BY WILSON BLAKEMAN – STAFF WRITER
“I will tell you: I went down to Melton’s Deli the other day and they knew my name. I got all kinds of excited about that!”
New Centre Softball Coach Tori Brown is new to Danville, but is no stranger to small-town living. Growing up in Harrison, OH just outside of Cincinnati and earning her bachelors from Valparaiso just outside of Chicago, she says her life has been lived in a series of towns a few minutes away from big cities.
While Coach Brown is excited about the Softball Colonel’s potential on the field, returning an experienced corps of upperclassmen and a group of talented first-years, she also has great expectations of her student-athletes in the community.
As a member of Centre Athletics’ external relations, Coach Brown combines her jobs of winning on the field with winning in the community. With several free softball clinics and other community service activities in the works, she hopes to make a positive difference in Danville while developing her student-athletes into service-minded individuals.
Coach Brown comes into her first head coaching job at Centre after four successful seasons of assistant coaching at Ohio Wesleyan University. As an outfield coach, her Battling Bishops posted a .973 fielding average. As a hitting coach, Ohio Wesleyan batted .310. Becoming the new coach for a successful squad in the Colonels has her excited to take the program to new heights.
In the 2017 season, the Colonels finished with a 24-19 record falling to Hendrix in the Conference Semifinals.
“We had a great season last year, and we’re all happy about that, but we want more.”
Coach Brown also says that the Colonels have adjusted well to the change in coaching, and that the team culture is positive, super competitive, and familial.
“I’m definitely becoming a part of the Centre family… a team who doesn’t have a non-competitive bone in their bodies.”
There is no doubt that Coach Brown and her team are training hard in the fall, eagerly waiting for the spring season, and another great year of Centre Softball.