Tagging Up Influence: Varsity Softball Head Coach Stevi Johnson

Head softball Coach Stevi Johnson arrived at Redwood in 2022. Given the great influence she spreads, her path to Redwood was an interesting one.

By: Fabian Anguiano

Born in Bakersfield, she moved to Visalia when she was two years old. Coach Johnson got into softball growing up, watching her two older sisters and got inspired to join the sport.

As a player, Johnson was really competitive. She wanted to win at every cost; she worked extremely hard to do so and she made sure she was the best player she could possibly be for her team.

Johnson implements her competitiveness into her coaching as well, as she also tries to instill that mindset into her team.

Coach Johnson does not believe you can look back and wish you could have done something better, though you could have done something more, “I feel like you can never look back and think that you couldn’t have worked harder. When you have an outside perspective of the game, you feel like you gave it everything you could, but then there always is that little bit in you that feels like you could have given it a little bit more,” says Johnson.

Johnson’s favorite part about playing softball was her relationships with her coaches and teammates that came from the sport, as she is still connected to some of her teammates from her college days.

Coach Johnson played softball for Charleston University in South Carolina. 

One of the biggest differences between high school and collegiate softball is, “That you’re going from your day being completely structured out to 5 am workouts to meal times with your teammates to weightlifting to then going to classes, to practice, and night classes. It’s a huge difference in the sense of commitment. You have to understand that you are essentially giving up your entire time to that sport compared to when you’re in high school,” says Johnson.

The person who inspired Johnson to begin coaching was her father, as he was her coach growing up.

Johnson’s father always made sure he, “Instilled a certain passion and hard work ethic into the girls he coached.” Coach Johnson says that made her “want to give that back to other players.”

After Coach Johnson returned to Visalia from South Carolina. Within two days, she was notified about the Softball coach position being open. She would apply very quickly, and the rest is history.

In Johnson’s first year of coaching, there would be a lot of learning lessons. Johnson first coached at the college level for three years at the college where she had previously played. She then transitioned to high school.

It was different, as both are different in age and are different in what they need to work on.

With that, Coach Johnson would make sure to coach and teach at the level of the players and to instill some fun into it.

Johnson has felt she has grown as a coach by having, “a lot more compassion. I felt I was kind of hard and not as understanding as a coach to now, where I try to see things in a much different light, or kind of understand who my players are and give more grace and more compassion to them.”

Coach Johnson can not exactly point out which year has been her favorite at Redwood so far, as every year bring it’s own set of challenges, players, and skill sets that make things fun.

The impact that Johnson wishes to have on the girls she coaches is a hard work ethic. She says, “I try to instill a lot of life lessons into the way that I coach, and the different implementations of rules that I have, especially when it comes to making sure we’re on time.”

This is important to Coach Johnson as you have to be on time to your job, if you don’t work hard, and someone beats you out. This is all meant to prepare her players for the adult life.

From the beginning of this season to now, Johnson feels like the team has “improved amazingly, we are a super young team. We have a lot of young talent as well, with some upperclassmen who have been great leaders. At the beginning of the year, I just felt like our team didn’t necessarily know who they were, as far as how they were going to compete together as a team.”

Coach Johnson feels like the team chemistry has grown over the past few weeks, and they are finally starting to find their groove on the field.

Johnson’s goal for the team by the end of the season is to go further in the Division One playoffs, as the furthest they have made it was the second round. 

“My lifetime goal as a coach is to make these kids into better human beings. Honestly, at the end of the day, we only have softball for so long in our lives, but we are human beings and adults far longer.”

Stevi Johnson, Head Softball Coach for Redwood High School

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