Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Team set to enter fall play under first-year staff

Tuesday, September 16, 2014
First-year Southeast softball coach Mark Redburn instructs the team at Southeast Softball Complex. Photo by Sean Burke

Southeast Missouri State University's softball team will welcome in new head coach Mark Redburn and two new assistant coaches, Kerry Shaw and Stephanie Winter, for this season.

Following a record of 11-34 last season, the university decided to not renew former head coach Lana Richmond's contract after 33 years at Southeast.

Redburn's coaching resume consists of coaching and teaching for a total of six years at the high school level in the Fort Zumwalt and St. Charles districts before entering the collegiate level in which he coached for a total of 10 years.

His experience at the college level consists of head coaching at the University of Evansville for five years of coaching, Saint Charles Community College for three years and Jefferson College for two years. In addition to these head coaching experiences, Redburn was an assistant for three years at the University of Missouri.

"We want to come in and establish our foundation and what we believe, and we aren't going to cut corners. We've got to work hard and earn what we want because it's not going to be given to us," Redburn said.

"At the same time we want to have a message here that we want to develop the entire student-athlete all the way around and we want them to be good people,we want them to be great students and we want them to be great softball players."

Redburn's focus and overall plan for the team included overall development as a whole, create and maintain foundation and use these components as building blocks for the softball program for the future.

Shaw, a Missouri Western State University alumnus and the newly acquired infielders and batting coach for the team, has a total of 20 years of experience.

Shaw's experience consists of eight years as the head coach at Grain Valley High School from 1994 to 2002 then a tenure at Odessa High School for four years from 2010 to 2014.

During his break from high school athletics, Shaw coached baseball and softball for teams his children were involved with and teams participating in summer leagues.

"We are looking forward to helping each one of them try to reach their potential and kind of a cumlative effort of improving of the program. In addition to doing whatever I need to do to help coach Redburn and Winter and make this a smooth transition as far as a new coaching staff," Shaw said.

Winter is a native of St. Louis and played softball at the University of Michigan.

Winter's resume as a player includes winning the Big 10 Conference championship three out of the four years she played in addition to winning the national championship in 2005.

In her fifth year at Michigan, Winter was provided with her first year experience in the field of coaching as the team's student assistant.

Following graduation, Winter was an outfielders' coach at the University of Northern Iowa from 2008 to the summer of 2010 before accepting a coaching opportunity at Upper Iowa University until 2012.

After eight years of being involved with softball away from Saint Louis, Winter made the decision to pursue her master's degree at Saint Louis University, which also included assistance with infielders and outfielders during her two-year degree completion.

Winter said she is excited about drawing the attention of kids from the St. Louis area down to Southeast.

"I think there's a great pool of kids in St. Louis and in Missouri that we can use to improve our program," Winter said.

Southeast's fall season starts off with two doubleheaders. The Redhawks will play in St. Charles, Missouri, against Lindenwood-Belleville and Lindenwood University. In the following week, the Redhawks will play against Southern Illinois-Carbondale and Lakeland Community College in Carbondale, Illinois, before hosting their first home game doubleheader against Three Rivers Community College and Williams Baptist on Oct. 11.

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