‘A young energy’
New head softball coach is sure about his role with the Lady Eagles
Looking at Jeff Hill’s upbringing, it’s not a question of how he turned out to be a teacher and coach, but how could he not? “We’re all educators,” the new Mayflower Lady Eagles head softball coach said of his family. That includes his twin sister, an older sister and his parents, Anita and Ron Hill of Alma.
“My mom was an English teacher; my dad was a football coach and a history teacher and ended up being a principal,” Jeff Hill said. His twin sister, Andrea Kremers, and older sister, Stephanie Hill, both teach, and like him, “they were both excellent athletes,” he said.
Hill, 40, has a new position, but he is not new to Mayflower. He’s been with the district 14 years, 13 as assistant softball coach, and was promoted July 1 when longtime softball coach Steve Herron retired.
Herron, who will be 70 in May, said Hill brings “a young energy” to the job.
“He has experience; he coached softball at a school where he was before he came to
Mayflower. He’s a hard-worker. He’s got lots of integrity, too; he’s a good guy,” Herron said.
Going into coaching was a decision Hill made with his heart, not his head.
His family moved around, but he graduated from Johnson County-Westside High School near Clarksville, where he was valedictorian and hit the ACT score out of the park. He was an all-around athlete, too.
“I played everything — football, basketball, baseball and ran track,” he said. Hill said he excelled equally at football and baseball, but he also started on the basketball team.
“My team baseball-wise wasn’t very good; I had to pitch a whole lot. I’m left-handed; I played shortstop. You don’t typically see left-handed shortstops.”
His desire to become a coach was strong, but some friends and family encouraged him to explore other, more lucrative, occupations.
“A lot of people tried to persuade me to do something else to make a little more money,” he said.
Hill considered sports medicine, but he wanted to be outside, not stuck in a building. He majored in math at University of the Ozarks in Clarksville and took his first teaching job at J.D. Leftwich High School in Magazine for one year.
He called it a “desperation-type job.” “Part of the reason I left after one year is the job didn’t have any coaching attached to it,” he said. Hill taught all day and volunteered to help coach baseball and football.
Then he was hired in Hartford, which has since merged with Hackett, as senior high football, softball and head junior high football coach. He was there for three years, from 2006-2008.
He’s been at Mayflower ever since, coaching and teaching algebra.
“If you had told me in college that I would stop coaching senior high football to coach softball, I’d said you were crazy. Softball wasn’t something on my mind — at all,” he said.
As part of my job at Hartford, I got the football job, and [softball coach] was part of the job,” he said. Hill was surprised at how much he enjoyed coaching softball. Female players seem to have more fun practicing, for one thing, he said.
The first year at Mayflower, there was no
opening for an assistant softball coach, but “I jumped on that once it became open,” he said.
He slid into the top job when Herron retired. Mayflower Assistant Superintendent John Pipkins said hiring Hill was an easy decision.
“I think [Hill’s] knowledge of the program and his knowledge of softball and the athletes that we currently had in the program — that, basically, was the determining factor,” Pipkins said.
Hill said he and Herron have different personalities, and he admired Herron’s relationship with the players.
“Learning from him was more on the personal side; the girls absolutely loved him,” Hill said. “He’s a very good guy; there’s nobody who dislikes the guy. He’s a doesn’t-have-a-bad-day type of guy. Girls just gravitate toward him. He’s a very, very sincere good guy. That’s something I could get better at … being more personable sometimes. I could have more empathy.”
But Hill said his desire for a winning team is as strong as anyone’s.
The Mayflower Lady Eagles have been successful, going 17-8 overall and 4-2 in conference in 2019. Oh, but that conference.
“We have traditionally been good, but at the same time, we’ve been in the past five, six years in the best conference; it’s a very top-heavy conference and region.
To get to the state tournament, you’re the best five teams in 3A. We haven’t made it out of regions since I’ve been here; that’s one of our goals. We’ve had plenty of teams that were good enough to get there, but the state champion comes from our region almost every year.”
Although the conference has changed a bit this year, Hill said, strong opponents in the past have been Haskell-Harmony Grove, Glen Rose and Rose Bud.
COVID-19 cut the 2020 season short and dealt a setback to the team’s progress.
“We only had three seniors on the team last year, two starters. We were going to have a young team last year, and that young team didn’t get any experience — we had two games; we were 2-0. But we were going to have a pretty good season. It was a young team that needed
that experience, and they didn’t get it.
“The girls who played travel ball continued on this past summer. It was more for those girls who don’t do travel ball that could have used last year, for sure. Now, instead of having sophomores and juniors, they’re almost like freshmen or sophomores again.”
He has reasons to be optimistic about this year’s season, though.
“Anybody I’ve talked to …. fielding-wise and hittingwise, we’re good or better than we’ve ever been. We’ve got good depth this year. We’re pretty good at pitching, but not real experienced.”
One of Hill’s goals as head coach is for the players “just to know the game better.” The travel-ball players, “really don’t know the game like I want them to know it — not just do it, but understand why you do it. Early in the game, this philosophy; late in the game, that philosophy — not be told, just understand it.”
He believes his players can get there. He wants softball to be more top of mind, too, for the school and community.
“I want softball to get recognition. We’ve never had any kind of signs up” on the field, he said, but he has remedied that.
“We’ve got a lot of signs up everywhere that say ‘Mayflower Softball.’ I’ve wanted those signs here for a while, and I finally just got them,” he said.
Losing last year’s season helped him pay for some of the cost, with $1,000 left over in the budget. Sponsors were obtained, and the Booster Club contributed, he said.
Hill wants to make a mark with the softball program, and he’s in it for the long haul.
“I’ve been here 14 years, and I’ve not applied for another job or anything,” Hill said. “There are kids here who say, ‘It’s just Mayflower,’ or whatever, but if they did get out to other schools and other towns, they’d see Mayflower is a special place. This is where I want to be.
People should look at Mayflower as a special place, because it is.”
And taking the head softball coaching position is also a decision he’s sure about.
Hill, who is single, said, “It’s just me; moneywise I don’t have a whole lot I have to take care of. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. I was very comfortable in that decision. I haven’t second-guessed that at all.”