Shannon Doepking wants to rebuild Syracuse as 1st-year head coach

Shannon Doepking, usually an intense coach, flashed a small smile in her corner office in the Roy D. Simmons Coaching Center. The first-year head coach motioned to one of almost a dozen letters on the brown bulletin board next to her computer.

Its author, Syracuse’s current first baseman Alex Acevedo, planned to transfer to Dartmouth from Florida Atlantic to play for Doepking until the latter took a job at SU. Acevedo loved the potential freedom that would come under Doepking — a coach that was more understanding than any other coach she’d ever had.

Instead of transferring to Dartmouth, Acevedo followed Doepking to Syracuse. Nearing the end of her first season at SU, Acevedo wanted to show the impact Doepking had had on her. So she filled half of the page with words of appreciation for the coach that finally gave her a chance.

“This stuff right here,” Doepking said, pointing toward the letter, “this is why I coach.”

The plethora of hand-written letters in Doepking’s office quantify her brief, seven-month impact on Syracuse (20-28, 8-13 Atlantic Coast) as head coach of the Orange softball team. Doepking goes out of her way to get lunch or coffee with her players, a drastic shift from former head coach Mike Bosch who waited in his office for players to approach him, players Miranda Hearn and Hannah Dossett said.

Through her experiences playing and coaching college softball, Doepking has developed four core values — selflessness, family, ownership and 100% effort — that she’s brought to SU. Not everyone has bought into what Doepking preaches, but Doepking’s doubling down on her approach.

“We’re not winning a ton of softball games right now, but you have to take a step back and cherish the things that we do have in life,” Doepking said. “… I think when you’re around a team long enough, most teams reflect their head coach.”

Perpendicular from her collection of letters and in front of the room’s lone window sits four framed photos. The only one related to softball is a team photo from her college years as a catcher for the Tennessee Volunteers.

Eva Suppa | Contributing Digital Designer

As a freshman, Doepking wasn’t an easy player to coach, Tennessee co-head coach Ralph Weekly said. Before her first collegiate game, Doepking stood in a circle with her team. But instead of paying attention to Weekly, who was addressing the Volunteers, she honed in on her opponents’ warmups. So, Weekly called her out.

“Didn’t your parents teach you better?” Weekly asked the freshman.

Doepking, already bold and straightforward, responded, “No.” As punishment, Doepking watched her very first collegiate game from the stands.

“It took Shannon a little bit of time,” Weekly said, “but she eventually became one of my favorite players.”

When her brashness didn’t get in the way, she listened to Weekly’s words. He preached hard work, family, and being a good teammate. Eventually, Doepking bought in.

Years later, when Doepking took her first head coaching job at Amherst in 2014, she wrote a letter to her former head coach. It was a point of maturity for her, one that showed a change in her demeanor from a defiant and unproven college player.

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When Doepking took a head-coaching job at Dartmouth before the 2015 season, she was surprised she didn’t have to hold her players accountable to her core values. Their previous head coach, Rachel Hanson, had already built a culture of hard work, and Doepking just had to continue it.

But in the 2017 season, Dartmouth had a .500 record in conference play and missed the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year. Doepking looked for a way for the team to take more initiative. She reached out to the school’s leadership committee, a requirement for all Dartmouth sports teams, on how the team could refocus.

During that summer, Doepking and her entire team trekked to a log cabin 20 miles north of campus. Cell phones weren’t allowed, and the head of their leadership committee instructed them to carry giant tree trunks to and from a remote mountain.

“Coach jumped right in there with us,” Taylor Ward, a senior infielder and outfielder at Dartmouth, said. “We learned that we had each other’s backs no matter what happened. No one was going to go forward or move on without making sure everyone else was set.”

It made the team closer, and Doepking soon realized she could use off-the-field activities to create the close-knit team she yearned for. Getting meals with players turned into conversations about family and friends. Her philosophy switched to “if I know my players as well as they know me, I would know how to talk to them in times of struggle,” Ward said.

The following year, Dartmouth won the regular-season Ivy League title and Doepking was named Ivy League Coach of the Year.

“I walked into a Dartmouth program where the program had already been laid by the previous coach. She did a really good job with culture,” Doepking said, “Here (at Syracuse), it’s a polar opposite. Our culture isn’t very great here.”

Eva Suppa | Contributing Digital Designer

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Bosch led Syracuse to a 30-20 record in 2018, but almost two months into the offseason, he left the Orange to become an assistant coach at Florida. His departure allowed Doepking to take a job in the ACC.

Unlike at Dartmouth, Doepking had the chance to mold a locker room culture on her own at Syracuse. During SU’s first team practice, Doepking called out most of the team individually, just like Weekly did to her years ago. When Doepking’s SU players approached her in practice, each one walked into the huddle.

Doepking turned to her assistant coach, Miranda Kramer, and asked why her players hadn’t sprinted toward her.

Kramer, who’s been with SU since 2016, responded: “I don’t know.”

“It was definitely a shock for a lot of players,” Kramer said. “Her style is very different from the previous coach.”

Doepking needed her new players to fit the mold that turned around Dartmouth, but only had three months to instill her values. She joined her players for coffee at Starbucks, lunch at Chipotle and “friendsgiving” at her house.

As Doepking and her wife, Jessica, cooked dinner, they played icebreakers looking for each others’ “golden coin,” the thing that is most important to them.

“She wants to know us as people, more than players,” Lailoni Mayfield said. “She actually cared…that my nieces and nephews are the purpose for everything I do.”

While the Orange have slowly developed the bond Doepking’s tried to create, they only have 20 wins in 48 games. The process — winning three out of six home games to start ACC play to handing 9-39 Pittsburgh its first series win of the season — is still in progress.

Eva Suppa | Contributing Digital Designer

Before traveling to Colorado State, Kentucky, Louisville and Boston College over spring break, all of SU posted a team photo with the caption “#family,” Doepking said. Doepking interpreted this as a complaint that they had to play softball over break rather than seeing their families.

Instead of making them sit out games like Weekly did, Doepking sat down with the two captains, Toni Martin and Bryce Holmgren, and asked why they aired their grievances on social media instead of talking to her in person.

“It’s a prime example of how leading is hard,” Doepking said. ”Our team has to be able to make the hard decisions that put the team ahead of themselves.”

As the Orange struggle to record wins down the stretch, Doepking is honest about the lack of leadership and progress in the locker room. She’s making her messages clear, but some haven’t latched onto the values.

Three days after dropping two consecutive games to the Panthers, Doepking uncrossed her legs in her office and motioned to assistant coach Vanessa Shippy across the hall. Doepking shouted, “When is a time that I was straightforward?”

“You’re always straightforward,” Shippy responded.