Hawks’ softball coach is unique— he’s a man
Iowa softball pitching coach Shane Bouman has something that no other Big Ten softball coach does — a Y-chromosome.
Of the 34 paid assistant and head softball coaches in the conference, Bouman is the only male.
In Iowa head coach Gayle Blevins’ 22 years as a Hawkeye, she has had one other male assistant. Rich Calvert, now the head coach at Drake, was an assistant at Iowa from 1997-2002. He led the Bulldogs to a 1-0 victory in Iowa City on Wednesday night.
In softball though, Xs and Ys aren’t nearly as important as Ws and Ks, especially to Bouman.
“It’s not about just hanging out; let’s see if we can have fun,” he said. “Winning is fun to me, winning championships is fun.”
This season, his Hawkeye hurlers are coming through in a big way. Senior Brittany Weil currently has a 22-8 record and a 1.00 ERA. She has thrown three no-hitters plus a perfect game so far this season. Junior Amanda Zust is also putting together a solid season with a 1.74 ERA and a 16-4 record. Weil attributes some of her success to Bouman’s teachings.
“He’s really helped with developing my drop ball, and he’s really been working on focusing in on every pitch and being committed to each pitch,” Weil said. “He really helped both me and Amanda develop as pitchers at this level.”
Having a male coach was not any different for her, Weil said, and she actually had never had a female softball coach until arriving at Iowa.
Bouman got involved with softball at an early age, hanging around the field while his father played competitively. While also playing baseball, he started playing softball seriously as a sophomore in high school in fast-pitch leagues. Male softball was a bigger sport at that time than it is today, he said.
After high school, he had a distinguished football career at South Dakota State University. As a three-year starter at quarterback for the Jackrabbits, Bouman threw for 4,663 yards, eighth in school history. He finished with a 100.72 quarterback rating. Football runs as deep in his family as softball does — brother Todd Bouman is an NFL quarterback with the Baltimore Ravens.
But even while playing on the gridiron, Bouman continued his career on the softball diamond.
“I played all through my college years. We played softball all summer and then tried to train enough so that we were ready for football when it came in the fall,” Bouman said. “I can remember both my junior and senior year at South Dakota State that we went right from the state tournament or from a regional tournament right into fall camp.”
As a pitcher, Bouman was honored as a four-time Amateur Softball Association All-American and a two-time North American Fastpitch Association All-American. His teams competed in five national championships and nine International Softball Congress World Tournaments. He finished with a 532-124 record in a 16-year career.
During his playing days, Bouman clocked out from the rubber between 78-82 mph which from 46 feet, although 3 feet farther than the NCAA women’s distance, appears at least as fast as the hardest throwing major-league pitcher.
“If you’re throwing 80 mph, it’s like 106 in baseball,” Bouman said. “So we can get it there in the air.”
In 2002, Bouman accepted the head softball coaching position at his alma mater. He coached South Dakota State for six seasons before accepting a position at Iowa with eyes set on winning a championship. In 2008, Bouman was also named Iowa’s recruiting coordinator.
While softball may only be a female sport at the NCAA level, Bouman knows his way around the grassless infield of the softball diamond and of course, the pitcher’s circle.
“This game all starts in the circle,” Bouman said.
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