Sedgwick, Brent have Lady Bulldogs ready for rematch with Poteet

As soon as Lindsey Post got over the disappointment of last year’s 2-1 state semifinal loss to Denton Ryan, she began to ponder the possibilities of what might be in store for her senior.

Returning six starters from it’s the most successful team in school history, the star second baseman had a feeling the drive and disappointment from an early exit at the state tournament would motivate her and her teammates into 2008. A week later, though, Post and her parents weren’t so sure.

“I was at home and my parents got an email,” she said. “[Former head coach Debbie] Evans had sent out a really long email saying she wasn’t going to come back.”

Evans, the only head softball coach in the history of North was stepping down to take an assistant’s position at Allen. For Post, this meant losing the only coach she had known in her three years of varsity softball.

“I was a little concerned,” Post said. “We had a pretty good thing going for us, and I was worried that everything was about to change. We had just got done with a trip to state, and we had all the momentum going into the next season. Now we had to get a new coach.”

The change really hit home a weeks later when Dan Sedgwick was announced as the program’s second leader. Not only were the Lady Bulldogs going to have a new coach, but the new person would be a man from Franklin, a school just outside of San Antonio.

Sedgwick knew his new players would be worried about the change that was coming, but reassured his veterans that he had no intention of trying to get away from the things that has led North to what is now seven-consecutive postseason appearances.

“I think they understood I wasn’t going to change a lot as soon as I got here,” Sedgwick said. “The biggest change was that I was here. Me coming in and changing everything that they were doing would have been foolish. My God, they went to the state tournament last year.”

The main obstacle for Sedgwick was inheriting a roster of players that had never played for a male coach at the high school level. He knew quite well the difficulties of coaching a girls team after writing a dissertation on the situation in a gender studies class at the University of Texas at San Antonio. To maintain a level of stability, Sedgwick turned to assistant coach Laura Brent, who had served under Evans during North’s run to the state tournament.

“There isn’t anything that I can do to change the fact that I’m a man, and that’s where Coach Brent comes in,” Sedgwick said. “A lot of times I’ll get Coach Brent and let her know how I’m feeling about something. I’ll go up to her and say, ‘Coach, I’m biting my tongue. I’m about to act like a man.’ That’s when she’ll go over and take care of those problems better than I could have. It’s worked wonderful.”

Brent hasn’t just made Sedgwick’s job easier, either. Many players have used Brent as translator between them and their new head coach.

“Coach Brent has kind of become the mother figure for this team,” Post said. “When things aren’t going our way and we’re becoming a little frustrated with Coach Sedgwick, she kind of calms both sides down. She’ll come in and tell Coach Sedgwick what it’s like to be a girl and what we’re going through.”

Brent knew she would have to take on the added responsibility of “team mom” when she found out Sedgwick would be taking over at North.

“Anytime when you’re used to a certain way and then you have a big change, like we had from a female coach to a male coach, there’s going to be some buffering, so to speak,” Brent said. “I kind of knew that I was going to have to be to a buffer.”

Brent’s ability to help the team transition from Evans to Sedgwick has worked out to near perfection this season. The Lady Bulldogs boast a 26-4-2 and have earned a spot in the regional quarterfinals for the sixth-straight year.

North will face a familiar opponent in this year’s third-round series, which begins today at 7:30 p.m. at North, in Mesquite Poteet, last year’s Region II semifinal opponent. North swept Poteet behind two shutout performances from Kristen Adkins.

The Lady Bulldogs won’t have Adkins this year, but Ashliegh McLean has done more than pick up the slack in her stead, leading North to a two-game area sweep of Whitehouse last week. For Poteet (33-4), 2007 starter Bradie Baker, and her 0.86 ERA with 224 strikeouts and .526 batting average with 26 RBIs, is back in the mix.

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