Following Kaleigh Rafter being named head coach in mid-October, Team Canada on Tuesday announced Rafter’s inaugural coaching staff.
Assistant coach Chris Jones will return to the Canadian staff and will be joined there by recently-retired Olympian Jenn Salling.
Both Salling and Rafter were part of the first-ever Canadian softball team to earn a medal at the Olympics earlier this summer, when the veteran players led Canada to a bronze in the Tokyo Games.
Jones was an assistant coach from 2019-21 on the Canadian staff and previously played for the Canadian men’s national team program for many years. Salling enjoyed a decorated playing career, including a pair of Olympic appearances in a Canadian uniform and a lengthy collegiate and professional playing career in the United States. A Washington Husky alumnus, Salling spent five years playing professionally in the US and previously coached college softball at Roosevelt University and UCF.
Alongside the staff additions, Team Canada also announced a quartet of new additions to the National program’s “coaching pool.”
Florida State head coach Lonni Alameda and yet another recently-retired Canadian Olympian, Joey Lye, headline that group.
Part of the Canadian coaching staff for the Tokyo Games, Alameda was also an assistant coach for the Canadian team during the 2008 Olympic cycle. The longtime head coach of the Florida State Seminoles, she most recently led FSU to a national runner-up finish in the Women’s College World Series this summer.
Lye is a veteran collegiate coach, including having spent a three-year stint as the head coach at Division 1 Bucknell from 2018-20. She also served as a facilitator in Athletes Unlimited this summer after playing in the league’s inaugural season in 2020.
Also joining the coaching pool are Melissa Finley, most recently the head coach of the Canadian Junior Women’s national Team and an Ontario native. Collegiately, Finley coaches at Swarthmore and was previously the head coach at Division 1 Colgate.
Keith Mackintosh, who has spent the past four cycles with the Junior Women’s National Team program, is the final addition to the National Team Coaching Pool.
