans all yours. You don't have to tell him, you don't have, first couple days I wanna kinda show me what he was doing. Just didn't really know him as well. But now I'll be in year two. I don't, I'm not gonna ask him to show me his plan, I trust you. Here's your hour. Go do your thing. Yeah. But basically every weekend, but 4th of July, we're on the road out recruiting. I refuse to get the 4th of July up. That's a lake weekend, that's a family weekend. I tell my staff, you're not going out. If you want to, you can, but you're never gonna be required to. I think you should be on a boat with your family having a good time. Yeah. That's what I'm gonna be doing. So I don't think there's one female. Coach in the country that coaches a male sport, but it's very prevalent on the women's side. Having male coaches, and you just talked about three male coaches on your staff. How is that for you? And is there ever that need where, gosh, I wish I had a female assistant that was with us. I've always had a head. My, my head assistant was always a female until this year. Okay. So it's always been a female. Okay. We do have two volunteer female assistants on staff. Actually I was looking for a female, but at semester. Coach Houston was by far the better candidate. And I was really proud of my kids that I know they wanted a female assistant. Yeah. And they actually went and made a list of, pros and cons and they said, Hey, we want a female, but right now he's a better candidate. And I agree. And so we went, my ad said, Hey, you gotta hire the better candidate. Good. But yeah, we do have the two, two female on staff that are volunteers. So we do have the female side them to go to and can find and have that around. Nice. So that's very important. The girls need to have that. I definitely agree with that. Do they travel with you? They do, yes. Oh, that's nice. And our trainers are female. She's did everything too. So they have her as well. When I coach women's basketball after I coach men for 15 years. And it was just so hard to find a female assistant that wanted to work that many hours for 1500 bucks. Yeah. It's such a challenge. It's really cool when you have a family of coaches that all play a role and. The girls are empowered to help you find those people, so that's really cool too. I had Coach Harvey for 12 years now at Franklin College as a head coach. That's great. That was a great, her and Coach Smith that many years was an awesome convo. Yeah, that's it's, it just, it changes everything When you have that balance across the board when that there's all those different people that can handle all the things that go on for any team. It doesn't matter if it's men or women. I wanna do a little rapid fire with you, coach. Just do some fun stuff, get to know you a little bit better and just give you a chance to talk about your love of the game. You talked about the second national championship. Did one feel bigger for you? Did one have a different, did one resonate different? The first one was we lost the first game like 11 to four. We played eight games in seven days. It was a totally different to the gauntlet. We took the hardest path possible. Lost the first game of the final series in a walk off in or in the seventh inning. So mean it was, we had to win two in the last day. The second one we went undefeated and one game was extra innings, but on that we're in ahead most of the time. So it was totally different feeling the first one took off running around like crazy, man, just, lost my mind. And the second one, I literally just came outta the dugout and just started crying and went to one knee. And then my son tackled me. But it just, totally different feeling. That's correct. More appreciative, more just can't believe this happened again. I get to, just felt wow, blessed to experience this twice. Yeah. That's so cool. Think you appreciate it, knowing how hard it's to do once. You got to do it twice is just an amazing feeling. Do you have all that on film? The end of each of those games? Yes. Yep. There's some great moments picking up my kids and my son. Oh gosh. The rule is they can't come on the field for till 20 minutes or whatever it is, but they said he was too cute and he ran right by him. And so I bent down. When I was bent on a one knee, I was crying and all of a sudden I just feel this big on my head and I see these two crocs. And I'm, I grab his ankles and spin 'em around. Damn. We did it. We did. And it's, oh, that's so great. Moments. A 9-year-old and 8-year-old belt. I'll never forget that, how cool it was to share that moment with him. That's so awesome that's the video you show at graduation and at their wedding, that's really cool. What's one word, your players, would you des describe your coaching style? I would say passionate. Yeah, I that's obvious. More fun to coach. A gritty one. Oh, pitchers dual or a come from behind. Offensive explosion. One. Oh, gritty. Why is that? I just think that's more, it's more intense. I just think I like defensive battles. Yeah. I just think, a game that's one to zero is more fun to be involved. And that's game that's. Offense. Offense. I love offense. Yeah. But I think those games will lock you in. Each possession counts, each pitch counts. I think it's more mentally taxing on you, and it's more challenging. We, we, we got that World Series this year, didn't we? Yeah. Every game. Holy shoulda. Yeah, I agree with you. There more, more strategy comes into it more. Absolutely. Yeah. You, it's been a long time since you've gotten to see coaches win and lose games like they did, and a lot of good coaching. What's the most underrated skill at championship level softball? Probably matchups like substitution, pinch hitting change in what, maybe what got you there and not being stubborn based on, yeah. We had a kid that we changed out after Game one, the World Series this year, and played a kid that hadn't hit all your Long Force. And just had a gut to go with her. And she ends up hitting two home runs and play great defense. And she, had one home run her whole career and it was like a point something batting average. I'll never forget. And she hit the first one against Linfield. I'll admit it, I was crying like a baby. Just because that kid, those kids don't usually get to that point because they quit. They don't get what they want. And you got a senior that never complained, worked hard, she could do every year, and just did her job. And her reward is, it gets a start. Four games, the World Series hits two big home runs and Rob's a home run and played great. And those moments are what kind of keeps you doing this and makes you just love this job even more when you see those kids get to experience and her joy come around second base. I'll never forget that. That's awesome. She's a gamer. She showed it. Yeah. I love if ESPN made a documentary of trying softball, what would the title be? That's a great question. I don't know if I have an answer for that. Something with passion maybe. I don't know. That's a great question. I'll have to come back to that one. Yeah. There, there's so many ways you can go with your program. You've got your, you've got your engineers, your superstar students. You've got this culture that you've built from scratch basically. So there, there's a lot of ways you can go. What's one characteristic? Every recruit who wants to play for you must have must love the game and be hardworking. Yeah. Yeah, coach, thanks for doing this. It's it's been a pleasure getting to know you. It's obvious that this is a calling for you and I'm so happy for trying that they have somebody like you in the, in this leadership role. And I'm excited to watch what you do for the next 20 years. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you on the show. And that's a wrap of part one of my conversation with Coach Donnie Danson. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, just wait because part two is where we take you deep into recruiting, and it might be one of the most important conversations we've had all year for families trying to navigate this journey the right way. Coach Donny breaks down recruiting with rare honesty and clarity. He talks about what really matters at the Division three level, starting with GPA, because as he says, the academic side is bigger than most athletes ever realize, and it directly impacts admission and financial packaging. His line says it all. We care more about our kids', GPA than their ERA and their happiness more than whether they can win us a ball game. Part two is also special because it will be the final episode of 2025, our season finale. So I want you to come back and finish this year with us the right way. Thank you again for listening, sharing and being a part of this community. It means more than you know. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.