by Graham Hays
It really shouldn’t come as a surprise when a coach in the game long enough to accumulate more wins than all but one other person in NCAA softball history announces that the time to walk away is at hand.
That LSU coach Yvette Girouard caught most off guard with just such a declaration last week, making public her intention to retire at the conclusion of the 2011 season, says a lot about how she stayed at the top of the sport for more than three decades. She was a rare combination in coaching, although perhaps a common one among the all-time greats. She was successful beyond her years when she started a program from scratch at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana-Lafayette) on a salary of $3,000 that she complemented by working part-time in her family’s restaurant. Yet by the time she moved into a state-of-art softball facility at LSU for the 2009 season, she was still as stubbornly competitive as that 20-something who dragged the field at USL with her dad’s truck.
But while a softball game can theoretically last through eternity, a coaching career has entirely human limitations.
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