How ‘bout those Kohawks? Coe College playing for national softball title, starting Thursday

CEDAR RAPIDS — Do you allow yourself to dream?

“That’s all we’ve been doing this season, I feel like,” said Coe College starting third baseman Shaylee Dodd on Tuesday, a few hours before her team flew to Texas for the NCAA Division III Softball Championship tournament.

The Kohawks’ dream of reaching the World Series for the third time in school history (Coe went 1-2 in 2006 and finished second in 2009) became reality last Saturday when they finished a two-game series sweep of Hiram College in their NCAA super regional at Coe.

“It was almost surreal when we hoisted that trophy,” Dodd said.

Life in D-III isn’t flying and hotels, and such. It’s buses and day trips. But this is an NCAA championship. So that organization picks up the tab for the flights, rooms, food, and the bus that took the Kohawks two hours from the Dallas airport to Marshall, Texas, for the tourney that starts Thursday at East Texas Baptist University.

“None of us have ever been on a stage like we’re going to be playing at come Thursday,” said Kohawk catcher Skyler Stookey of Solon.

Coe’s first-round game is Thursday at 4 p.m. against Linfield University of McMinnville, Ore., a 46-4 team that didn’t allow a run in its last four NCAA games.

No matter. The Kohawks are no slouches at 37-9, the regular-season champions of the American Rivers Conference.

“The team chemistry is just one of the best atmospheres I’ve been a part of,” said Belle Plaine’s Dodd, part of a lineup packed with Iowans.

Jake Koolbeck is Coe’s first-year head coach, but he’s been part of the softball program since 2016 and also has been the school’s assistant sports information director. He replaced Coe Hall of Famer Diane Meyer, who did a lot of winning in her eight years as coach.

Koolbeck’s formula for building a competitive roster isn’t complicated. Focus on what’s close to home. With Iowa high school softball played in the summer, it’s easy for him to scout the local players.

All but one of Coe’s eight position players are from Iowa, including Keara Ball of Cedar Rapids Xavier, Nicki Wood of Lansing Kee and Heather Boeckenstedt of Dyersville Beckman.

“We’ve gone from playing each other in high school to playing on the same team in college,” Dodd said.

“There’s so much good softball around here,” Koolbeck said. “We want to bring in the best talent, but I truly believe we can set our foundation with a good core group of Iowa girls. You see that by who’s on the field, how our roster is made up.”

Koolbeck has nine seniors, but that doesn’t mean he’ll have a rebuilding task once this season ends. The seniors were deprived of the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so they are eligible for another season.

“Right now we have six, and possibly a seventh senior coming back,” Koolbeck said. “They’re going to see if we can’t run it back and have some of that same success next year. So that’ll be a lot of fun.”

“We love it here,” Dodd said. “We can’t seem to stay away.”

But first, trying to stay through next Wednesday in the double-elimination national tourney is the Kohawks’ mission.

“We’ve been talking from the beginning of the season, basically, about getting to Texas,” Stookey said.

“We may have overpacked a little bit,” said Koolbeck, “but we want to be optimistic. We’re ready to be down there for seven, eight days.”

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