Cowley Softball Staff

Head Coach Ed Hargrove

Ed Hargrove begins his 26th season as the head coach of the Lady Tigers, coming off a 2009 season in which they finished 52-7 overall and 26-0 in the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division, good for a sixth consecutive conference championship.  The Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division title was the programs’s 16th with Hargrove as coach.  The Lady Tigers also won the Region VI District E championship qualifying them for the national tournament in Normal, IL where they finished 5th.

The 52 wins marked the 12th consecutive season of 40 or more victories for the Lady Tigers, and the 12th consecutive season the team was ranked in the top-20 of the NJCAA rankings as Cowley was ranked as high as third in the country during the 2009 season.

Hargrove is the winningest coach in Cowley sports history, and his 917 victories rank him first in the nation on the National Junior College Athletic Association’s wins list of active softball coaches.  Also, the 917 victories are the most by any coach in Region VI.

Hargrove was  named the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division Coach of the Year in 2009, the  seventh time he has won the award.  Hargrove earned Coach of the Year honors in 1997 (28-4 in the east), 1998 (28-4), 1999 (29-3), 2000 (29-3), 2004 (16-2), 2005 (18-0) and 2009 (26-0).

He won his 900th game on April 15, 2009 with a 21-0 win over conference foe Independence.  He was inducted into the NJCAA Softball Hall of Fame May 16, 2007 at the NJCAA National Tournament in Normal, IL.  Hargrove also received the Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission “Outstanding Achievement Award” on June 26, 2007 in recognition of his 800th win and induction into the NJCAA Softball Hall of Fame.  Hargrove was inducted into the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

Hargrove is a graduate of Arkansas City High School, Cowley, and Fort Hays State University.  He attended Cowley on a football scholarship and Fort Hays State on a baseball scholarship graduating in 1976.

Ed and his wife Linda, a former Cowley athlete and coach, have been married 39 years.  They have two children:  Tara, a 1994 graduate of Wichita State University, and Brian, a 1998 graduate of WSU.  Tara and husband Jeff have three children, Jacob 11, Brynn 8 and Halle 7.  Tara played 3rd base and 1st base for her dad at Cowley in 1991. Tara is a volunteer Room Mom for each of her three children at Martin Elementary School in Andover. Brian lives in Wichita and is the Director of Events and Marketing for the Greater Wichita Sports Commission.  He attended Cowley during the 1994-95 school year.  Linda, a standout athlete at Cowley, is a member of Cowley’s first Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame class, the Class of 2000.  She was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 in recognition of her 17 years of coaching at Cowley, nine years as the women’s basketball coach at Wichita State University and nine years as coach/general manager in the WNBA with teams in Portland, OR and Washington D.C. Linda currently works as a consultant with the WNBA's newest team in Tulsa, OK.

Coach Hargrove can be reached at (620) 441-5263 or by email:  hargrove@cowley.edu.

Assistant Coach Jenny Hoyt

Having helped the Cowley College softball program to a pair of conference titles and a record of 93-20 during the 2006 and 2007 seasons, Jenny Hoyt is returning to the school to serve as an assistant coach under head coach Ed Hargrove.

Hoyt, who spent this past season as an assistant coach at NCAA Division II Mars Hill College in Asheville, North Carolina, replaces Suzanne Unruh, who recently left to become the head softball coach at Tabor College in Hillsboro.

A Rose Hill native, Hoyt helped coach the outfielders and pitchers at Mars Hill as the team went 29-18 overall and 9-7 in the South Atlantic Conference. She is looking forward to being back at Cowley.

“It will be nice to be closer to my family and after playing two years here it will be fun to be back,” Hoyt said. “I enjoyed playing for Ed (Hargrove) and it will be good to coach with him.”

After seeing limited playing time as a freshman at Cowley, Hoyt took advantage of her starting role as a sophomore and was named a second-team all-conference and all-region third baseman for the Lady Tigers as she batted .341 with 28 runs batted in.

“Every year since she left Cowley I tell our players at the first practice about what Jenny accomplished as a player here and use her as an example of someone who could have quit but didn’t,” Hargrove said.

Ninety percent of the freshmen would have quit and not come back after not playing much that first year but she came back to be an all-conference performer and was very integral to our success.”

Playing in her final home game on April 29, 2007, Hoyt  hit her first and only home run of her career as a Lady Tiger. Hoyt’s home run keyed Cowley’s 8-0 win over Highland Community College and helped the Lady Tigers clinch their fourth straight Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division title.

After graduating from Cowley College in 2007, Hoyt transferred to Mars Hill College where she was a starting third baseman during both of her seasons at the school.

During the 2008 season Hoyt helped the Lions win a school record 39 games en route to the South Atlantic Conference championship game.

She helped the team to another successful season in 2009 as the Lions finished in second place in the highly competitive South Atlantic Conference, the highest finish in school history.

She received a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Mars Hill College in 2009.

Hargrove has long held the belief that Hoyt could be a really good coach someday if she chose to get into the coaching profession.

Coach Hoyt can be reached at (620) 442-0141 or by e-mail: hoytj@cowley.edu