Trine Softball: A Rags to Riches Story

The reigning Division III national champions rose out of the NAIA level with a subpar facility and a men’s basketball coach as its newly-hired coach. Oh, and the first “unofficial” victory came over an alumni team featuring 40-plus-year-old women and expectant mothers.

“… and we were excited!” exclaimed Trine head coach Don Danklefsen, now in his 19th year with the Thunder.

Now the northeastern Indiana university located in Angola boasts one of the top softball facilities in Division III, has made the NCAA Tournament in five of the last nine seasons, set a program record for wins in a season (46-6) last year and also captured its first national championship.

Champions! @TrineAthletics #d3sb | #WhyD3 pic.twitter.com/r9PJcRtpNi

— NCAA Division III (@NCAADIII) June 7, 2023

And Trine looks poised to make another run at a national championship in 2024.

“It’s been several months (since we won the national championship), but I almost tear up when I look how far this has come,” said Danklefsen. “The kids are so proud of being part of what happened here. I want to do it again and again.”

Transition to Division III

Danklefsen was hired to oversee the transition from an NAIA program to NCAA Division III in 2004. Coaching basketball brought him back to his alma mater where he also worked in the Admissions department. The offer to take over the softball program was to get him out of his Admissions role and free up more time to concentrate on the basketball program where he was an assistant coach – and the softball program too.

“I thought it was a joke,” he said of the softball offer.

Danklefsen grew up with a mother who was a high school softball coach and a sister who become an All-American college softball player.

“I was around (the game) more than I knew,” he said with a laugh.

Solid advice from his younger brother finally committed him to the challenging new role.

“He said, ‘Can you coach?’” recalled Danklefsen. “I said yes and he said, ‘Learn the game, teach them how to compete and you will be fine.’”

That advice turned prophetic.

Months after the celebratory state of emotion that arose from defeating an alumni squad, including the moms-to-be, Danklefsen put the players on notice.

“We put a good offseason in. We put in a conditioning program and upped the commitment level,” he said. “The senior class of eight was dying for that. And we had a good freshman class.”

That first spring, Trine lost a close game to a top-five ranked team and the players were angry with their performance.

“I knew we had come a long way,” he said.

Meanwhile, Danklefsen took a deep dive into coaching softball players.

“It all took off a lot faster than expected,” he said. “I called any coach that would listen. I went to a lot of college practices and travel ball practices that I knew were good. … I’ve read more books about softball than I did (books) in high school and college.”

Still called Tri-State University in 2005, Danklefsen’s first team finished 16-18 in its first year in NCAA Division III. One year later, the program went 19-21 and followed that with a 31-8 season.

The program was rebranded to Trine University in 2008 and Danklefsen has never won less than 26 games in a season — and never finished with a losing record.

With success came more upgrades for the program, including a new stadium in 2015, after the program made its first NCAA Tournament appearance in Tyler, Texas.

“The (old) field was miserable. We had one set of bleachers. No foul poles. No batting cages. No bullpens,” he said. “It was like Christmas when we saw this new place. Now, you can’t find a better DIII stadium.”

Fresh off that first national championship, what is now called SportONE/Parkview Softball Field, has received more upgrades including new bullpens, batting cages, an improved warning track in the outfield and new signage.

“We needed to upgrade the facility and have a better place to train,” said Danklefsen, who is now recruiting against Division II and small Division I programs for talent.

Talent like Debbie Hill

Debbie Hill, the reigning Division III Freshman of the Year, watched Trine reach the national championship series for the first time in 2022. In fact, part of the recruiting pitch to Hill was she would be a key piece to finishing the national championship journey.

“It felt like family to me,” said Hill of her choice. “When I came on visits, we would eat lunch with the team. All the camps I came to, all the girls and the coaching staff made me feel welcome. And I wanted a smaller school. I’m not just a number in the classroom. My professors know me.”

Hill’s addition was one of many reasons Trine went from national championship runner-up in 2022 to national champion in 2023.

As a freshman, she went 13-5 with a save in the pitcher’s circle and had a 1.51 earned run average over 97 innings with 128 strikeouts.

At the plate, she hit .446 with 19 doubles, 15 home runs and 58 runs batted in. Those statistics earned her Division III First Team All-American status.

“I just wanted a chance to prove myself,” said Hill of her initial goals. “I wanted to work for playing time. I was not expecting as much as I got.”

Hill knew she would be a power hitter in the Trine lineup and be part of a pitching staff that would not rely on her to be the dominant pitcher she was in high school.

“I didn’t really expect to get as many innings as I did,” said Hill. “I was excited about the staff that we had. We had an unstoppable pitching staff. I was excited to be part of something so good.”

Shut Down Hurlers

With senior Anna Koeppl (16-0, 0.51 ERA), juniors Alexis Michon (13-1, 1.53 ERA) and Lauren Clausen (4-0, 2.15 ERA) and Hill, Trine had one of the top pitching staffs in the country.

“I felt like we had three or four No. 1s on the mound,” said Danklefsen.

That proved crucial when Trine lost its opening game at the NCAA softball finals to Rowan, 11-4 – the first time the vaunted pitching staff allowed double digit runs to an opponent all season.

“We got shellacked in that first game by Rowan but we never got nervous,” said Danklefsen, who credited the 2022 experience at the national tournament as helpful.

Trine won four straight elimination games to reach the championship series for the second straight season. Salisbury took game one of the three-game series, 4-2, but could not hold off the Thunder.

Koeppl and Michon limited Salisbury to four hits in a 6-3 victory in game two to set up a winner-takes-all championship game.

Michon got the ball in the circle and twirled a two-hit shutout to lead Trine to a 1-0 victory and a celebration that young girls first getting serious about the sport dream about.

“It was awesome,” said Hill. “I’ve seen people on TV win national championships. I wanted to be that team and I got to experience that.”

With Success Comes Expectations

Graduation took Trine’s starting shortstop and centerfielder and years of battling injuries moved Koeppl into retirement despite having another year of eligibility.

“She had a torn biceps tendon in high school and battled that all four years at Trine,” said Danklefsen.

Koeppl is now student teaching to prepare for a full-time teaching assignment in the spring.

Michon and Hill will be a formidable 1-2 pitching punch and the addition of Black Hills State transfer Alex Rodriguez, who is still recovering from a knee injury that sidelined her in 2023, and the return of Clausen and sophomore Michaela Doiron gives Trine another deep pitching staff.

Danklefsen added power to the offensive punch with a Division II transfer from the state of Arizona and junior college transfer that belted 18 home runs last season.

“We’ve added more long ball power for sure,” he said.

Along with Hill, freshmen Karley Trine (.348, 12 doubles), Emma Lee (.333, 7 doubles) and Ashleigh Tranter (.333, 5 doubles) had productive first seasons at Trine.

“We know we don’t have to do anything crazy,” said Danklefsen. “It’s not 20 hours more a week. We just need to keep the right mindset, stay hungry and humble and we have a shot to be pretty good again.”

Hill echoed that sentiment.

“We just have to keep working hard,” she said. “We know what it takes.”

In 2019, Danklefsen signed a long-term extension to stay the head coach at Trine. The lure of a basketball coaching position that brought him back home has long expired.

“After five years of softball and we won a couple of (conference) titles, I got a nice raise to stay with softball,” said Danklefsen. “I was offered the women’s basketball job twice. I said no. I couldn’t walk away.”

Now there may not be a better place to be in Division III.

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