Even with the upcoming Division III softball finals, Rowan coach Kim Wilson encourages relaxation

In athletic parlance, tension can be referred to as the enemy of performance.

When longtime Rowan softball coach Kim Wilson sensed her team’s tension during a scoreless tie in the seventh inning of a playoff game earlier this month, her message was simple.

“We just told them to unpucker and just be free,” Wilson said with a chuckle during a Wednesday telephone interview. “‘Just don’t be tight.’ And the next inning, we came out and scored a run, and that’s kind of been our thing: ‘Just unpucker.’”

Wilson, who will be inducted into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame in December, hopes winning continues to be the Profs’ thing.

On Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Rowan (41-8), the No. 6 seed, faces No. 3 Trine University (40-4) of Indiana in the finals of the 2023 NCAA Division III softball championship in Marshall, Texas.

“I started at Rowan in 1997, and in ‘99, we went to the World Series,” Wilson said. “I knew it wasn’t easy [to get there], but we didn’t go again until 2018. Then you realize how special it is.”

Wilson, now in her 27th season leading the Profs, is one of the winningest coaches in Division III softball history, notching more than 900 victories across 32 years of coaching.

Her team’s current playoff run, Wilson joked, has kept her from having to worry about giving a speech when she is inducted into the NFCA hall of fame in December.

“These kids have really taken us on an awesome ride,” she said. “It’s surreal to have this opportunity in the same year [as the hall of fame induction].”

The season nearly came to an end May 18 when a scoreless tie against Penn State-Berks reached extra innings.

Fortunately for the Profs, Payton MacNair’s RBI double in the bottom of the eighth secured a 1-0 walk-off win in their NCAA regional.

Finding ways to relax her team and find fun in competition is something Wilson says she learned from her mother, Jan Wilson, the former longtime volleyball and softball coach at Slippery Rock who also was a five-sport athlete at the school and is in its hall of fame.

“I just like to have fun,” Wilson said. “We may as well laugh and smile, especially nowadays. … There’s all the stuff going on with COVID-19 and all that. This should be where [players] get to forget about all that. They don’t have to worry about classes or what labs they’re doing. They should be able to come to practice and know that it’s not a job. We love to be together, and every day we’ve been able to continue our season has been fantastic. It’s not drudgery. It’s exciting, and we want to be together as a team.”