Durant softball assistant coach Mike Crabb knew that he would eventually leave the game on his own terms, but didn’t always know when that would be. Now, after 25 years in the game, he has decided that it’s time to pursue other interests.
“I think you have to have no doubts, when it comes time to practice,” Crabb says. “And it’s to the point, now, where I get off in the afternoon and I’m like, ‘Do I want to go to practice?’”
An assistant under Durant coach and friend Matt Carter, Crabb spent the last decade with the Lady Cougars after coming up through the Little League and travel ball circuits. Having been able to coach his daughter, Brittany, and help Durant win the 2012 state championship, he simply feels that he’s done everything he could possibly want to do in the game.
“I think I’ve had a great run,” Crabb says. “I’ve enjoyed it. I can’t say I have any regrets about leaving — I think I’ve done everything I’ve set out to accomplish.”
FAMILY AFFAIR
Crabb didn’t get into coaching just to work with his daughter. He was actually involved in the game before he had any children.
After marrying his wife, Audra, Crabb was encouraged to join her father-in-law in coaching for nearby Pinecrest Little League in 1987. Though Brittany started playing tee-ball at age 5, Crabb didn’t switch over to coach her team right away.
He became more involved in the game itself four years later, when Brittany got the opportunity to play travel ball with the Tampa Mustangs. Although it was a learning experience for Crabb in itself, he became even more attuned to the game when Brittany turned 14 and the team was folding. When an opportunity with the Florida Maniacs came up, both father and daughter were on board.
“We played against this guy, Tom Taylor, for years, and when the team folded up, he offered her a spot to come play for him,” Crabb says. “He took me under his wing and taught me quite a lot about the game. He truly is one of the best coaches in the state of Florida.”
Around the same time, Crabb met Carter and joined up with the Lady Cougars in 2004, while Brittany was enrolled there. Both Crabbs stayed with the Maniacs in the high school offseasons, until Brittany graduated in 2007. That marked the end of an era for her father.
“Any time my daughter played was just an amazing thing,” he says. “I just loved the game so much, and she made it possible for me to be a part of this. Any time she pitched, or played the field — those were some of the most amazing times I’ll never forget.”
Instead of leaving the sport right then, Crabb decided to hang around. What followed were some of the best years of his coaching career.
LESS STRESS, MORE GOLD
“Coaching a child, there’s a lot of emotion that goes into it,” Crabb says. “With (Brittany) being gone, I thought it would be a good chance for me to be more into a game than worrying about how she was doing.”
He was right. Crabb says that the last seven years at Durant were by far his least stressful as a coach, and a “totally different” experience from what he had gotten used to.
“Coaching her was the best time I ever had, but coaching without her was some of the most relaxing coaching I’ve ever done,” he says.
The team had shown some promise for some time, and that all came to a head in the 2012 season. That team went 24-4 en route to the state title, outscoring its Final Four opponents 15-4 in the process. It’s his favorite memory from a long coaching career, possibly the pinnacle of his softball success.
IT’S JUST TIME
Durant’s program has been fairly successful since then, and the team still looks good in this upcoming season. But, after completing the fall ball season, Crabb spoke with Carter and decided it was simply time to wrap it up.
Crabb wants to spend more time with his growing family, travel more often with his wife and celebrate other successes. Brittany has since married, and she and her husband are starting a family of their own. And, Audra earned a degree in Business Management in October, after working on it part-time in between her work schedule and raising the family.
“Because of (Audra), I was able to do it,” Crabb says. “She was able to stand behind me, whatever decision I made. She’s a big reason I got into it, and a big reason I got out of it. It’s kind of come full-circle.”
But, as with many athletes and coaches, this isn’t the end of Crabb’s love for softball itself. He was offered a part-time position, which he did consider, but decided that he had to commit himself full-time to coaching if he were to make the impact that he’d want to make — and going full-time just isn’t what he wants to do anymore. He may be back in some capacity in a few years, but that just depends on where life takes him.
“I can’t say, four or five years from now, that I wouldn’t get back into it,” he says.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
COVERING ALL BASES
Though Mike Crabb has coached softball for much of his career, he did experiment with the boys’ game at one time. When his son, Michael, was in Bloomingdale Little League, Crabb coached his team for a year.
It was then that he realized he wanted to stick with the girls.
“I found the boys were a lot harder to coach than girls,” Crabb says. “Boys, at that age — he was around 7 or 8 — are a lot harder to coach. Girls would just sit down and listen; boys were like billy goats. They just wanted to push and shove. That was an interesting season.”