If you ever see UL softball assistant coach Hunter Veach dragging the field on a tractor or watering it with a hose, just eave him alone.
He’s most likely in deep thought and enjoying himself more than you would imagine.
“That’s my happy place,” Veach said with a smile. “I just zone everything out and think. I do a lot of planning when I’m out there. When the water hose is in my hand and the field is dragged, it’s one of the most peaceful places to be.
“Especially when nobody’s around, the lights are on and it’s 10 o’clock at night, and you’re just out there just in your element, a lot of preparation gets done there. Those are little moments as a coach, that’s the bright spot.”
Those moments are even more peaceful these days as the Ragin’ Cajuns prepare to begin postseason play at 10 a.m. Thursday against the Southern Miss-James Madison winner in the quarterfinals of the Sun Belt Conference tournament in San Marcos, Texas.
As Veach finishes up his first season of implementing a new defense at UL, there’s a lot of satisfaction watching it run like a well-oiled machine.
“That’s the thing,” Veach said. “That’s the system. It can’t be any different later in the year in a bad way, it can’t. The ultimate goal is consistency. We have a very talented group of players on the field right now who have grown at an exponential rate, so I’m expecting nothing but the best when it comes to the postseason.”
The Cajuns head to Texas leading the nation with 41 double plays turned during the regular season.
For three months last summer, Veach and UL head coach Gerry Glasco brainstormed about how to upgrade the team defense. The goal was to get UL to the Women's College World Series.
“I did not walk into this blind,” said Veach, who came to Lafayette after a year at Texas A&M. “I knew exactly what that man wanted, how he wanted it done and what his expectations were.”
Veach knew Glasco is demanding and hates to lose.
“That’s Gerry Glasco. I think that’s his best quality,” Veach said. “In this profession, you have to be open and honest. My biggest thing is everybody that’s around him knows why he does it.
“If you understand the why piece of what you’re doing and understand what drives somebody to be great, that’s when you get the best out of them. He gets the best out of our coaches and he gets the best out of our players.”
It was a much more difficult process to get the team to understand the why of his new defensive system.
“We spent a lot of time studying. It was PowerPoints … working on communication,” he said. “There are so many little verbiages that we throw out to them all the time, and it can get very confusing to the players in the fall. This number and this color, what does that mean in that situation?”
The UL defense struggled mightily during the first month of the season, leading to the Cajuns’ 9-12 start.
Veach said the growing pains never worried him.
“Zero,” he said. “The only thing I had to panic about is the girls sticking to the process. In February and early March when we were making the mistakes, the girls knew what they were capable of and they didn’t understand why it (mistakes) were happening. We did as a staff. We knew they had to get their feet wet.
“What I was worried about most was, are we going to jump ship and change what we’re doing?”
Veach said at one point this season that his infielders were getting 1,000 defensive reps a week.
It finally clicked during a Feb. 27 road game against Nicholls.
“Just in an instant, the switch flipped,” he said. “It was 100% the Nicholls game. We had three double plays, had a backside out and a redirect out. It was amazing. Since then, we’ve never looked back.”
The process wasn’t complete. Cecilia Vasquez played third base that night, and Brooke Ellestad hadn’t made the move from shortstop to third base yet.
“We asked Brooke, ‘Do you want to play short, do you want to play third or do you want the ball?' ” Veach said. “That’s the question we asked. Any good athlete, like Brooke has proven to be, is always going to say, ‘I want the ball.’ ”
That approach stems from Veach’s preference of having the most athletic infielders on the corners.
“If we can have good athletic corners like we have right now with (first baseman Sam) Roe and Ellestad, you can take away the middle of the field completely, which in turn leads to a lot more double plays,” Veach said.
What really impressed Veach throughout the process was the preparation of players who started on the bench.
“This is so unique to me that we had so much talent that sat the bench in the first part and when their name was called, they were ready to go without missing a beat,” he said. “We’re leaning on that a lot and that’s not something a lot of teams have. That’s something that’s very special.”
The last step to success is the pitcher in the circle where the top duo of Sam Landry and Chloe Riassetto shine defensively.
“We have communication from our middles to our pitchers in three different ways to let them know what side is covered, who has the bag, what side you need to be aggressive to, what side you don’t need to be aggressive to,” Veach said. “That’s something in our communication system that doesn’t take a timeout.”
It’s not just his players initially stunned when getting to know Veach. During his time at Texas A&M, he met the director of operations for the Aggies’ golf team. Incredibly, her name is also Hunter.
So when former coaching colleague Troy coach Eric Newell visited Lamson Park last week, he was quite confused when his director of operations kept referring to Hunter as a “she”, before he finally realized the married couple have the exact same name.
“We enjoy having fun with people that way,” Veach said. “I love it. Always wanted two of me ,but I’m starting to realize more every day that I don’t have two of me, she has two of her. She’s definitely Hunter No. 1 in this equation and I learned that really quick.”
