During his nearly two decades as USF’s softball coach, Ken Eriksen has earned a reputation as one of the sport’s most thoughtful leaders.
That was on display again in his post-game remarks after the Bulls were eliminated Saturday in the NCAA Tallahassee Regional by Auburn in extra innings.
Internet message boards can be useful tools for fans to share opinions and updates, but there’s also another side to it. Here’s a hat-tip to USF communications team member Darek Sharpe for uploading this clip to X.
“Social media is a real detriment to young players in college athletics,” Eriksen said.
He went on to share a memory that obviously still bothers him. In 2022, USF had an outstanding pitcher named Georgina Corrick. She was the NFCA and Softball America Pitcher of the Year.
In the opening game of the NCAA Tallahassee Regional, she shut out Mississippi State, but no one knew at the time what a struggle it was. She had been injured the week before in the conference tournament.
She couldn’t go in the next game and USF lost to Florida State.
“The announcers from ESPN at that time maligned us for not starting her, but she couldn’t even walk,” Eriksen said.
Corrick tried to come back in the elimination game against Mississippi State, but had to leave after one inning.
Eriksen brought this up as a prelude to the criticism the Bulls took at times this season.
“Our starting pitching staff was hurt the last pretty much four or five weeks of the season. What they did for us was incredible,” he said.
“So anybody that took to social media, whatever aspects of it, they critique us, is ridiculous. I have a friend who pitches for the Houston Astros and came off Tommy John surgery. He's gotten blind and death threats on social media over the past couple of weeks.”
Message boards can be savage places, especially when pseudo-experts want to fire the coach weekly, either for losing or not winning by a larger margin.
For the most part, coaches can tune out the noise. For people like me, the boards can be useful to see what fans are talking about and feeling. We have access to coaches and leaders, and a question seems legit, we can ask them about it.
But when the questions on those boards turn into attacks, that crosses the line.
Last football season, for instance, head coach Alex Golesh was vague about quarterback Byrum Brown’s injury. We asked questions every week, and Golesh truthfully said Byrum was practicing with the team.
He didn’t expand upon that, but was not obligated to do so. However, that didn’t stop the boards from lighting up with wild speculation that wasn’t fact-based.
Only after the season was over did Golesh fight back against criticism for how he handled that situation. It turned out Byrum had a broken leg. He wanted to play every week and hoped to play in the Hawaii Bowl, but the pain was too much.
“We need to stop this in America right now,” Eriksen said, “and really focus on what these kids do on the ball field and the heart and passion they play with.”
Those are good words to live by.