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Legendary Coach Mike Lotief’s Next Challenge: Building Club Program Excel Elite

Mike Lotief (far left), who coaches a 12U team and oversees the Excel Elite club program, talks to a group of his players.

The night of November 1, 2017—after Coach Mike Lotief had been surprisingly fired after 18 years of unparalleled winning leading the University of Louisiana-Lafayette softball program—he immediately began to orchestrate his next practice plan: starting a new travel ball organization in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area.

“I have been involved in the game of softball as a coach since the early ‘90’s,” the legendary coach begins,” and my wife, Stefni (a two-time All-American pitcher at Louisiana) a lot longer than me.”

“All of my friends called to express their shock and disbelief of how ULL mistreated us and how they mishandled the whole situation, but after all of the challenges I’ve been through in my life, my mind doesn’t have the time or energy to be bitter or wonder why or even start to have a victim mindset or as I call it ‘a pity party.’ It’s 100 percent counterproductive.”

No Time For a Break

Those close to him recommended the record-setting coach, who was diagnosed in 1983 with throat cancer and utilizes a tracheotomy valve, rest for a while before moving on to his next venture, but Lotief had other ideas.

Lotief was encouraged to take a break, but less than three weeks after leaving ULL he began talks to start Excel Elite.

“They (friends) encouraged me to take a break and look after my health after giving my all to the Ragin Cajuns softball program, most times ahead of my family and even my own health,” continues Lotief, who set a ULL record in 2004 with 60 wins and has the highest winningest percentage in the country, over .800%.

The week of Thanksgiving, barely 20 days after his firing, Lotief drove to Dallas to meet with a group headed up by Kristell and Shannon Williams who were coaching their daughter’s 16U travel ball team.  From the fruits of those meetings evolved a new travel ball organization in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex named Excel Elite.

“We debated whether to wait until the summer of 2018 to roll out our new organization because so much would have to be done to transition in December and to be ready to go by the first week of March,” Lotief recalls.

“But instead of just sitting around talking about it, we decided to start taking action to see even if it was possible to do”, says Kristell Williams.  “We started looking for a facility right off of the bat, even before we had any teams committed.  Thinking back, that seems crazy.  Then we came up with a name and a logo.  “EXCEL comes from EXCELLENCE and our idea revolves around the process of pursuing excellence every day.”

Within a short amount of time, Lotief and the Williams’ had teams up and running at every age level.

“We let some of the players look at different names and different logos and different color schemes and our players unanimously decided to think ‘out of the box’ instead of going with the traditional names considered like Rippers or Rapid Fire.  We had lots of meetings and conference calls to make sure we could get elite teams in every age group.  And we were lucky to get elite teams in every age group –12U Swindell, 14U Acuna, 16U Williams and Hornbaker and 18U Mennefee.  From there we realized we had momentum and that we were on to something.”

Excel Elite presently has 15 teams and all of them are based out of the Dallas/Fort Worth area for now.  The program has its own facility, a 10,000 square foot, climate-control building in the middle of the DFW area located in Carrolton, Texas.

It has eight hitting lanes, four dedicated pitching lanes and a spacious, multi-purpose area for functional workouts or tee work and agility training or arm care.  All of the hitting lane cages pull back so teams can use the indoor facility to take ground balls or do conditioning or even do infield practice.

Record-Setting Success at the Collegiate Level

The Lotief-led Ragin’ Cajuns have long garnered national attention because of the coach’s innovations as well as the team’s success on the national stage.

At the 2008 Women’s College World Series, Lotief’s use of the split grip batting approach—where the hands are spread apart on the bat handle—helped lead to his team’s dramatic upset of the overall #1 national seed Florida Gators when Holly Tankersly hit a walk off home run against Gator All-American pitcher Stacy Nelson.

Lotief believes it’s important to be creative and innovative saying, “… philosophically we have always tried to find an edge.”

And again in 2014, when ULL—the only mid-major team to make multiple World Series appearances since 2000 with appearances in 2003, ‘08 and ‘14)—featured pitcher Christina Hamilton wearing lens-less black rimmed glasses throwing at a top speed of 60 mph while most other teams had ace pitchers maxing out in the upper 60’s with many touching 70 mph.  The Cajuns beat the Texas Longhorns in the finals of the Regionals and then swept perennial power Arizona in the Super Regionals.

“A lot of outside observers labeled what we did as ‘unorthodox,’” the legendary coach says, “and I admit some of it is different, but philosophically we have always tried to find an edge. For instance, when I came into softball most people said, ‘Recognize the riseball and don’t swing at it,’ but we said, ‘Get on plane with it and hit it out.’”

“Now in Major League Baseball ‘launch angle’ is the new verbiage. We believed in the early 2000’s that groundballs were not the way to beat elite pitching.

“I’d prefer 15 strike outs and three home runs than seven groundball base hits and zero runs and waiting for the other team to make an error.”

“We also had an early aversion to bunting or giving away outs and, again, MLB has proved that a sacrifice bunt is not the most efficient option.  However, promoting that philosophy means that you and your players and your organization have to make a commitment to make it work.  That means, financially you have to buy multiple pitching machines and it also means lots of live batting practice and coaches with sore arms instead of the old protocols of batting tees and side toss.”

Lotief Continues The “Process”… to A New Age Group

“I knew that my devotion to softball and to the development of my players gave me deep intrinsic fulfillment and it was never about the money—Stef and I started coaching at ULL for $33,000 after I left my law practice—and we spent more than our salaries each year for pitching machines and equipment to keep up with the expansion of softball, especially the SEC.”

It wasn’t even about the winning, it was about the process.”

That process included Lotief’s “out of the box” ideas about power hitting and his development of many unrecruited and lesser known prospects who eventually ended up being among the national leaders in home runs and slugging percentage, such as Danyele Gomez, Alaina Addison, Lacey Bertucci, Lexi Elkins, Nerissa Myers, Gabby Bridges, Holly Tankersly, Christy Ogeron.

“The process not only involves daring to think out of the box and to be different, but also an obsessive work ethic to make sure that your players develop the skill set to excel and compete at the highest level.”

Bringing Innovation & Improvements to the Club Level

Lotief is excited and is energized to bring improvements to the club level of play just as he did with his Ragin’ Cajun program for 18 years.

Lotief’s first task upon starting Excel Elite: build a suitable facility.

“Just like we figured out the inefficiencies in the game, such as the reliance on groundballs, the excessive reliance on bunting, etc., we are trying to expose the inefficiencies in excessive reliance on recruiting through travel ball teams, or said another way, the flaws in how parents spend their money  to develop the skill sets of their children,” Lotief states.

“In my opinion, travel ball should be more than just buying a uniform with a known name on it and showing up on the weekends and expecting your dream school to be there to sign you.  The reality is, and should be, that the select organization should oversee the process of training and developing each player in its organization–that’s why our very first focus was acquiring the training facility and properly equipping it.”

The inefficiency in travel ball now is that too much money is being spent on traveling and not enough attention is being given to skill development.  Too many kids are falling through the cracks.  The idea of each kid having their own hitting coach and own pitching coach and then just showing up on the weekend to play with a team they have not practiced with all week is shortsighted.”

“In my opinion, the primary obligation of the select organization is skill development itself through a detailed process administered through a team environment, i.e. the organization.”

“Softball is a sport of parity; if you have the skill set and have a team first mindset, then it doesn’t matter what your physical genetics are – look at Jose Altuve for the Astros at 5-foot-4 or Justin Pedoria with the Red Sox.”

“We have more kids participating in softball than ever before, so we must be able to teach and develop the proper skill set to help those players with dreams and aspirations and the willingness to work hard to excel and be the best in a team first environment.”

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