Owen pulls double-duty coaching at Hiram College

by Aaron Gray
agray@digitalsports.com

Brittany Owen went to college to become a college coach and she's not limiting herself.

The 2004 Chesapeake High School graduate is now an assistant coach for the women's soccer team and the softball team at Div. III Hiram College in Ohio.

"Yes, I guess it's very rare to be on two different coaching staffs," Owen said during a telephone interview from her office at the school last week. "But I knew I wanted to get into the coaching business so I jumped right in."

After a standout playing career at the Pasadena high school, Owen accepted an athletic scholarship to Div. II Limestone College in North Carolina and was a four-year starter in both sports. She was also a team captain in both sports her senior year.

For soccer, she was selected as the team's most-improved player her senior year after making the transition from midfield to defender. In softball, she was chosen as the team MVP her junior season and was selected to the All-Tournament team. In her final year, she set a school record for most walks in a season (30) while playing third and second base.

"After playing sports for so long, I knew I had to be around it," said Owen, whose father, Tom, is the junior-varsity girl soccer coach at Chesapeake and a varsity assistant with the softball team. "But coaching two teams keeps you busy."

She has been working for about two months and when she's not on the sideline, she's in the office.

"I'm in the office every day, all day and then we have games on the weekends," said Owen, whose soccer team (4-4) has won two straight and hosts Mount Union College tomorrow. "I stay with one sport at a time. When soccer season ends, softball immediately starts."

Owen's primary responsibility is weight training and conditioning. Soccer season wraps up the first week of November -- pending a playoff run -- but softball doesn't start until spring which leaves the cold winter months as the ideal time to get softball players in shape for the season.

"There's no down time and the girls know that coming in," said Owen, who will be the first-base coach.

Said Tom Owen: "Brittany learned first-hand what it takes to be a college athlete and now it's her job to prepare other girls in the program. She loves to coach. She really has a calling for it."

The weather may be a factor in Ohio. After "enjoying four years" of sunshine at Limestone, which is 45 minutes outside of Charlotte, NC, the snow will be falling soon at Hiram, which sits in between Cleveland and Youngstown in the Western Reserve region of Ohio

"Oh, it's going to be freezing here, I can already tell," Owen said.

But as soon as the snow melts in early March, the softball team will take the field. But that's after the team travels to Florida for a two-week trip where it will play at least 14 games. The soccer team also has a trip to look forward to next August when it heads to Argentina for two weeks.

Until then, it's training with the student-athletes and helping them prepare for the season. But sometimes, Owen admitted that she likes to lead by example and when words don't work, she straps the cleats up and jumps into the game.

"It's always fun," she said. "When I get on the field, the girls always say, 'Look out, D2 is playing.' They think they're so funny."

Hiram is a liberal arts college with a student population of 1,200 and has increased in size every year since 2004.

While at Chesapeake, Owen helped lead the Cougars softball team (21-5) to the Class 4A state championship her senior year and was named to the coaches' All-County first team as a third baseman. In soccer, she led Chesapeake (12-3-1) to an appearance in the Anne Arundel County championship and the Class 4A East Region semifinals during her senior season.