PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Kim Wilson is one of the top collegiate softball coaches in the country. She is preparing for her 27th season at the helm of NCAA Division III Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Wilson has had a lot of special teams at Rowan, including 18 NCAA Tournament teams and four that made the Super Regional round, but her 2016 squad was really something special. It earned 42 victories and a third-place finish in the NCAA Tournament.
She remembers the statement that the team made in winning the New Jersey Athletic Conference Tournament that year.
“We won 11-0 [over The College of New Jersey] in the finals. We were off. There was nobody stopping us," said Wilson. "It's meant to happen. That was the team that really established it, and they established that winning attitude.”
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Wilson has won over 900 games in her career, 836 of those wins coming at Rowan.
While the victories are nice, she said what really matters is developing lifelong relationships with the players that come through the program.
“We're not using them for four years. This is a lifetime commitment to them,” said Wilson.
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“We talked about love. We talked about family, and they are family. Whether they play one year or four years, they're still part of our family. I hope that's what they take out of our program. The wins are a bonus, the softball is a bonus, and that we play at a high level is the bonus part of it, but they're in the Rowan family and that's what makes it special.”
You can listen to Kim Wilson talk about how she got into coaching and other favorite memories at Rowan University, by listening below to the latest episode of 1-on-1 with Matt Leon.