John Brown had Senior Night down to a routine. For years, he served as the emcee of the evening after the Mingus Union softball team’s final home game of each season. He verbally took the packed bleachers on a journey through each outgoing senior’s softball days. Brown talked about the player’s favorite memories and quirks, sometimes adding his own commentary to the pre-written script.
Senior Night on April 11 was the same. After the Marauders’ 7-1 beat down of Bradshaw Mountain to wrap up the 2022 home slate, Brown grabbed the mic and walked the crowd through his memories of the six senior players and graduating student manager. He noticed throughout the afternoon that there were more former players of his in the stands than usual, but he didn’t think much of it. After all, this is Cottonwood — loyalty runs through the blood of the city. But he’d eventually realize the sight of his players throughout the years was no coincidence.
“I was caught up with winning the game and all the stuff that I had planned for the girls afterwards,” Brown said. “At the end it started to hit me that there were girls there that I hadn’t seen in 15 years and I didn’t know why they were there.”
After Brown spoke about his seven graduating seniors, he started to wrap up the festivities. He’d already broken his promise of making it through the night without any tears shed — which happened rather quickly — and was prepared to head home. But there was one more person to honor for the night. In a move Brown says he didn’t see coming, his wife snatched the microphone out of his hands, and announced that Senior Night wasn’t over. This was the longtime Mingus softball coach’s last home game too.
After 22 years, Brown retired from coaching after the 2022 season ended with a 4A Conference State Championships semifinal loss to the eventual champions, Salpointe Catholic.
This time it was for real. Four years ago, Brown told his team that the upcoming 2019 season would be his last ride. His youngest daughter had graduated and he decided that, even though the young core of the team was strong, he’d be done after this.
“We were able to rope him back in,” senior pitcher Alexis Ayersman, a freshman on that team said. “He knew that we were different.”
After a playoff run and No. 4 final AIA ranking in 2019, Brown talked himself into one more season. It just happened to turn out that there wouldn’t be a next season. The Marauders played just two regular season games in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the sports world in its tracks.
20 years of coaching couldn’t end like that.
“That’s when I kind of drilled it in that I’m going to stick this out,” Brown said. “This group deserves at least a solid season … This group of seniors was the reason I stayed.”
They were the reason he stayed, but the wild part of Brown’s journey was how it started. His eldest daughter Miranda’s little league softball league was short on coaches so he volunteered to help out. The casual commitment soon became an obsession.
“Competitively, I can’t do anything half-assed,” Brown laughed. “I went after it.”
Little league coaching turned into club-ball, and club-ball parlayed to Mingus. Funny enough, the longtime coach never stepped on a diamond competitively as a player. Brown didn’t play little league. He didn’t play in high school. He never played an organized game of baseball — he wrestled and competed in the pole vault in high school.
Brown threw all convention out the window as a coach. His trademark aggressive style of play was designed through a lack of design. Brown isn’t a branch on a coaching tree, he planted his own seeds with a fresh perspective on softball.
“[Softball] was a complete unknown for me which I think helped me strategically,”
he said. “We tried different things and played outside the box.”
Base stealing became deeply ingrained in the DNA of John Brown-coached teams. His philosophy on the base paths was that players should never end an inning on the base they their at-bat landed them on. If the player hit a single, she should be on second base before the inning ends. If she hits a triple, she needs to score.
“My daughter Miranda was extremely aggressive when she played and so she became my first-base coach,” Brown said. “That just really clicked with the both of us being really aggressive. We stole a lot of bases.”
Unconventional coaching styles require trust from the players to be effective. When tradition is broken, trust needs to be earned. Brown understood that from the beginning.
“It’s not me coaching them, it’s me being on the team with them,” Brown said. “To have all nine kids on board and not have any bad seeds, you just don’t get that.”
Mingus athletes are in a relatively unique position compared to most communities.
The athletes play together as a group for years. The upperclassman group on the 2022 team were teammates far past their Mingus days. They spent copious amounts of time together whether it was little league or club softball while growing up in Cottonwood.
By the time they entered the Mingus program as freshmen, they were teammates for formative years of their lives. Brown had to earn their trust. He did that by not acting at their softball coach, but as acting as a father figure away from home and helping these young women blossom.
“He’s really helped me grow as a player. He showed me the potential of what I can be,” outgoing senior Ella Behlow said. “I can be down on myself, I can be crying after a game and he’s always there to tell me that he loves me and I mean so much to him.”
After two decades of putting the lives of his players first, it’s time for Brown to take some time for himself. He’ll focus on his business and his family first, of course. He wishes to spend more time with his grandchildren, but Brown already foresees the softball itch coming back. He’s flirting with the idea of becoming an umpire in the future, saying that he’s always appreciated the umpires he’s worked with through the years and he’d like to pay it forward.
As for a return to coaching, Brown is noncommittal. But his grandchildren are quickly approaching little-league age, and he knows the desire will be hard to resist.
“We’ll see how that plays out. They’re talking about putting together a team that I just might consult and help, not take the reins, but that’s in the long-term future,” Brown laughed. “I’ve been watching little league, I’ll put it that way.”
