09/08/2026
A coaches story (long but worth the read)…
Swamp Donkeys D
From an Idea to World Champions
When the Houston World Series ended in the fall of 2025, there was no Swamp Donkeys D team. There wasn’t a roster, a lineup, a practice schedule, or some master plan to build one. In fact, I had never really planned on becoming a coach at all. Then, after Houston, a few players approached me with an idea: What if we built a Swamp Donkeys D team?
At first, I was hesitant. I knew what coaching would require because I knew this game. I had been playing for five years, traveling to fifteen or more tournaments a year, watching good teams, bad teams, talented teams, dysfunctional teams, and championship teams. I had learned that winning at this level was never just about collecting the most talented players. It was about finding the right players, putting them in the right situations, and somehow convincing a group of completely different personalities to believe in something bigger than themselves.
Eventually, hesitation turned into curiosity. Curiosity turned into a challenge. And by October, the work had begun.
I started scouting. Not just looking for home-run hitters or highlight-reel defenders, but searching for pieces of a puzzle that didn’t exist yet. We needed speed. We needed defense. We needed reliable bats. We needed players who could move runners, players who could change a game with their legs, and players who might only get one opportunity in a big moment but could be trusted when that moment came.
More than anything, though, I wanted team players. Talent can win games, but if you’re trying to survive an entire season and eventually a World Series, talent alone isn’t enough.
There were hours of conversations, one-on-ones, phone calls, games watched, personalities evaluated, and decisions made. Days became weeks and weeks became months until, finally, there was a roster. And what a roster it was. There were personalities everywhere. Strong ones. Loud ones. Competitive ones. Opinionated ones. At one point, someone joked that we had a few too many “chiefs in the kitchen,” and early on, they probably weren’t wrong. Everybody had an idea. Everybody had experience. Everybody wanted to contribute. The challenge was never going to be convincing these guys to care. It was teaching them how to care about the same thing.
That transformation didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly, through practices, games, conversations, mistakes, victories, frustration, laughter, and time spent together. Players began understanding their roles. They stopped measuring their value by where they hit in the lineup or what position they played. Trust began replacing ego. Teammates became friends, and somewhere along the way, friends became family. The collection of players I had recruited during the fall was becoming something completely different.
We were becoming a team.
Then we started winning.
League play became the first glimpse of what this group could become. We traveled to the Houston Lone Star Classic and went undefeated, bringing home first place. We kept winning back in Dallas. And the more we won, the more the atmosphere around us seemed to change. At times, it genuinely felt like Swamp Donkeys versus everybody.
Maybe that comes with winning?
When you become the team near the top, everyone circles your name. Every opponent wants to be the one that knocks you down. Every mistake gets noticed. Every loss suddenly means something.
But we kept playing.
By the end of the regular season, we had won our season outright and secured our berth to the 2026 Gay Softball World Series. There was only one team that had been able to crack us late in the year: the Mad Batters. They became our regular-season kryptonite, the only team to hand us a loss. As a coach, I worried about that game more than I probably ever told the players. Not because one loss changed what we had accomplished, but because doubt can be dangerous. I wondered whether that loss would make them question themselves. Whether they would start wondering if we were really as good as we believed we were.
They didn’t.
Instead, they worked.
For the next two months, we practiced every single week. We worked on defense, situational hitting, base running, communication, positioning, and discipline. We practiced the things that don’t make highlight videos—the extra cutoff, advancing a runner, knowing when to take the extra base and when not to, making the routine play, understanding where the ball needs to go before it is ever hit. The little things. The boring things. The championship things. Because I had been around enough tournament softball to know that eventually, you end up in a game where talent isn’t enough. Eventually, somebody has to execute.
By the time we arrived at the World Series, the team walking onto those fields barely resembled the group that had first come together months earlier. Every player had developed. Every player had improved. Everyone understood what was expected of them and, more importantly, everyone understood why their role mattered. There was no longer a collection of individuals trying to figure one another out. There was just us.
And then the World Series began.
We went 4-0 in round robin, and for those four games, the Swamp Donkeys put on an absolute clinic. The preparation showed. The confidence showed. The chemistry showed. But everybody who has played a World Series knows round robin is only the introduction. Bracket play is where the tournament changes. Ninety-four teams had arrived in our division believing they could win the same championship, and one by one, the margin for error began disappearing.
The games got tighter. The competition got better. Some games were decided by a single run. In others, we fell behind and had to fight our way back. There were moments when one bad inning could have unraveled everything we had built, moments when somebody had to make a defensive play, get a hit, take an extra base, or simply keep the inning alive. And through all of it, something remarkable happened: we never stopped being ourselves.
We played disciplined Donkey softball.
Nobody had to become Superman. Nobody had to win the tournament by themselves. Make the play in front of you. Put the ball in play. Move the runner. Take the extra base when it’s there. Trust the guy hitting behind you. Do your job and believe that the next Donkey will do his.
That mentality carried us through one battle after another until Friday night, when the lights came on and everything felt just a little different. Across the field was Long Beach Dynasty. Win, and we were headed to Championship Saturday. Lose, and we were being sent into the losers bracket, where the road to the championship suddenly became much longer and much harder.
It came down to the final inning.
Months of work. An entire season. Countless practices. Everything sitting there in one game.
And once again, the Donkeys found a way.
We walked them off.
For a moment, everything erupted. Long Beach Dynasty was finished, and the Swamp Donkeys were going to Championship Saturday.
What most of the teams around us probably didn’t realize was how much work had happened long before those moments. We had scouted roughly 60 of the 94 teams in our division. We watched hitters. We studied defenses. We looked for tendencies, speed, weaknesses, positioning—anything that might give us an advantage if our paths eventually crossed. In a tournament this large, you can’t control everything. A bad bounce, one bad inning, or one great play by an opponent can change everything. But we were determined to control everything we could.
Then Saturday arrived.
After all the recruiting, all the practices, all the league games, Houston, the loss to Mad Batters, two months of preparation, round robin, bracket games, one-run battles, comebacks, and the Friday night walk-off, there was only one game left.
The World Series Championship.
Across from us stood Fury. And almost immediately, they punched us in the mouth.
Seven runs in the first inning. Seven runs, in the biggest game of our lives.
There are moments in sports when you learn what a team really is, and they usually don’t happen when everything is going right. They happen when the plan falls apart. They happen when the scoreboard looks ugly and the other dugout is celebrating and there is nowhere to hide from the pressure of the moment.
I looked at my team, and I didn’t see panic.
I didn’t see finger-pointing.
I didn’t see anyone trying to do too much.
I saw the same team I had watched grow all year.
So we went back to work.
After giving up seven runs in the first inning, our defense held Fury scoreless for the next six innings. Zero. Not another run. The scouting mattered. The defensive positioning mattered. The practices mattered. Our hitters kept putting balls in play. Our runners kept applying pressure. Guys accepted whatever the situation demanded from them. Slowly, one inning at a time, seven runs stopped looking impossible. The deficit disappeared. Momentum shifted. And then the Swamp Donkeys took control.
When the final out was made, the scoreboard read: Swamp Donkeys 16. Fury 7.
And for a moment, everything I had imagined for months became real.
I had thought about that final play countless times. I had imagined what it might feel like to see the last out recorded in a World Series championship game. I had pictured my players running onto the field. I had wondered whether I would yell, laugh, cry, or somehow just stand there trying to process it.
Then suddenly, I didn’t have to imagine it anymore.
We were World Champions.
The Swamp Donkeys had won the 49th Gay Softball World Series, the largest in iPride Softball history. Ninety-five teams had entered our division. Ninety-four of them would leave without the championship. The last team standing was a team that didn’t even exist a year earlier. A team I never planned to create. A team that started as a conversation after Houston and became a roster filled with big personalities and a few “chiefs in the kitchen.” A team that learned that championships are not won because every player gets exactly what they want; they are won when every player decides that what the team needs matters more.
That is the part that brings me to tears.
Of course I am proud of the trophy. I’m proud that we went undefeated in Houston. I’m proud that we won our season. I’m proud of going 4-0 in round robin. I’m proud of every one-run game, every comeback, every defensive stand, and that Friday night walk-off. I’m proud that after Fury put seven runs on us in the first inning of the championship game, we answered by shutting them out for the next six and scoring sixteen of our own.
But when I think about this season years from now, I don’t think the scoreboard will be what I remember most.
I’ll remember the people.
I’ll remember watching players grow into roles they might not have imagined for themselves. I’ll remember seeing guys make enormous improvements because they kept showing up and working. I’ll remember watching a group of different personalities learn to trust each other. I’ll remember the practices when nobody was watching, the conversations nobody else heard, and the countless hours spent trying to prepare for situations we hoped would eventually come.
And when those situations finally came, they were ready.
Every player mattered. Every player contributed.
Every player became part of this championship.
As their coach, that is what means the most to me. They bought into the process. They believed in one another. And they trusted me enough to believe that every decision, every practice, every adjustment, and every expectation was leading us somewhere.
A year earlier, there was no team.
There was just an idea.
Then there was a roster. Then there were teammates. Then there was a family. And somewhere along the way, a group of guys who had never played a single inning together became the best team in a 95-team World Series division.
Sometimes the greatest chapters in our lives begin with something we never planned to do.
I almost said no. Instead, I said yes.
And on Championship Saturday in 2026, I watched a dream I had replayed in my head for months finally happen in front of me.
Swamp Donkeys D.
2026 Gay Softball World Series Champions.
HEE-F**KING-HAW!
