Coaching Spotlight: Rounding the Bases with North Texas Assistant Coach Jason Gwyn

Jason Gwyn spent the last five years as a high school head coach and coached at the travel ball level for several years. That’s just scratching the surface of his experience, though – his resume also includes an assistant coaching stint at Texas Woman’s and a stint in Austria, where he tutored the Austrian national programs and led the Austrian National Team to a 3rd-place finish in the European Championships in 2008.

This fall, Gwyn returned to the college ranks and to Denton, Texas as the new assistant coach at North Texas. He’ll help tutor the defending Conference USA regular-season champions in defense of their title. “He brings a wealth of knowledge to our team and our staff,” Mean Green head coach Rodney DeLong said upon Gwyn’s hiring.

Following his arrival in Denton, Gwyn talked about his coaching career and his style and philosophies between the white lines.

Extra Inning Softball: When did you decide to pursue a coaching career? What factors led to that decision?  
Jason Gwyn: My sophomore year in college is when I changed my major and decided I wanted to pursue coaching as a career.  I had been helping my dad coach my younger sister’s travel ball team for a couple of years and decided that I really liked the sport and wanted to pursue coaching it.  I was at Texas Tech at the time and asked Rich Wieligman if I could come out and help the team.  I worked with Texas Tech softball for two years as a student manager, then the University of Texas as a Grad Assistant.

EI: Is college coaching something that has always been a goal of yours?  
Gwyn: If I’m being honest, yes.  I did the college thing early in my career, and it didn’t work out.  After a couple of years away from the game, I went overseas and coached for a season and then came back to the states with a newfound passion. At that point, I decided to coach club ball and get into high school coaching.  Over the last few years, I’ve had that itch to get back to the college game.  I’m an extremely competitive person, and that side of me I think always had hopes of getting back to college.

EI: Did you anticipate much of an “adjustment curve”, moving from travel ball to the collegiate level?  
Gwyn: No, not really.  Through travel ball I’ve stayed really connected to the college side of things, so I feel like I was pretty prepared for the change.  I also worked a lot of college camps over the years, so I feel like that helped as well.

EI: Describe your coaching style for me. What do you feel like are your biggest strengths and attributes as a coach?  
Gwyn: I feel like I would be labeled as a “player’s coach”.  I’m good at building a positive working relationship with each individual player and then using that relationship as the driver behind how I work with the athlete.  All players are different in the way they want to be coached, the information they need, how they interpret information, how they deal with failure, etc., and I feel like I’m very good at creating an environment that allows each individual to flourish and thrive within a team setting.  On the field, I feel like I’m very technical and methodical in delivering instruction and teaching the game, and then using that teaching to help develop strategies and game plans.

EI: As you move to the college level, do you feel like it gives you an added benefit to have such intimate knowledge of the recruiting landscape in the state?  
Gwyn: Definitely.  Over the years I’ve been able to develop great relationships with club coaches across the state and nationally.  And not just club, but high school as well since I’ve been a HS coach for the last 10 years.  It’s also allowed me to watch and evaluate players of all levels from all corners of the country.

EI: Joining a program like UNT that has been at the top of the conference consistently over the last few years… does that add pressure for you as a new staff member to continue that success, or does it take some pressure off because you’re walking into a situation that’s not a total rebuilding situation?  
Gwyn: I’m not a big pressure guy, meaning I’m not someone that really feels the pressure.  And I think that’s because no one will ever have higher expectations for me than I’ll have for myself.  And any team I coach will never have higher expectations for themselves than I’ll have for them.  I use those high expectations to help drive and push myself and my team to be the best we can be every day.  The goal is to be 1% better every day.  That’s how I measure success, by just being better every day.

EI: If we’re doing this interview in one year’s time, after you’ve got a full season under your belt, what needs to have happened during that year for you to be able to say ‘this was a successful year’?  
Gwyn: Did I help the players improve? Did I help the team improve? Did I make positive contributions to the coaching staff? Did I have a positive impact on the program as a whole?  To feel successful at the end of the year, I will be able to answer yes to each of those.  And, if I can say yes to those, then the on-field success would have been a byproduct.  I think that if I can focus on my contributions, the wins and losses will take care of themselves, as will conference championships and post-season appearances.