Murphy seeing success at Alabama
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO
Alabama pitcher Lauren Sewell, right, talks with coach Patrick Murphy, left, between innings of a Women’s College World Series game against Florida in Oklahoma City, Sunday, June 5, 2011. Florida won 16-2 in five innings.
By DAVID MERRILL
Sports reporter
Patrick Murphy may be the center of the college softball coaching world now, or at least close to it, but that wasn’t always the case.
Murphy, who was the interim coach for Northwest Missouri State University’s softball team for the 1995 season, just finished his 19th season as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Murphy, a Fayette, Iowa native, credits his four months in Maryville for helping him get the job.
“If it wasn’t for my time there, I likely wouldn’t be where I am now,” he said. “Northwest is in the perfect location for recruiting. It’s close to Kansas City, Omaha, and towns in Iowa. There are a lot of good softball players that tend to get overlooked in Iowa.”
Murphy took over the Bearcat softball program in 1995 after Gayla Steenbergen left to take another position. Steenbergen coached Northwest from 1982 until 1994.
Murphy used his one season to go 28-20 with two of those wins coming over then-MIAA powerhouse Missouri Southern. The Lions were 45-8 that season and made the Division II playoffs.
“Those two wins over Missouri Southern were big for our program,” said Jim Redd, who was Director of Athletics at that time. “It showed that our program could get over the hump and go on to the next level.”
At that time, to become a coach on more than an interim basis, you had to have a master’s degree in physical education, which Murphy didn’t have. If he had taken a different route academically, he said things might have been different.
“If I had that degree, I might still be there, or I would have at least stayed a lot longer,” he said. “That just wasn’t the case.”
Murphy, who played baseball for Fayette High School, did attained his undergraduate degree in history from Northern Iowa with a minor in Mass Communications.
He coached little league while at Northern Iowa then, upon graduation, spent his grad school years at Louisiana-Lafayette, which was Southwestern Louisiana at the time, where he helped coach the softball team. He quickly moved to assistant coach and helped guide the Ragin Cajun program to a record of 234-96 over five seasons, including a 1993 trip to the Women’s College World Series. Alyson Habetz, who is now his associate head coach at Alabama, was key cog on that Lafayette team.
Murphy then made the one-season stop in Maryville before an assistant coaching position game open at Alabama.
Alabama, like all other Southeastern Conference schools at the time, were in their first years of playing competitive fastpitch softball.
Essentially, Murphy’s reputation as one of the best pitching coaches in the game as well as the opportunity to get in the SEC early helped him secure a spot as an assistant coach. It was a job he applied for on Redd’s encouragement and insistence.
Murphy took over the head coaching position in July of 1998 to coach the 1999 season when Kalum Haack decided to retire.
In his first season, Murphy led the team to a 39-26 record and a trip to the NCAA national tournament.
The next season, he took them to the Women’s College World Series for the first time and that 2000 team won a school-record 66 games and finished in the Top 10 in the country for the first time in school history.
As of the end of the 2017 season, which ended at the hands of Florida in the NCAA Super Regionals Tournament, Murphy has one national title to his name (2012) and has made 11 trips to the WCWS, won five SEC regular season titles, five SEC Tournament titles, and has made the NCAA Tournament every year he has been head coach.
The Super regional round was introduced to the NCAA Tournament in 2005, and Alabama is the only team in the country to make all 12 of them. The Crimson Tide have won nine of them.
The team’s 2012 national championship season ended with a 60-8 record and a win over Oklahoma for the title. He helped the Tide become the first SEC team to win a national title.
It almost didn’t happen. Murphy agreed to become Louisiana State’s head coach for the 2011 season, but changed is mind two days later, citing a change of heart.
One of his favorite parts about coaching softball at Alabama it is one of those examples of a sports program being a family.
“I know every player who I’ve ever coached, what they’re doing now, if they’re married, how many kids the have, and all that good stuff,” he said. “The atmosphere around the program here is amazing.”
During last season’s anniversary celebration, all of his alumni from the past 20 teams showed up and presented Habetz with a trip to Rome and Murphy with a trip to Ireland as gesture of appreciation.
“I just remember being pulled out to the mound and they start playing this Irish jig music and I was like ‘Are you serious? They gave me this gold helmet with a bunch of gold-wrapped chocolate to go with the plane tickets and everything. The whole trip was paid for. It was one of the coolest moments in my career.”
Another one came this past season when fans packed the stadium for a three-game series against rival Auburn. The Crimson Tide sold out all three games of the series and filled the 4,015-seat stadium to capacity. It marked the first time in his career that the team sold out three straight games.
The growing crowds, however, weren’t anything new.
In 2009, the Bama softball faithful broke the national single-season attendance record formerly held by Fresno State. In 2010, the season total rose to 80,690 and more than 68,000 more watched in 2011.
Murphy’s career mark now sits at 988-272. Counting his 28 wins at Northwest, he is one of 23 NCAA softball coaches to win 1,000 games or more.
