Softball: Graham leaves OHS program

When Stephanie Graham was offered the head junior varsity basketball and softball coaching positions at Odessa High in 1997, she was advised by some coaches around the district to stay away. Graham, a 1991 OHS graduate, was a volunteer softball coach at Midland Freshman school with hopes of becoming a head coach.

The Lady Bronchos, which had only started their softball program in 1995, had a short but already widely known reputation of dispirited play.

It did not matter to Graham.

"I was in Midland, but I always knew I wanted to go back to my alma mater," she said Thursday.

 In 11 years at the helm of the Lady Bronchos program, Graham compiled a 264-139-3 record and led the team to the playoffs the past five consecutive seasons. In 2008, Odessa High advanced to the Class 5A state semifinals for the first time in school history.

She officially resigned Tuesday to take a similar position at Class 5A Mesquite High. The decision, Graham said, was a personal one as she will now have more time to spend with her daughter, Jordan, who will be a sixth-grader next year.

"This was an opportunity that just came up," Graham said. "I have some family in Mesquite and (it) gives me the chance to spend a lot more time with Jordan, which I haven't been able to do the past few years.

"Odessa has been my home forever; I graduated from Odessa High and came back here to coach and it's going to be hard to move, but it's the right time."

Because OHS did not offer softball, Graham played almost every other sport and on club softball teams. After graduating, she was an outside hitter for Howard Payne University's volleyball team and eventually graduated with an accounting degree, though the career proved unsatisfactory quickly.

"I missed being part of a team," Graham said. "Everyone said. ‘No, you'll like accounting after a while.' But I missed the team, the atmosphere."

She went to UTPB for teaching certification and joined the school's first-ever softball club team, she said. After Midland Freshman school, she went back to Odessa High and, this time, she brought a level of expectation few were ready for.

Since the beginning, "Our goal was to win a state championship," Graham said. "At that time, people didn't even know what a state championship was. We couldn't even win a district game."

The confidence eventually rubbed off on the players.

"She had high, high, high expectations of making state," said senior pitcher Courtney Cernoch, who was on the varsity team since midway through her freshman year and recently earned second-team All-District 2-5A honors. "The first thing out of her mouth at practices is, ‘Do you want to get to state?' It's a lot of pressure on her and on us. She had to make practices hard."

OHS girls athletics coordinator Tracey Borchardt said that the opening will be posted and "we'll go on from there."

"I've know Stephanie since she was in junior high and I was coaching junior high," Borchardt said. "I've watched her all the way through high school, off to college and then back to Odessa.

"She really has turned the softball program around with hard work. This was a personal decision for her, to be able to spend more time with her daughter, and I know she'll do a great job."

Graham said she recommended junior varsity Rachel Pena for the position.

ECISD athletic director Todd Vesely said there is no specific timeline for finding a replacement. He said he would like one as soon as possible and internal candidates would be considered, but he's willing to wait for a higher quality candidate if needed.

In a sense, Graham's success put ECISD in such a position. The bar is high.

"The Odessa High softball program is a different program than the one coach Graham took over," Vesely said.

"I think coach Graham did an outstanding job helping people believe they could win," he added. "She broke new ground, set new records."

Vesely did not directly say if an offer was made to keep Graham - "Any time you have great people, you do everything you can to hold on to them," he said - but both sides separated on a good note.

"You have to wish people well," Vesely said.