Shirey leads Fayetteville to shot at history
Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008
During championship week, the least hectic part of Jason Shirey's day is on the lawnmower.
With the engine running, no one can bother him. He can't hear his cell phone, and no one dares to stop him while he mows the outfield at Lady Dawg Yard.
But championship day at Lady'Back Yard on the campus of the University of Arkansas lies in wait for Fayetteville's most successful softball coach in history. The chance at tying a state record for consecutive championships in softball are at stake, and North Little Rock stands in the way of a three-peat.
The attention that goes along with the impending championship game doesn't bother Shirey. But as sure as the 10 a.m. time set for first pitch, the pressure will mount on Shirey as the week progresses.
He won't let that cloud his day, which starts at 8 a.m. in class at Ramay Junior High as the teacher of Arkansas and U. S. History, and ends at 6 p.m. on the softball field in practice.
"I'm not feeling it just yet. The time will come," Shirey said. "... I think this is very underrated, but, we're still responsible of teaching 120 kids in class a day and giving them your attention and effort. The easiest part of the day has been mowing the field. I can't hear a phone and nobody can stop me. If they did, I might run over them. But, yeah, I'd rather have the attention than not because that means we're doing something right."
Shirey has impressed his peers for certain. His 146-22 record in five seasons as head coach is one of the top 25 best in the nation, according to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association.
"The one thing certain about Jason is that he's a serious type," Fayetteville athletics director Dick Johnson said. "He's a very warm person but, boy, when he crosses the line on the softball field, he becomes super serious."
Shirey demands attention to detail from his players. It's a trait he picked up coaching under Yvette Girouard at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1994 to 1997. He then carried that over to the University of Arkansas, where he was hired on as hitting coach at the UA in the fall of 1997.
"That was an eye-opening experience," Shirey said. "There were a lot of finer points I had to learn and I learned from one of the best [in Girouard ]."
The most impor tant aspect he learned while coaching collegiately was structure.
"I think that's the key for anybody in life," he said. "We post a practice plan and it gives us an idea of what we want to accomplish, and a time frame in which we want to accomplish it. I don't believe in three hour practices just to have a three hour practice. We tell them up front, you come in and do your work the way we want it, you get to go home. I just think it pays off."
Farmington head coach Randy Osnes took Shirey on as a volunteer assistant in 2001 after a coaching change at the UA. Shirey's wife, Amber, then an assistant coach under Gary Blair for the basketball Lady'Backs, helped the process along.
Blair, at the time, was good friends with Brad Blew, the girls basketball coach at Farmington. Little by little, word spread from Shirey to his wife, to Blair, to Blew and then to Osnes.
"It was a wild situation," Osnes said. "After I heard about him, I called him up and we got to talking. It was an instant friendship and we carry it through to now."
The matching philosophies between the two quickly built a respectful and caring relationship. To this day, Osnes and Shirey talk almost daily after Shirey's three-year stint at Farmington. Three years after his jump into the high school ranks, Fayetteville High's Johnson came calling in 2004.
"When you run in athletic circles, word of mouth is really big," Johnson said. "When someone talked about who can fix your hitting, Jason Shirey's name would always pop up. It became crystal clear that Jason Shirey was the guy we needed to go after. We did that and we obviously did the right thing. He was everything we were hoping for and more. Not only as a softball coach, but also as a teacher."
On the field, five consecutive conference championships have been won, along with two state titles under Shirey in his five seasons at the helm. The third could come Saturday. The success has helped Shirey build first-class facilities. Because of the team's booster club, fundraising and other outside resources, an indoor facility along with much-needed updates at Lady Dawg Yard, including coaches offices, were recently completed.
But Shirey's success also carries some burden at Fayetteville, Johnson said.
"People laugh when I tell them this, but I'm completely fierce when I say it: When the UA job came open a couple of years ago, I was worried to death," Johnson said. "I knew where the best softball coach in this part of the country was and it wasn't at any college. I was worried they would come after him.
"But we know we can't capture talent; we can just be its partner for a while."
Shirey said he's happy on the high school level, but not just as a coach of softball. Along with teaching junior high kids and raising two children of his own with his wife Amber in a friendly environment, life lessons are to be learned.
"We're trying to teach so much more than just softball. It's life, too," Shirey said. "If we can provide discipline - that structure - we think they'll accomplish what they need to accomplish. They'll not only be a good softball player, but hopefully a good person. "... Win or lose, there's greater things in life. It may not seem like it at the time, but those things are definitely more important."
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