It’s 11:30 on a Thursday morning and Leigh Ross is getting ready for practice.

But the first-year Syracuse softball coach isn’t mulling over a clipboard or discussing strategy. Instead she is standing on the third-base line, sandwiched between two of her players, long-tossing.

She throws with an easy form, a slightly short-armed toss that is always on target. For a moment, it isn’t hard to picture the Leigh Ross that was an All-American outfielder at Toledo 16 years ago. At 37, Ross still looks the part of the player as much as the coach.

‘I’m always involved at practice,’ Ross said. ‘I try to throw everyday or I might run bases with the kids.’

Ross has been to the pinnacle of this game she is so enamored with. At Toledo, Ross was a key element of her school’s improbable run to the 1989 College World Series, where it finished seventh.

More importantly for Syracuse, Ross is determined to get back to that level, only this time from the coach’s box. She’s hoping to do it with players who have the same drive that carried her deep in the postseason.

‘I remember (Syracuse) told me that whatever information I had sent over here, they liked that I wrote I had played in the World Series as a player and my goal as a coach is to take a team back to the World Series,’ Ross said. ‘I think that’s what sparked their attention.’

Syracuse takes on No. 18 DePaul in Chicago and Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., this weekend.

Ross comes to Syracuse as the program’s second coach with a proven track record, after 10 years as a coach at Bowling Green, including eight as head coach. SU’s 10-20 record (3-1 Big East) might make Ross’ World Series goal seem a bit lofty – especially at a school that doesn’t play its first home game until April. Ross acknowledges it will take time, but she knows the ingredients because she’s been there. And those ingredients are players who have the same drive as her and same chemistry as her college team.

Ross took over as head coach of Bowling Green in 1999, when she was just 28. She became the winningest coach in Falcons history with a 237-198-2 record and was the Mid-American Conference coach of the year in 2001. In 2004 Ross led Bowling Green to an NCAA Tournament berth after the Falcons won the MAC tournament.

Throughout that time, her positive and passionate coaching style left a lasting impression on the players and coaches she came across. One of those coaches was Kyle Jamieson, currently SU’s associate head coach, who met Ross in 2000 while he was coaching at Toledo.

‘I thought she was a great coach, and I liked the way she led her team and her personality,’ said Jamieson, who has served as Ross’ coaching sidekick since 2004 at Bowling Green. ‘She does so many things for kids in terms of listening to them or being a role model. I just have seen kids that would go through a brick wall for her.’

Ross fashions herself more than a coach, but as a mentor to her players during their time in college.

That desire has led Ross to take chances on players before. While at Bowling Green she recruited a talented, learning-disabled athlete when no other coach would. Ross guided the girl through not only four years of softball, but also to a college degree. It was one of Ross’ favorite accomplishments as a coach.

Knowing that background, it’s not surprising Ross’ personality is warm and engaging. Before games, the coach has been known to chat up umpires or, if the official is a familiar face, exchange a hug or personal greeting. Ross has only been thrown out of a game once during her 14 years of coaching, at a game at Baylor last season.

Not to be deterred from watching her team, Ross snuck into the press box to see the rest of the game.

It’s a combination of those endearing qualities and her enthusiasm about her craft that have left an imprint on her current group of players.

‘She’s a very hands-on coach and she really wants us to succeed,’ sophomore infielder Lindsay Wasek said. ‘We have fun, but we also know when it’s time to work hard.’

The one constant of Ross’ teams at Bowling Green was they reflected her passion and competitiveness.

‘When I first took the job at Bowling Green I said, ‘Give me some bats and some balls and I’ll compete with anybody, because the game is the game,” Ross said.

The second of two children growing up in Toledo, Ohio, Ross spent most of her time outside playing sports with kids from her neighborhood, most of whom were older boys like her brother, Don.

‘My brother would never let me quit a game,’ Ross said. ‘Whenever I’d get hurt it was always ‘Oh c’mon, you’re fine. Get back out there we need another guy.’ I was never able to run into the house to cry to mom.’

In fact, Ross preferred baseball with the boys to softball early on. Ross never even played fast-pitch softball until she was forced to transition from the baseball diamond the summer before her freshman year at Whiteford High School in Michigan.

Ross brought with her to Whiteford a bold confidence – unafraid to show emotion on the field or banter back and forth with opposing fans. That attitude didn’t always sit well with her coach at the time, Kris Hubbard.

‘We had a few encounters, let’s put it that way,’ Hubbard said. ‘You don’t want to take that confidence or that cockiness away from an athlete like that, but they still need to keep it in check.’

Ross admits that Hubbard, who she remains in close contact with today, was the first to humble her and teach Ross to harness her emotions.

It’s there Ross displayed her natural ability and developed her desperate desire to win. Ross led Whiteford to three state championships, earning all-state honors at three different positions over three years: centerfield, pitcher and shortstop. Hubbard, in her 32nd year of coaching at Whiteford, considers Ross the ‘best player’ she has ever coached.

Ross would return to the outfield for her playing career at Toledo, where she was selected a second-team All-American her senior year in 1991. She compiled a .398 batting average and 296 hits over her four-year career, both MAC career records.

More so than her individual achievements, however, Ross remains driven in large part by the memory of the College World Series.

‘The biggest thing I learned from that experience is that you don’t have to have the best players at every position in order to get that far,’ Ross said. ‘That proved to me what chemistry really was. I always relate that experience and how we acted as teammates and try to make my team sort of like that.’

Ross understands it will take time to assemble a consistently competitive program, much less one capable of amending the ‘0’ that precedes any reference to the number of NCAA Tournament appearances the Orange have earned over the program’s seven and a half years.

Yet the ambition Ross displays is why the coach left Bowling Green. It’s why Ross admits that, in retrospect, her time at Bowling Green was a stepping stone to get to this position.

‘It’s hard to win at the level I want to win at when you don’t have the facilities, and you don’t have the money, and you have to fundraise just to go on spring break trips,’ Ross said. ‘I could have continued to stay there and been happy, but I think when last season ended I thought, ‘Gosh, can you go any further at a MAC school?”

Not that leaving Bowling Green was an easy decision for Ross, or one that she had considered previously.

Besides leaving the program she had built, Ross had to consider her family.

As a single mother of two children, Jared, 9, and Teagan, 6, Ross agonized about moving her kids away from the only community they had ever known. Only after several visits with Syracuse administrators and athletic officials did Ross feel comfortable enough with the area to relocate.

But Ross is here now, attempting to mold a young Orange squad into one she can call her own.

Ross admits the trust between her and her players is a work in progress. But it takes time to build the type of trust and chemistry necessary to win at the highest level. The type of trust and chemistry Ross had in Toledo in 1989. It’ll come by finding players like her.

‘When I recruit, I look for girls with my same love for the game,’ Ross said. ‘I want to see girls sprinting, diving, going all out. That’s how you play with pride. It’s something you do not because coach says so, but because that’s how sports are supposed to be played on this level.’

Published on March 29, 2007 at 12:00 pm