MAAC Coaching Spotlight – Monmouth’s Shannon Salsburg
Edison, N.J. (April 21, 2020) –Monmouth University’s Softball Head Coach Shannon Salsburg sits down with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) to give insights on the Hawks softball program, the canceled 2020 season, and her life. Salsburg has led the Hawks to the past two MAAC Championships and positioned the team as preseason favorites for 2020.
Q: Two-straight MAAC titles in the past two years, what is the feeling of winning a MAAC championship like?
A: There’s nothing like it. Each year we have a new set of kids, and to watch them set goals early in the year and talk about what they want to do for us is amazing. The development of our program, going from middle of the pack to where we've been fortunate to be the last two years, it’s because the leadership on our team has really elevated our play and has helped the kids understand what it's going to take from day one of lift all the way to May, playing last year LSU. It's the greatest feeling, and my favorite is when I get dowsed with Gatorade, because that means our kids were able to do it. It's just an incredible feeling.
Q: Last season your players brought what seemed to be something like a “rally tree” with them in the dugout, what was that?
A: It was a rally bamboo tree, and actually the Phillies copied us! At our home field, we're not sure where it came from or how it happened, but we actually have bamboo growing. So, one day at practice, one of our kids found a stick and brought it over. The kids were joking around saying it was their “magic stick” and it was special. She had a great practice that day so she ended up bringing it to the next game and it became our rally a bamboo stick. There's been a couple throughout the years, using the bamboo. They wear out their welcome and we have to start over, but it became such a thing last year to where we actually packed it and took it to the NCAA Tournament with us.
Q: Prior to those championships, there were a few years of coming up just short. What is it like to fall in those games and what lessons did you learn from them?
A: Man, it's difficult. These kids see that what they want is right in their grasp, and come up just short. We ran into two very good teams that deserved those championships. But you could really see that those kids were going to elevate the program because they looked me right in the eye and told me we weren't going to lose again. When they came back, you could see the work they put in over the summer. There were other kids, who, you could tell just did the status quo and were slowly falling off. But as we brought in others, they've taught them that this is not a feeling you want. It's a huge lesson. Just because you work hard doesn't mean you're going to get it. It takes a lot. It takes a strikeout here when it could have been ball four, it takes a lot of things to make a championship happen. Particularly in our conference where there's a lot of parity.
Q: After learning those lessons, what did it take to become champions?
A: I think one of the things we focused on since I got to Monmouth is our preseason schedule. As we get better, I continue to make the schedule better in our preseason. This year we played two Big Ten teams, we play some teams where if you look at RPI, they are in the top 100. We feel that it’s better to put kids in challenging situations from the start, let them fall. We'd rather they fall in February and March so that in May the kids understand expectations and they see that they fell short and can look at themselves and truly self-evaluate. We talked a lot about how we have to be true to ourselves and self-evaluate. It starts with me and ends with the last kid on the bench. We have to be honest and say “what can we do to make ourselves better”. Everyone has a part. I think that as we've gotten better and grown, our culture has grown and our ability to be honest with each other has grown. It's always kind of honesty, right? We're not going to come at you in an angry way but we're going to be honest with you and we hope they are the same with us. We've been able to do that as a group, and I think the culture has gotten better and the product has gotten better.
Q: Monmouth got off to an 11-9 start this season with big wins over programs such as Purdue, Maryland, and Ohio. What were your thoughts to the start of the season?
A: You know, the start of the season was good. I think every year, like I said, it's a different team. We did return a lot of players this year and for some of our kids it just took a second for them to realize that they still had to work hard at this. They put in the work, but when we got to some games it just wasn’t as easy as I think they were expecting. It took them everything they had to get the results they achieved the year before and the year before that. Once we kind of jumped that hurdle, I think we were really starting to find ourselves. Preseason is all about those ups and downs and figuring out who we’re going to be this year. Challenging them to fight, getting in there, doing it together, all those things. We had one of our best team meetings we've had in my five years at Monmouth the night before our last game. We came out and took care of George Washington, who beat us the day before. I was really excited about where we were heading.
Q: What did it mean to you to be named preseason favorites?
A: Well, for me, it's respect and appreciation to the fact that people see how our program is, see what we do. Me getting here, I think we were picked fifth or sixth, so to see just how far we've come in such a short time, I'm really appreciative of that. I tell our kids that literally means nothing besides they respect you, now you have to go out and prove it and make it happen. I greatly appreciate that the other coaches in the MAAC respect us, and we respect them. It was going to be fun to see what would happen at the end of the year because it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was going to be harder than it's ever been.
Q: Alyssa Irons was the 2019 MAAC Pitcher of the Year and a unanimous selection to the 2020 Preseason All-MAAC Team. Lindsey Baron was a 2019 Co-Rookie of the Year and the 2020 Preseason Player of the Year. What did you see from them to start the season and what were your expectations moving forward?
A: I saw kids that were really excited to grow. Kids that understood that they weren't at the top of their game yet. Alyssa was working to make a couple of adjustments to some of her pitches. Lindsey was working harder than she worked her freshman year. Freshman year she just jumped in and said, you know, what is this all about. So, this year she was hitting the weight room hard, getting stronger and faster. I thought she was super aggressive in the games we played, so I just saw a ton of growth. Even just the little things that were going to be just as impactful as we got further into the year and into the MAAC season.
Q: What are some of the toughest schools to play at while on the road?
A: Conference play is funny because everybody has something. Everybody has their little mojo, so it's very interesting. Marist is tough, you're in those dugouts that are off to the side and their fans are above you but also trickled around you. Plus, that's a great rivalry for us, so it's always fun to play in. Manhattan has such a different thing going on because everyone is up above you and you're playing on the turf and it's fast, so that one has always been an interesting challenge. Fairfield, their fans just understand the game so well, which I get because they've been so good for so long, it's always been a challenge to show up and give them your best. Rider is spicy on their own field like no other, Saint Peter’s brings a lot of energy. Everybody has something that we have to prepare our kids for. That's what's so fun about conference play, you have to bring it every single day because the people across the field want it just as bad as you do.
Q: When you recruit, what do you look for in a student-athlete?
A: Grit, that's one of my favorite things. I want a feisty kid. I want a kid with a chip on their shoulder, that's not quite good enough but that I think we can help grow. I look for a kid that truly is a student-athlete. We treat our kids like adults, so I don’t want to chase them to their classrooms. I want to know that they can take care of themselves. As we narrow down our recruits, I try to stay around the dugout and around the parents because I want to know what she's all about. Is she a team player? Is she a kid that's more for herself? Does she chuck her helmet when something doesn’t go right? If they do that, they definitely aren't coming into my dugout. Things like that. I want to get a little bit deeper into who they are. But grit is my number one, I love grit. Grit can take you a long way.
Q: What was your initial reaction to the cancellation of the season?
A: My initial reaction was you have to be kidding me, holy cow. I just didn't quite understand the scope of what was happening. We had been at George Washington the weekend before and on the way there I got an email from Dr. Marilyn McNeil (Vice President/Director of Athletics, Monmouth University) basically saying not to shake hands with other teams. I thought, wow, that's something, so I shared that with my kids and we talked through what that meant and what that would look like. It got to the point when we weren’t shaking hands that weekend, jump to Thursday and our season is canceled. I think we were all a little shocked and surprised. Obviously, there is no playbook for this. None of us have been through this before, so it was just blowing all of our minds.
Q: How was this news broken to student-athletes, and what was their reaction?
A: We had had two team meetings prior. The one the day before, we talked about if we were allowed to go tour next tournament, if people were comfortable with going to our next tournament, things like that. We wanted to honor whatever the kids felt, if they expressed that they didn't want to travel, that was fine and we understood. We took a straw vote and decided that we all still wanted to go. The next day, we brought them in and had another conversation that we were trying to figure out if we were even allowed to go. But an hour and a half later, one of my administrators said Shannon, it's done. I thought done? What do you mean it's done? So I told her that I didn't want the kids to read about it on the MAAC website, I wanted them to hear it from me. I brought them back to my office and I cut right to the chase. It was devastating, our seniors had no idea what was going to happen, it was just a tough moment. One of the toughest moments of my head coaching career no doubt.
Q: What kind of questions have student-athletes been asking you?
A: Initially they just asked why, and what would happen next, and if they are allowed to stay on campus. Those were some of the initial things. We figured out that they had to move off-campus and all that fun stuff. From there, it went to eligibility. Are we going to be able to get our year back? What's that going to look like? How is our scholarship affected? When will school be back in session? We've answered a lot of those, we are online all summer at Monmouth, and the scholarship piece is still up for interpretation.
Q: Are you keeping in touch with student-athletes?
A: We are, yeah. Once a week we do a Zoom meeting. We've done everything from full team, where it's my big Brady Bunch, to maybe just pictures and catchers or just outfield, just different things. We are just touching base, making sure they're okay and good mentally. This can be scary for all of us, so it's part of our job to help all of these kids and make sure they're doing okay. We check in on all the academics and that fun stuff. We also text a lot. I've heard from a lot of them on different circumstances, I hear from everybody at least once a week one way or another. Zoom is pretty cool. I've never done it, but it's been so fun. It's nice to see my team every week.
Q: What have you personally been doing during the pandemic?
A: I've gone from deciding lineups to homeschooling. My seven-year-old, she's in first grade so I’m learning math that I've never learned before in my life. I also have a four-year-old, so we do homeschool in the morning then it's pretty much camp counselor. Thank goodness it's been such beautiful weather here at the Jersey shore. We've been outside playing basketball, riding bikes, taking walks, and meeting all of our neighbors with social distancing. It's been fun. It's been a way to slow down in a way that I'm normally not used to during these months. I haven't slowed down like this in a very long time, so I've been having a lot of really great family time. Just hanging out at our house, it's been pretty neat. I've also barbecued probably more than I have in my entire life.
Q: What is the first thing you are going to do when allowed back on campus?
A: That's a great question. I think I'm just going to walk around. I really miss being there, I miss how beautiful our campus is, I just miss the energy. Even during the summer there is such a good energy about the place. Then I'll probably go straight from there to lunch with Marisa, my assistant coach, at the beach. Why not go to the shore if we can? I just miss the area. Again, we take things for granted. I miss the energy, I miss the vibe of a college, and a gorgeous one at that. It's always a nice place to go to work.
About the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference:
With 11 institutions strongly bound by the sound principles of quality and integrity in academics and excellence in athletics, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) is in its 39
th year of competition during the 2019-20 academic year. Current conference members include: Canisius College, Fairfield University, Iona College, Manhattan College, Marist College, Monmouth University, Niagara University, Quinnipiac University, Rider University, Saint Peter’s University, and Siena College.