SUNY Coach Curran-Headley
Takes 400th Win

By WRILEY NELSON
ONEONTA

SUNY Oneonta softball swept its first four SUNYAC conference games on April 7 and 8. Among outstanding performances across the lineup was a major milestone for program-changing Head Coach Sara Curran-Headley. The Red Dragons’ 10-2 mercy-rule victory over SUNY Brockport on April 7 was Curran-Headley’s 400th career win.

Curran-Headley came to SUNY Oneonta in 2014 after 10 years as head coach for the Division II Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. At Mercyhurst, she recorded eight 20-win seasons and racked up the most victories in program history.

Her first season with the Red Dragons was the greatest one-season turnaround in program history and the fourth-largest single season improvement in the history of Division III softball. The 2014 Red Dragons finished 30-11 after an 8-28 season in 2013.

Curran-Headley’s tenth season at Oneonta is looking better by the day. The team had a rough start in March, facing tough national competition on a spring break tour of Texas. Since returning to New York, Oneonta has gone 9-6-1. Curran-Headley sees the difficult early games as a key part of her philosophy of continuous improvement.

“The team kept up its mental positivity in the face of top competition in Texas. We learned a lot and can keep improving our play every day,” she said.

Hard-knocks spring break play has been part of Curran-Headley’s softball career since her own days as catcher for Robert Morris University. She recalled facing difficult opponents in Florida and trying to learn from top athletes at big programs.

Curran-Headley had high praise for a number of her players, including graduate student Megan Palmatier.

“She’s one of the hardest workers I’ve seen,” she said. “We spoke about this at our early senior banquet this year. She’s really helping to spread that work ethic across the team.”

She is cautiously optimistic about the rest of the season.

“We gave ourselves a big breathing room this past weekend,” she reflected, referring to the Red Dragon’s 5-1 record between April 3 and 8, “it would be great to continue that way, but we have some tough competition coming up. We’re really just taking things one day at a time, and I think we really are getting better every day.”