Ivy League Grad, Former Gatorade Player of the Year & New Extra Inning Softball Editor Regan Weekly Recaps “My Softball Story”

My first memory is at a ballpark… Bower Field Recreational Ballpark in Knoxville, Tennessee, to be exact.

When I drive by the park today, I see nothing more than a run-down collection of fields and chain-link fences, but my 6-year-old self saw a whole new world. I felt exhilaration sliding on the rocky dirt, tearing up the back of my right leg. I found joy in losing my breath running around the faded-white bases. The bumpy stretches of outfield that I would refuse to play on today became a challenge that my younger self prided herself on her ability to navigate them.

At that time, I was technically not old enough to play on the 8-and-Under coach pitch team. I should’ve been forced onto a tee-ball team, but because my parents agreed to the park’s condition that if I was only going to be a pinch runner until I turned seven, I would be permitted to join the older girls.

I was a Lady Astro.

For the next two years, my mother made me dozens of bows out of black and gold ribbon, the team colors, to wear in my hair as I played. My dad, Marc Weekly, was my coach and we played tournaments across my city every week. We dominated each time, repeatedly taking home the championship trophy.

The entire top of my dresser in my bedroom was covered with plastic softball trophies. These awards were my pride and joy and I played with them like Barbies! Some of them were shaped like a globe, but instead of the spinning item being Earth, it was a foam softball.

I look back on these awards now and laugh at the irony:

… the trophies got it right: softball is my world.

More than once, my family has been referred to as a softball dynasty.

It all started with my grandfather (maybe you know him?).

Ralph Weekly coached in the armed forces for many years before starting his college softball coaching career in 1986 at Pacific Lutheran University.

Additionally, he was an assistant coach with the USA National team in 1995 at the Pan-American games in Guatemala. His first great success came in 1996 at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. This was the first year that softball was a part of the Olympics. That year, the United States Women’s National Team won the gold medal, and then again at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

Prior to Tennessee, Papa Ralph and Karen Weekly were coaching softball at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where Karen was also a professor.

They began coaching the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers softball team in 2002. Since then, Ralph has surmounted more than 1,400 wins, has been inducted into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and his team has been ranked in the Top 25 nationwide every week since 2005!

Karen, who has served as a role model for me my entire life both on the field and off, was the co-head coach with Papa Ralph for many years and was recently been named the Head Coach of the team following my grandfather’s retirement.

She has coached more than 1,000 wins and has also been inducted into the NFCA Hall of Fame. Additionally, she has held the role of President of the NFCA and was a lawyer and administrative judge at the University of Tennessee.

Moving down the tree, my father, Marc Weekly, has also been heavily involved in athletics throughout his life. In 1990, he began his college football career as Pacific Lutheran University’s starting quarterback and maintained this role throughout all four years.

During this time, he led his team to four NAIA Division-II national playoff appearances and two national championship games. To this day, he holds the season and career records at PLU for most passing yards, most touchdown passes, and most total offensive yards.

Following graduation, my father was offered a minor league contract as a catcher for Seattle Mariners organization but turned it down. Instead, he signed a deal to play two years of football in the Canadian Football League with the Edmonton Eskimos.

After this experience, he relocated to Tennessee. In 2005 he joined his father at Tennessee as the volunteer assistant coach until I began playing softball. At that time, he gave up his job at one of the top softball schools in the country to coach me. That’s a lot of pressure for a six-year old! Anyway, I took it in stride.

I was born with an expectation to be exceptional. When I was eight years old, my father told me:

“You are an elite player; you need to play at an elite level.”

That year, we left the recreational team to start a club team. He took the most promising players from the Lady Astros and we started the Tennessee Worth Hustle. Our colors were black and orange, as were the majority of teams in Tennessee. I still played with a lot of the same girls as before, but now we had girls from other parts of the state.

I remember feeling so official. So serious. I held myself to a higher standard than before, and so did my dad.

When I turned ten, softball turned into something more than just a game: it became a job. It was still fun because I was in love with the game, but I definitely had this new awareness that my success at softball was going to be the defining characteristic of my young life.

Although I enjoyed the pressures of playing at a higher level, I was still a ten-year-old girl, not entirely ready for the consequences that came with higher stakes.

I threw a fit in the dugout every time I had a bad at bat, as did most little girls. Succeed. Get it done when it counts. Don’t choke. My father’s words constantly ran through my mind during my playing career.

When my dad told me I didn’t move laterally fast enough, we went out to the field and did drills for four hours, four days a week.

When he told me I didn’t throw hard enough, I practiced throwing until my arm physically could not take anymore.

When he repeatedly said I was not good enough to play at the highest level, I earned eight full athletic scholarships from Division I schools across the country.

He made me a better player by forcing me to work to feel successful.

On the field, I still rejoiced at successes like hitting a home run and seeing my dad at third base, clapping for me. I sprinted around the bases for the proud high five I would receive from him as I rounded third, heading for home where my teammates were screaming my name.

I wouldn’t say I ever felt happy, per se. Rather, my heart welled up with pride. You did this. This was all you. I took responsibility for all my successes and all my failures.

I rarely celebrated the “little” wins. Those were things that my father labeled as “routine,” and this became my truth as well. If I wanted to be great, I would never settle for being good. I needed to be the best. I needed to get the job done when it counted. I needed to be “clutch,” as my father called it. Knowing that I and others held me to a higher standard made me love the game so much more.

It gave me a reason to play.

As I aged, we moved to the Fury organization and I competed with them throughout the rest of my club ball career, other than a brief stint with the Birmingham Bolts – Dorsett team, which was truly such a fun few seasons.

I found the most joy playing for my dad at my high school, The King’s Academy in Seymour, Tennessee. I played up as an eight-grader and by the time I graduated, we had earned three Division 2 Class A State Titles, I was named All-State each year I competed with the team, and I broke the home run record for a single season with 21.

My greatest accomplishment, however, was being named the 2019 Gatorade Player of the Year for my state. What’s funny is that I don’t even know who nominated me, so when I got the email that I won it, it came as a complete surprise.

I committed to Dartmouth my sophomore year of high school, prior to the rule change. I remember first hearing my dad say the team’s coaches were watching me and right then—upon learning it was an Ivy League—I was hooked.

I can’t even put into words how beautiful Hanover, New Hampshire is—not to mention the athletic facilities! Plain and simple—saying “yes” to Coach Shannon Doepking’s offer was the best decision I’d made at that point in my life.

“You’re a Weekly” is a phrase I have heard too many times to count. I had to ask my coach at Dartmouth to stop calling me “Weekly” because I needed to be anything but a Weekly there, where the name carried an air of “uncoachability” from their perspective.

After nine years of that being my No. 1 identifier, I just wanted to be Regan. I wanted my successes and my failures to be attributed to me, not my last name.

I left the team at Dartmouth in the winter of my junior year, partly because of injury but mostly because the experience was no longer what I was looking for.

I was one of six recruits in the 2023 class for the team, all of which committed to a different coach than the one who was there when we arrived. By the time I graduated, only half of the players remained on the team.

However, I am very thankful I selected a school and not a team when making my decision as to where to continue my academic and athletic career, and thus was still able to have an absolutely incredible college experience and graduate with an Ivy League degree.

At present, I’m a full-time writer, working both at Extra Inning Softball as well as producing my own creative content, as that is and has always been my passion. On the side, I help out with my dad’s latest venture, The Marc Weekly Hitting Academy, which boasts 125 student-athletes and counting as word of his players’ success spreads.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to spotlight young players and celebrate tremendous achievements in the softball world through my current position — it has allowed me to fall back in love with the game that has consumed my entire life.

Thank you!

— Regan Weekly/Extra Inning Softball

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