The Samantha Story: Chapter Four - Starkville
Brian Ogden, Assistant Director/Communications
8/17/2021
The Samantha Story is a four-part series examining Samantha Ricketts’ journey from All-American to head coach. The final chapter focuses on her time in Starkville.
STARKVILLE – Samantha Ricketts sat in a California hotel room and waited.
She was waiting for the press release she knew was coming, waiting for her moment, waiting to be able to share the news. Ricketts would be the next head softball coach at Mississippi State.
That was never on her mind five years earlier when she’d first arrived in Starkville.
“I was looking for a place that I felt like could be challenged, a place that had potential for me to grow and to see if I could help improve an offense,” she remembered. “I thought this was a strong program with postseason experience, a good hitting team and had the ability to add more power to those numbers.”
In the summer of 2014, Ricketts made her first trip to Mississippi. She had a job offer in hand to be the Bulldogs’ hitting coach but was trying to make sure it was the right fit for her.
While she was in town, the program was holding summer camps, and she had the chance to meet some of the student-athletes during their lunch break before heading off to spend the afternoon looking at houses with a real estate agent.
“I just remember [the players] being very excited,” she said. “They knew who I was as a player and about my sister. I got a chance to talk to them and let them ask questions about my style and philosophies.”
As an assistant coach, Ricketts saw MSU break the school record for home runs in a season three times and post three of the top four RBI totals on record. When State began searching for a new head coach, she took her impressive numbers as evidence that she could get the job done. Ricketts was asked if she’d be interested in leading the Bulldogs, and immediately said yes. She then had a little over a week to prepare for what she considers the easiest and toughest interview she’s ever had.
She had a head start. She knew the team, their families, the staff within the athletic department and every member of the search committee. But she also knew she had never prepared for anything like this before, so she called her old coach and mentor Patty Gasso.
“It was nerve-wracking because I was the very last interview of the week, and I knew that going in,” she said. “It was a Friday afternoon after they had met with at least six other interviewees throughout the week. I had a lot of talks with my mentors, with Coach Gasso, with Coach [Tyler] Bratton and just really making sure I went in feeling like I was the most prepared.”
Ricketts still has the notes from that phone call. In fact, she has notes from every call she’s had with the legendary Oklahoma head coach since that day. She keeps a running note on her phone and computer. It was updated last week.
Gasso advised her on her PowerPoint presentation. She told Ricketts to make personalized handouts for everyone who would be in the room. Most importantly, she helped Ricketts translate the success she’d had into selling points that proved she would make a good head coach.
“I was able to accomplish what I set out to, which was improve our hitting numbers and to have All-American hitters,” Ricketts said of her time as an assistant. “But I think overall the biggest thing I learned was that the relationship with those hitters and the trust in those conversations were more important than the mechanics of the swing we were talking about. Because if they didn’t believe that I truly cared about them and what was best for them as a person, they weren’t going to buy in and listen to what was best for them as a hitter.”
Relationships. They were a hallmark of Ricketts’ time as an assistant, what made it so hard to leave Wichita State and what made her peers and players root for her to get the job. It’s only fitting that she’s come to be defined as a relational head coach, one focused on the person more than the player.
Following her Friday afternoon interview, MSU Director of Athletics John Cohen called on Saturday. Ricketts accepted the job then flew to California for a recruiting trip. The official announcement would wait for Monday, so Ricketts found herself waiting in a hotel room to recruit as the program’s head coach for the first time.
Her first call was to Gasso, then her mother. Next came Bratton. She told the players in the team’s group text to a flurry of excited GIF responses. Once the release was posted on Monday morning, Ricketts headed out to the tournament to begin searching for her future rosters and finding a new assistant coach.
The first summer went by in a blur, but it wasn’t that much different. She was on the road recruiting, where she’d been for nearly a decade by that point. It wasn’t until her first team meeting in August, that it set in for Ricketts. She was the head coach, the face of the program, the leader.
“That was something that I never sat in front of and led,” she said. “I may have done the back end, the paperwork, the manuals, all the preparation for it, but I do remember sitting in front of all of them like, ‘Alright, let’s go. Let’s get this started,’ I think that was the first time I was pushed forward into the spotlight.”
On February 7, 2020, Ricketts wrote her first lineup card and earned her first victory, a 4-0 win at the NFCA Leadoff Classic against Missouri State. Her team went on to win the tournament that weekend before cruising to a 25-3 record in a shortened season.
Ricketts will always remember being presented with a cowbell for her first win as a head coach following that game. She noticed director of operations Kayla Winkfield passing something to senior Fa Leiliua.
“I remember there being a commotion in the dugout, and I was trying my best to ignore it,” she said. “I saw Wink, and Fa is not very secretive either, so I’m like ‘Oh my gosh guys, if you jinx this, if anything happens.’
The teams shook hands following the game, and Leilua presented the bell to Ricketts, but she’d forgotten to complete unwrap it and remove the packaging, so the bell wouldn’t ring for Ricketts.
“We had to re-shoot the celebration about four times,” Ricketts said. “IIt took a couple tries, but that was about right. It was the first time for a lot of us. It was fun, it was exciting, it was a good start to a really good weekend and a great tournament. I think that really kind of helped everyone settle in.”
While the cowbell moment might be the one fans and players remember going forward. Something happened that fall that set the tone for the year and proved once more why Ricketts was right for the job.
“I remember a fall post-practice meeting, and I think it was Lindsey Williams and Candace Denis talking about what the standard was for this team and this program,” Ricketts said. “Lindsey Williams mentioned ‘This is Coach Ricketts’ first year. Let’s do this for her as well,’ and that just kind of blew me away.”
The coach who always puts her players first was being put first by her players. That relationship is the foundation for her program.
