Will Jameson looked at coming to the Fort Mill softball program for two reasons and now those reasons have been accomplished.
Jameson, an assistant for the past couple of seasons, has been named the new head softball coach at Fort Mill after the retirement of Chuck Stegall. Stegall knew his window for winning a state title was closing as was his career. He had asked Jameson to come coach with him to help win a state title and to be in the running to take his spot when he retired. That is exactly what happen.
Fort Mill capped the 2022 season winning the 5A state title and now Jameson will start the 2023 season in a new role as head coach.
“The biggest thing is I had a great thing going at York with great kids and facilities and stuff like that,” he said. “But like everyone around here knows, you have a chance to come to Fort Mill it is something that is hard to pass up.”
Jameson teaches at Fort Mill High and was at York for five years coaching softball before coming to Fort Mill where he has been the past two years. He said it meant a lot to him to have Stegall ask him to join his staff at Fort Mill, knowing that one day it was possible he could be in line for the head coaching job.
“I jumped on the opportunity,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, but it was hard to pass up the opportunity to get over to the school district.”
Jameson said he knew Fort Mill was special with the talent the team has had in recent years, that a run to a state title was possible. Now that they made that run, Fort Mill lost a lot of seniors, so Jameson has his work cut out for him to start reloading.
“We lost eight seniors,” he said. “Pitching is always big. Losing Maddie Drerup was big. The main thing coming in is to set the culture up with what I see as a coach.”
Jameson said there won’t be dramatic changes, just adjustments here and there.
“We will have to work very hard to get back to where we were at and we got a group of young kids that want to work hard,” he said. “With me being here the past two years, they know who I am and what I expect for the most part. It is going to be about setting up the program and get a culture for what I like to do as a coach and get that going.”
Getting better every day is the expectation he said he has for his team this coming season.
“If you are getting better every day, you are making your teammates better every day,” Jameson said. “Winning is nice, but it is about becoming better players every day and becoming better people every day. If you do that, winning will take care of itself. We are young and we are going to take our lumps, but if they will buy into what we are doing, we will surprise some people.”
Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep
