BY ERIC WOODS Tribune Sports Editor

No matter how hard she tried, Pattie Ruth Taylor couldn’t stay away from coaching.

Coaching is in her blood.

Taylor, the daughter of legendary Russellville Elementary basketball coach Sammie Taylor, envisioned her future in the business world. She told herself that she wasn’t going to coach. But her teammates weren’t buying it.

“You’re going to coach,” they told her.

It took Taylor a little longer to realize that they were right

After interviewing for jobs in the business world following her playing career at Middle Tennessee State, Taylor quickly discovered that path wasn’t for her.

She applied for a volunteer assistant position at Duke and met assistant Laura Valentino. Valentino got the head coaching job at UConn, and Taylor followed her to the Northeast.

“She called me and asked if I wanted to go up there with her, and I went up there having never been to the Northeast before,” Taylor said. “I just knew I wanted to start coaching, and you got to take the opportunities whenever you can to get in, and now that I’m doing it, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

Taylor made another stop at Lehigh under longtime coach Fran Troyan, who has won nearly 1,000 games and won 19 Patriot League regular-season crowns and 12 tournament titles.

Now, Taylor just wrapped up her third season as the pitching coach for Texas softball, who has appeared in the Women’s College World Series Final in all three seasons and won their second straight national title last week.

Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising.

Lessons From Home

Taylor grew up in a family where her parents, grandparents and uncles devoted their careers to education. Her father amassed around 1,200 wins at Russellville Elementary over five decades of coaching, impacting generations of young athletes in the process.

By watching her father coach, she learned how to coach great athletes and shape even better people.

“Through sports, my dad was able to take in a lot of kids and make them into better humans, and I think that’s something that I’ve really taken into my coaching career,” Taylor said. “Because at the end of the day, softball is just what they do, it’s not who they are as humans. So, just being able to rely on that, and my parents always taught me it’s about how you treat people that matters the most, and I think the work ethic that I’ve seen my dad doing coaching, it’s just elementary school basketball, but he’s out there hours on hours making these kids better. You talk to some of those kids, and they talk about how in their playing history, the best time of their life is when they were in elementary school basketball.”

Taylor has carried her father’s philosophy into collegiate softball by pouring herself into her players.

“What you put into those players goes a long way,” Taylor said. “The relationships he’s built through that, and then the work ethic. If you want something, it’s not going to come to you. You have to work for it. That’s what I’ve taken into my career. When I got the job here, I knew I was ready for it, and once I got here, I was going to put my whole heart and soul into it. I think that’s helped me a lot along the way.”

Russellville Roots

Along with her family, Taylor credits much of her path to the support she’s received from her community in Russellville and at Cherokee High School.

“I think the biggest thing is just the support system I’ve always had,” Taylor said. “I think growing up in Russellville, a small town, everybody knows who you are, and there for a little bit, I felt like I was always playing to like prove somebody wrong, especially once I got older and being a principal’s kid, the coach’s kid. Once I moved to Cherokee, it was like I’m playing for me, like I want to do this for me, and the hard work that my parents have put into allowing me to do everything I was able to do, and so I think it’s just the sense of community that’s helped me.”

Taylor’s community has stuck with her no matter how far away she has traveled.

“Every time i think about this journey, I get emotional about it because I’ve had so many people from our community who have never watched softball before, until this,” she said. “I see how much they’re rooting for me, and I’ve had some families say that this is the first time in years that their whole family just sat down and watched TV together, and it just brings so much joy to me.”

Even more than 1,000 miles away, Taylor said she feels the impact of her hometown support.

“I’m just a little kid that grew up in Russellville, Tennessee,” Taylor said. “It just makes me want to share with younger athletes, girls and boys, that if you want something, you just have to go work for it, and just keep following your dreams. This isn’t something that’s easy. If you want something, it’s going to be really hard, and it’s just being able to push through that, but I think with the sense of community that I’ve had growing up, it’s helped me with so much. They’ve always been there, and I’ve been able to lean on them. Just having them behind me to keep pushing through is just something that goes a long way.

“I’m so proud to be where I’m from and being able to find us on the map it just means the world to me, and I couldn’t have done it without them. So they deserve all the celebration that we get, even here in Texas.”

Building a Champion
Before Texas, Taylor took her first job as a volunteer assistant at UConn under Valentino following her MTSU playing career.

Despite a pair of COVID-shortened seasons, Taylor helped “turn the program around and put the University of Connecticut back on the map,” appearing in the Big East Championship game in 2021.

“I learned from great people (at UConn),” Taylor said. “My mentors there, and the other coaches there just taught me so much, like if you want it, you work for it, and it’s gonna happen, and just being around people that want the same dreams as you do. It’s about who you’re around, and I feel like I’ve been very blessed to be around the people who want to be the best in whatever they’re doing, so I was constantly getting challenged and pushed to be the best version of myself.”

From there, Taylor took her first pitching coach job at Lehigh, where she got her first taste of what coaching a champion looked like.

In her first season, she guided a pitching staff that helped Lehigh to its 15th Patriot League title, winning an NCAA regional game in the process. The Mountain Hawks won 40 games in Taylor’s final season with the team.

“Being a part of a championship culture is something that really helped me grow,” Taylor said. “I want to win everything I do. I won a conference championship as a player, and when I won one as a coach, I was like, ‘There’s no better feeling than this,’ because you just like feel the joy that your girls are having, and how much work that you know they put in.”

Following the 2023 season, Taylor saw the Texas pitching coach job open. She had crossed paths with head coach Mike White in Lehigh’s 2022 regional appearance and in a preseason tournament in 2023, so she decided to apply.

She got an interview and the job, and Taylor has since helped lead the Longhorns to new heights.

“It’s been the best journey of my life, and I’ve learned so much being here, working under Coach White, working with the people I’ve been able to work with, and just being around these athletes who, you know, work day in and day out to go win a championship, and it’s just taught me so much, not only about softball, but just the love of the game and the love of people, and how far that can go.”

Culture Shift

Taylor’s arrival to Texas coincided with an impressive freshman class. White was in his seventh year and had the Longhorns on the rise with a Women’s College World Series runner-up finish in 2022.

Taylor took her father’s philosophy of loving the human more than the player to Austin, and it helped lead to a culture shift in the program that helped Texas softball get over the hump.

With Taylor and the 2024 freshman class, the Longhorns haven’t missed a Women’s College World Series Final, winning the program’s first national championship in 2025 and repeating in 2026.

“They wanted to win, and they wanted to bring the first national championship back to Austin as a group,” Taylor said. “And I think it’s just really relying on that, and investing in the people and not just investing in the player, and I think that’s especially as a pitching staff. I mean, I work with five of our pitchers constantly, and just being able to have that space where we get to be ourselves. We get to share our values, and everybody gets to have their own personality, and it’s just really being able to embrace that and take it all in and lock arms and go do it together when we walk in between the lights.”

Leading that freshman class is back-to-back WCWS Most Outstanding Player Tegan Kavan, who is the first player to ever win the award twice. Taylor said that Kavan has embraced her philosophy.

“Obviously, she’s a phenomenal softball player, but she really is an even better human,” Taylor said. “Her work ethic is second to none. She’s just constantly trying to better herself in everything she does on and off the field. She’s the most selfless person I know.Wwhat makes her such a great softball player is that she embraces people behind her. She takes them in. She’s the best friend to all of them, and she wants the best for them. So it makes everybody behind her and beside her work just as hard so they can give that back to her.”

Reflecting on the Journey

After winning her second national championship with the group, Taylor said each of them was “just as beautiful” due to her own personal journey to get there along with what the team worked for to get there.

“Last year when we won our first, it was something I’ve only dreamed of as a child,” Taylor said. “It’s unreal to think I’m a national champion from Russellville, Tennessee. And then this year, it was honestly just as beautiful. Every team has its own story, and just being able to watch our girls celebrate everything they’ve worked for meant the world to me. Every year is different. Every team is different. Every story is different.”

For Taylor, each championship has carried the same reminder of where it all began, and who helped her get there.

“For the support in the community that stands around me during my journey, I owe them everything,” Taylor said. “I’m a small-town girl from Russellville, Tennessee, and you truly can do anything you want. It’s going to be hard. It’s not always going to be easy. You’ve got to work for it, lock arms with the people that are beside you, and never forget where you come from. I’m so proud to be from a small town in East Tennessee, around the people who have supported me through everything. Just don’t forget where you come from and who helped you get there. I wouldn’t be here without my parents and that community, so it means the world to me.”