During the current state of athletics across the country, the Kennesaw State athletic department looks to fill the void by highlighting the amazing stories of select student-athletes both past and present as well as the faculty and staff that help to make KSU the unique and special university that it is.
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Scott Whitlock Memoir:
I Wasn't Expecting All This
If you have ever been to a Kennesaw State softball game at Bailey Park, you may have noticed a regular face in the crowd. More often than not sitting alone at a table as far down the first base line as one can go and muttering critiques about the game to himself, he can be an interesting site to the casual Owl fan.
But to those who know anything about the history of KSU or softball itself, this is more than some random supporter, this is a legend in the flesh, this is
Scott Whitlock.
He is the man who took the softball program, and in a larger sense the KSU athletic department, from its infancy to the power that it is today. His list of achievements on the softball field and at KSU are endless, racking up over 1,000 career wins, two DII National Championships, eight Coach of the Year awards and an induction into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
But Whitlock, still affectionately referred to as coach despite moving from the dugout to a desk following the 2013 season, doesn't take full credit.
"I was part of a lot of great accomplishments," said Whitlock. "I don't think I accomplished a whole heck of a lot by myself. I try to always remind myself, when someone is saying nice things about you it's easy to get your ego to swell up and everything. In reality if I didn't have people who had faith in me to give me a job, I didn't have players that were willing to give me an opportunity to coach them and I didn't have good assistant coaches around me to make up for my shortcomings, I would not have accomplished a whole heck of a lot. I'm just not that talented."
Growing up in the small town of Bostwick, Ga., Whitlock began his career not on the field, but in the gym as a manager for the Truett-McConnell women's basketball team.
While attending the junior college, he met future KSU Hall of Fame coach Colby Tilly, who hired him as a student manager for the Bears.
It was here, working as a general gofer that Whitlock discovered a knack for recognizing talent, and a passion for women's athletics.
"When I first started, I said well this will be fun," said Whitlock. "We'll get the basketballs out and we'll let the young ladies go and do what they do, it'll be fun. Then I went to my first practice and I saw how passionate and how committed and how eager to learn and how serious they were about it. I said these are doggone athletes, these are not just women playing ball, these are athletes, these people are serious."
After two years at TMU, he graduated and moved on to play baseball at Piedmont College. The women's coach there, recognizing the cross-town rival's manager, approached Whitlock about joining the staff as a student assistant coach.
So for two seasons, Whitlock coached his classmates in the winter and took the field in the spring, all while working towards a degree. And when the time came to graduate, that's when he planned to use his business degree to get a job for Schwinn bicycles in Marietta.
Until fate intervened.
Sitting in the stands of the old KSU gymnasium and waiting to watch friend Donna Stevenson play, Whitlock was waved over by another man sitting in the bleachers, KSU Athletic Director James 'Spec' Landrum.
After coaching and playing against KSU in its first two seasons, Landrum recognized Whitlock and wondered who he was there working for. After finding out Whitlock had not pursued a coaching career and was instead working for Schwinn, the two made arrangements to meet for lunch the following week. It was at that lunch that Landrum informed Whitlock that KSU was hiring its first batch of assistant coaches and whoever the assistant was for women's basketball would also help coach softball. And Landrum offered Whitlock the position.
"It just riveted like a lightning bolt down my soul that I was just offered a coaching job," said Whitlock. "So, I said I'm in. June 1, 1985, I pulled on to campus and I've been here ever since."
A vastly different campus in 1985, Whitlock joined a department that sponsored only a handful of sports, compared to the 18 it now sponsors. The department was run out of the student center, Fifth Third Bank Stadium wasn't even a thought yet and the softball infield was entirely grass.
That first year as a dual assistant coach, Whitlock helped lead the women's basketball team to its first winning season as well as the first 40-win season for the softball team.
The following year, at 23 years-old, he was named the head softball coach.
"I wasn't scared at all, I was too stupid to be scared," said Whitlock. "I knew I could do it. You have to have confidence in yourself, but I found out real sharp and real hard that I didn't know everything in a hurry, and I found out how different it was sitting in that seat."
Feeling the temperature of that hot seat, dealing with some small friction of replacing Head Coach Medra Ashmore and trying to earn the trust of his team, who were just three years younger than himself, Whitlock hit the ground running in 1987.
And in just its third year of existence, Whitlock led the slow pitch team to a 44-4 record and a District 25 Championship, the pinnacle of NAIA slow pitch softball at that time. In his four seasons of slow pitch softball, Whitlock and the Owls accumulated a 153-15 overall record, four conference championships and two NAIA District Championships.
"We were like the stinking Harlem Globetrotters of softball compared to who we were playing," said Whitlock. "It was made easy because the players were so good. So, they covered up a lot of my shortcomings."
But more important than the records and the achievements, Whitlock found his vision for coaching.
"I quickly learned that you teach a sport, or you teach a skill, but you coach people," said Whitlock. "I had already learned that when it comes to the female athlete, if they know you're genuine and they know you're real and they know that you are there for them if they need you to be, they'll run through Hell's fire for you. So, I knew that I had to be sure that my players knew that I was real, warts and all. They found out, if nothing else I was loyal and that I appreciated them, and I respected them for who they were. And I told them I wasn't going to insult them by coaching them like they were girls, you're an athlete I'm going to coach you like an athlete and this is how I do it, and it generally worked."
With the team taking off, it became harder and harder to balance softball and women's basketball. It was also at this time that KSU brought on Dr. Dave Waples as the new Athletic Director.
Both Waples and Whitlock, who became close friends throughout his 23-year tenure as AD, agreed that Whitlock turn his focus solely to the softball program, relinquishing his assistant basketball coach duties after three seasons, and instead taking on the mantle of the department's Sports Information Director.
Now fully focused on the softball team, and the department push to grow and promote women's athletics, Whitlock made the transition to fastpitch softball in 1991. A year that he describes as one of the most gratifying seasons that he's ever had as a coach.
Mainly because it marked the first fastpitch games Whitlock and his team had ever seen.
Carrying over 12 slow pitch players from the year before, he went out and signed two experienced pitchers, a third baseman and a catcher and away they went. But before the first pitch, that catcher was sidelined with a shoulder injury and Whitlock was forced to convert a slow pitch center fielder into a catcher.
With six of KSU's nine starters playing in their first ever fast pitch game, the Owls took the field and blanked Valdosta State 5-0 in its inaugural game. They went on to win 20 of their first 21 games.
"I am terribly proud of that '91 team," said Whitlock. "We were all learning together, we had no idea what we were doing, and we had no idea we were that good. Every day was like a joy."
The team went on to finish 41-11, becoming the NAIA Tri-District 10 Champions with an appearance in the NAIA World Series where they finished fourth in the country.
And the next season? NAIA National runners-up.
In the four years of NAIA fast pitch, KSU recorded a 176-29 record and did not finish outside of the top-five in the nation.
That momentum propelled Whitlock and the Owls to jump up to Division II in 1995.
After a mediocre 8-4 start in its inaugural DII season, the switch was flipped. The Owls went on a tear, winning 40 straight games, sweeping the Peach Belt Conference regular season and tournament championship.
It wasn't until the first game of the DII National Championship Tournament that the streak was snapped, a 4-3 loss to Wisconsin-Parkside. Undeterred KSU battled out of the loser's bracket, defeating UWP 9-1 in a rematch before downing Bloomsburg in back-to-back games to earn the Division II National Championship.
"The '95 year was truly special because it validated everything that we were doing," said Whitlock. "That softball program was only five years old and people were already asking, do you think they'll ever be able to win the big one? We had not finished out of the top-five yet and people wanted to know, were we ever going to win the big one. You try to say as a coach you block that out, you don't worry about it, but it does aggravate you."
Of course, after the dogpile on the pitcher's mound, the trophy celebration and a celebratory team jump in the nearby river Whitlock, KSU's sole SID at that time, still had work to do.
He wrote the game's recap, faxed it to the Marietta Daily Journal and called AD Waples, telling him they had won by saying that his SID just quit.
Whitlock went on to be named the 1995 DII Coach of the Year.
He and the Owls followed that season with another championship run, sweeping through the PBC and heading straight back to the National Championship ranked No. 1 in the nation. KSU went on to defeat Nebraska-Omaha in the final 6-4 to claim its second championship in as many years.
A national powerhouse, Whitlock led the Owls to unprecedented heights throughout their 11 seasons in DII. The softball team reached the DII World Series all but two seasons, racking up eight PBC Championships, 15 first-team All-Americans, a combined five National Player and Catcher of the Year awards and an overall record of 559-90.
KSU recorded at least 45 wins in all but one season, with its 64 wins in 2004 still tied for second all-time in DII history for wins in a single season. Whitlock himself still remains third in the DII record books for winningest coach all-time.
But after over 30 years at KSU, the accolades, the victories, the trophies, those aren't what Whitlock remembers most.
"All of it is part of your memories, but what I hang on to more than anything is the interactions and the people who were a part of the KSU softball family during my time there," said Whitlock. "I know how much I won, I know that I have had a lot of accolades and I'm not trying to 'aw shucks, golly gee,' but whereas I was very good at what I did, I know that I didn't accomplish one thing alone. Not one thing. So, I'm always grateful to those folks."
After dominating the ranks of Division II, Whitlock helped usher in yet another transition as KSU moved up to Division I.
But he wasn't worried.
"Moving up in divisions didn't change anything at all," said Whitlock. "It was about the people; you coach the people. The sport didn't change, hit, catch, run, throw, the team that can do that best wins. The game hasn't changed, but the way you present it, the way you sell it, the way you instruct it, the interactions all of those things that has changed dramatically."
It was that attitude that allowed the Owls to make a splash in their first two seasons, finishing among the top-two in the ASUN and taking home the regular season crown in 2007.
Until, after 22 seasons, he finally hit a wall.
With the four-year postseason ban that came with transitioning to DI, Whitlock had difficulty back loading his graduating talent and the program hit a brief stall resulting in his first and only losing season in 2009.
"I was spoiled," said Whitlock. "I was used to winning, but I was taking a knife to a gunfight. That was hard to do. The teams were not disgraceful, it wasn't a disgrace, but it was hard looking across the field at the other dugout knowing that if I'm going to win today, they have to mess up real bad. That for me was hard."
Despite the struggle, Whitlock was not discouraged adopting the attitude of one of his favorite cartoon characters Wile E. Coyote, continuing to pick himself back up and keep trying.
"He's a guy who's not very good at what he does, but he never quits," said Whitlock. "I like non-quitters. It was during that time when we weren't very good, and I was kind of finding how the other half lives that I realized the secret is you just have to keep trying and it made me think about the coyote."
And try he did. After narrowly staying above .500 in 2010 and 2011, he and the Owls found themselves back on top, clinching a share of the ASUN regular season title in 2012.
One year later, Whitlock retired from head coaching.
"I got out of softball because I knew that my time had come and gone," said Whitlock. "I found that it was a conscious labor for me to be able to keep connecting with these young people, because the age difference kept growing. When you look around and you have got the child of one of your former players on the team you go 'you've been around.' I felt that it was time for fresher eyes and fresher nerves to lead the program. I could still go out and coach like hell, but my time came and went, and I got to go on a wonderful adventure."
It was a tough transition for Whitlock, but for a man who has done everything for Kennesaw State from groundskeeping to being an SID, from becoming a Senior Associate AD in 2007 to interim AD during the 2010-11 academic year, the adventure didn't end after 2013.
He moved full-time into his role as a Senior Associate AD, diving headfirst into helping bring college football to Kennesaw State.
"It was tough, but the transition was made easier because for the first 18-19 months I was totally consumed with helping to get that football program uploaded," said Whitlock. "I don't know if I could've handled it if I had not had the football project to jump in and occupy my mind. That was a wonderful adventure. One of the great joys of this third act of my career has been the football program coming to KSU because I was able to be a part of the upload. That was so much fun because I love college football."
Still very much active in all things KSU, Whitlock has settled into his administrative role cultivating close relationships with the administration and the coaching staffs at KSU and using his experience and knowledge to help lead the next generation of Owls.
"I love to talk coaching with these young people," said Whitlock. "I have not taught [head volleyball coach]
Keith Schunzel a darn thing about volleyball, but through conversation and our time together and the faith and the trust that we have in one another, I do think I taught him some things about coaching. With the young administrators around here, they are so much smarter and brighter than I am, but I have the luxury of having years in the rearview mirror and I've got a PhD in KSU."
That PhD in KSU and coaching is further illustrated in Whitlock's recently published book
I Wasn't Expecting All This: Memoir of a Grateful Coach which hit shelves in 2019. In it, Whitlock reflects on the memorable moments, lessons and people that have helped to shape him.
"The book is more of an extra-long thank you note to everybody that has made my life what it is," said Whitlock. "I wasn't expecting all this when I came here, and it's been way cool. I just wanted to reflect on the people I've met, the things I've done and the people who made me possible."
The last of KSU's original hires, the only person to ever work for all four Athletic Directors, with 36 years and counting under his belt, Whitlock will always cherish his time Kennesaw State and it will always hold a special place in his heart.
"I still bleed black and gold," said Whitlock. "If somebody is out there wearing a Kennesaw State softball uniform, even though I don't really have any direct influence on their lives or any direct relationship with them, I still regard them as one of mine because they're wearing my colors."
