Hope Creasy was about to begin her freshman year as a member of the Radford University softball team in 2006 when she learned the program was making a coaching change. As unsettling as that news was to someone who was about to arrive on campus, the good news was that players would be part of the interview process to hire a successor. Which is how she ended up in a room with a packet of printouts that outlined Mickey Dean's conditioning regimen in day-to-day detail.
Other candidates brought optimism. Dean brought a plan for when, not if, he was hired.
"That conditioning side of things was laid out even more than what the softball was," Creasy, now the head softball coach at Radford, recalled. "When he gave that to us, it might have frightened some people, just because they weren't used to that. But in the end, it was something that we knew we needed to get to where we wanted to."
What followed that fall, as promised, was not particularly pleasant for those running, pedaling and swimming. But Radford went 241-116 during the six seasons under Dean and made its only two appearances in the NCAA tournament. A Big South program might not be able to compete for high school All-Americans, but there was nothing to stop it from being physically and mentally better prepared than the teams that could. The plan shaped an identity.
"As much as it sucked, it was a great feeling to have," Creasy said of the early conditioning sessions. "You figured out how to lean on each other and trust each other and get through things that were definitely not easy."
"No one wants to go through what we went through last year." Alyssa Rivera
On the face of it, there is little that is analogous about the coaching job at Radford and the one Dean now holds at Auburn. There is nothing small about Auburn, nothing small about the expectations for a program that two years ago played for a national championship, nothing small about the challenge of rehabilitating a reputation made toxic by allegations of misconduct by the former coaching staff. Radford just needed a coach to put it in the best position to win games. Auburn needed someone who could help make it OK to even care about winning and losing games again.
"No one wants to go through what we went through last year," Auburn sophomore Alyssa Rivera said. "As a team, as a unit, as a family, as everything. Last year? We just kicked [it] to the curb."
As different as the situations were at Radford and Auburn, each was still about identity. Not an identity imposed but discovered. Whoever took the Auburn job still needed a plan.
"I think it has to be one that is semiflexible, in that the experiences of the team prior to you arriving may delay or alter the course of your plan," Dean said. "If it's a skill thing, then your focus is on softball. If it's a culture thing, then your focus is there. If it's an academic thing, then your focus is there. So it may change the timing of where your primary focus is coming in."
Former coach Clint Myers didn't step down until late August, the abrupt move coming days before espnW reported that a Title IX complaint alleged the coach allowed assistant coach Corey Myers, his son, to pursue relations with multiple members of the team. Corey Myers had resigned during the season. All of that left the university to find a replacement later than the usual timeline for college softball hiring. Little more than three weeks passed between the senior Myers' retirement and the announcement that Dean would leave James Madison to take the Auburn job. The timeline left Auburn players, already on campus, largely in the dark.
"It was really just like a standby, like we didn't know anything that was happening," Rivera said. "At that time we were honestly just praying for the best. That was all we could do. At the end of the day, them hiring the coaching staff, the athletic department, at the end of the day, that's not our choice. So we've just got to make the best out of it, every situation we get put into."
Unlike a typical hiring process, as when Dean was hired during the summer by Radford in 2006 or James Madison in 2012, that left little time to let the players get to know him, and vice versa.
Those introductions instead had to be done in conjunction with fall practices, and they focused more on the future than the past. Dean said he still hasn't spoken to the team about the specific issues of last season, turmoil that included an on-field dust-up between a player and an opposing coach, the in-season resignation of Corey Myers, players reportedly refusing to board a team bus with another player and three marijuana-related arrests. Despite all that, Auburn went 49-12 last season and fell to eventual national champion Oklahoma in the super regionals.
Dean chose to say little at all for his first couple of weeks. He watched how players interacted and listened to how they communicated.
"I didn't feel it was appropriate, with the timing, to jump in and just lay the law down," Dean said. "Now, were there rules and expectations as far as behavior? Absolutely. And we went over that. I think that's always a work in progress, especially with the timing, but for me, it was figuring out a way to get them to trust in the process and create buy-in. It rarely pertained to softball."
At times that came in ways that would have been familiar to Creasy and her Radford teammates, in the weight room or on a track. But in this case, it also meant giving up some of the hours on the field allowed by NCAA rules to instead sit in a classroom and talk. Talk about what they wanted the program to be about, what principles mattered to them.
"When you're dealing with young people, they think this is going to be a quick process, but I wanted it to be a thorough process," Dean said. "So we really spent the entire fall semester, and are still working on our identity ... I had to allow that to develop and not rush it. Sometimes I would catch myself knowing what direction I wanted to go in, but knowing that if I forced that, it wasn't going to be long-lasting. So sometimes I would even have to step back and just allow things to sit overnight and then come back and talk again."
Creasy said the key at Radford was that upperclassmen bought in early, and players who might not enjoy the full payoff on the field accepted the physical regimen Dean implemented. They brought younger players with them. Dean said he was fortunate this past fall that Auburn's pitching staff, most notably junior Makayla Martin and senior Kaylee Carlson, embraced the changes. On a team with 15 first- or second-year players, Martin and Carlson were always keys to this season on the field. They pitched all but 44 of the team's 405 2/3 innings a season ago. They were part of Auburn's run to the Women's College World Series championship round a season before. But beyond performance, they will determine how quickly an identity takes shape.
"Change, you just have to adapt to," Rivera said. "You can't just not change."
Dean acknowledged that the interview process at Auburn was different from those he experienced elsewhere, that he had as many questions for those looking to hire him as they had for him. He wanted to know about the possibility of additional NCAA ramifications. Without detailing them, he said the responses he received left him comfortable. And the coach who turned Radford into an NCAA tournament team and James Madison into a World Series contender couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with the financial and structural resources available to an SEC athletic program. An SEC program, even one with its reputation in tatters, can compete for championships.
It first needs a new identity, which is why the new coach came in with a plan that had as much to do with talking as hitting, fielding and pitching. Talking and -- because the best advice he said he received was to continue to be himself -- some pages out of a more familiar playbook.
"Well, we did work hard, I can promise you that," Dean said. "That is one area that we didn't sacrifice too much in. That's an area you can really use to break down some walls."