Vann Stuedeman’s Return to College Softball

It’s only been three years since Vann Stuedeman coached a college softball game, though the pandemic-induced challenges in that same time frame make it seem like longer.

The veteran coach and former Mississippi State leader never considered herself “retired” from college softball, but did question if, when, and how she would make her return to the college game. That question was answered in late August when Stuedeman was announced as the new pitching coach at Illinois.

Stuedeman and Illinois head coach Tyra Perry have a friendship that goes back decades. It was a friendship that had inauspicious beginnings, however. As Stuedeman explains…

“I was teaching middle school – 6th grade. Birmingham Southern announced they were going to start a softball program, and I wanted the job. I thought ‘oh my gosh, I’m a Birminghamer, born-and-bred and I’ve basically been involved in every softball thing so far in the state of Alabama, I’m a shoo-in.’ I’m thinking I’ve got this job, I’m homegrown, whatever. Well, then Tyra gets it.

So I decide ‘well, we just won’t like her.’ So my sister and I are out recruiting and we’re standing around like you do during recruiting, just chit-chatting and all. And I just looked at Tyra and I said ‘Well damn, I guess I’m going to have to like you. I didn’t want to like you since you got my job, but I guess you’re just too nice and I’m gonna have to like you.’ That was in either 1999 or 2000 and here we are, twenty-two years later.”

Indeed, nearly two decades later, Stuedeman and Perry still maintain a close friendship. When rumors started flying that Perry might have to fill a pitching coach opening at the 11th hour this fall, her old friend Vann sent a text: “Don’t panic.”

“”I’m not even sure the last time that I had talked to her,” Stuedeman recalled. “Maybe in the spring or about a summer ball tournament a month or so ago, but I had actually gotten wind that Lance [McMahon] was a candidate [to be Alabama’s pitching coach] and so I texted her… then a few days later, she called me and told me that he had turned in his letter of resignation and I said ‘let me call you tomorrow.’ And the rest is history.”

While Stuedeman was out of the college game, she worked in real estate and coached high school softball. When she tossed around those ‘if, when and how’ scenarios in her mind, she didn’t quite picture the job she now has. Far from it, in fact. A Birmingham native, Stuedeman has never lived more than a few hours from her home city. Her family still calls the state of Alabama home – sister, Les, is the longtime head coach at Alabama-Huntsville and she’s never been outside easy driving distance from her parents.

“I’ve not lived more than two hours away from my mom and dad and I’m about to be fifty years old,” Stuedeman said. “My whole family is here [in Alabama]. I’ve got two nephews under two, my brother got married last year, it’s just a big time for our family, a lot going on. And I have a life in Tuscaloosa and a family – and everybody that knows me knows that I absolutely, 100% hate everything there is to do with cold weather. Those were really the two cons on the list; not really that hard of a choice, to pick up at this age and move to a part of the country that I’ve never lived in, but those were the two big cons to factor in.”

Following the announcement of her addition to the Illini coaching staff, a popular question surrounding Stuedeman has been whether or not she intends to stay at Illinois long-term. As far as she is concerned, though, that’s an easy question to answer.

“Tyra asked me the same thing,” Stuedeman noted. “I told her, ‘I’m tying my bootstraps to you’. I think she’s been great and she’s going to be great… my number one priority is to give her as much as I can and to elevate the pitching staff into the next level. I told her that I was there to stay and I’m with her, and I’ll be loyal to her as long as she’ll have me.”

At the end of the day, Vann Stuedeman is still Vann Stuedeman. Asked how she’s doing, her reply is still “Well, I’m Vanntastic”, spoken in that famous Southern drawl. Her energy level is still bottomless; her conversational style hasn’t changed. Neither, she says, has the way that she coaches.

From the coach who once shepherded some of the best bullpens in the SEC, staying true to her successful coaching style is exactly what Illinois is counting on.