When looking for a new head softball coach, Neosho athletic director Corey Roy didn’t have to look very far — just to the basketball court.

Neosho hired Grant Young, who is the high school girls basketball coach, as the next softball coach, to replace Beth Alms.

“I’m pretty excited,” said Young about the new job. “Neosho has a great tradition and the summer experience so far shows me the kids are tough-nosed. It shows there has been a lot of work put in by the parents and coaches. They play a lot of games in the summer. Most of the kids will play 50, 60 or 70 games this summer and that will help us out in the fall. The kids are putting the time in to get experience in the summer and we have a lot of players doing that from freshmen to seniors. It has been a pretty good summer so far.”

For Young, this will be his first head coaching job on the softball diamond, but he has experience from his time at Wheatland.

While at Wheatland, before coming to Neosho last year, he served as the junior varsity coach for Pat Dougherty, the former head coach of Iowa Western Community College.
“Getting the opportunity to learn from him at such a small school helped,” said Young. “I want to put what I have learned from him to good use at Neosho.”

Young will be assisted by Melissa “Missy” Clark, who prepped at Riverton, Kan., before playing softball at Missouri Southern for three years. She spent this past season as a student assistant coach for the Lions.

He will be taking over a team that returns standouts Kreslee Ketcham, Dimitra “Meter” Boman, Kanisha James, Kelsey Loncarich and Kelse’ Wyatt, all players who have started the last two seasons.

The Lady Wildcats will be joining the Central Ozark Conference this year, where they will battle the likes of Ozark, a final four team recently, and Republic, a team that has won the district championship in Class 3 almost every year this decade.

“The kids have been attentive to learn new stuff,” said Young. “I think we will have fun this year. We will be hard-nosed on the field, and if they buy in and believe in the system, we will do well.”