Sasquatch softball coach Janet Skaife saved best for last

No longer is it enough to simply join a team. There must now be the “buy-in,” a commitment of heart and mind that sounds concrete and final, and yet remains strangely undefined. So let’s take a stab at it. In the spring of 1985, the Community Colleges of Spokane started the first college softball program in the area, and Janet Skaife was determined to be a part of it – possibly more desperate than merely determined. She had played modified fastpitch since the fifth grade and gritted her teeth through the slowpitch games that were all Spokane high schools offered at the time. “So I didn’t want to miss this opportunity,” she said. Problem was, she was a senior at Eastern Washington University at the time, taking a 25-credit load to clear her plate so she could student teach in the fall. Nonetheless, she brought her glove to Spokane Falls – and enrolled for 12 more credits to be eligible. This is buy-in. Her investment hardly ended there – she has been head coach of the Sasquatch for 18 seasons now. But it seems to be ending here: she’s decided this one’s her last. It also has the makings of being her best. The 2015 Sasquatch have already set a school record for victories – 39, with a doubleheader in Yakima on Friday and the NWAC championships still ahead. They’re the unanimous No. 1 in a poll of the conference coaches and have the NWAC’s most dominant pitcher in Coeur d’Alene left-hander Lindsie Scholwinski, who is sifting through scholarship offers from some 17 NCAA Division I schools. The coach would just as soon not paint the bull’s-eye on their back a brighter shade of red. Her players are happy to pick up the brush. “Sweet, we want that,” said sophomore catcher Alex Shuster of the expectations. “That’s just going to drive us and make us better.” Of course, a hot opposing pitcher or some cold bats can be cruel equalizers, and Skaife knows all about timing. She had a team that belted 100 home runs one season get no-hit at the tournament. Another year ace pitcher Janessa Karstens tore an ACL. And then there was her first team, which struggled to tie for third in its region but blew through the bracket and won the title on a not-quite-walkoff grand slam. “I got the job in August, and Tori Mills out of (Central Valley) was really the only kid I recruited,” she recalled. “I got Sara Schumacher out of my bowling class. She was on the soccer team. The point guard on the basketball team (Lisa Bocook) wound up being our left fielder. We got hot at the right time and put some runs on the board.” It should be noted here that next year’s CCS softball team will be the first after 31 years to be coached by someone not named Skaife. Skaife was still Janet Wolkey when she did the Cheney-Spokane shuttle to play for Jerry Skaife’s new program in ’85. A decade later, they were married. The next spring, Jerry Skaife suffered a near-fatal heart attack and retired from CCS, and she gave up her coaching girls basketball at Ferris, figuring he needed her more than her players did. As his recovery accelerated, she decided she “didn’t want to see his program fall into just anybody’s hands.” And so, Skaife 2.0. Jerry had won 363 games in 13 seasons; Janet caught him a couple weeks into her 13th. On March 14, she reached 500 with a 4-1 win over Clackamas. But while the winning continued, Skaife changed, at least a little, spurred by the counsel of Clackamas’ Paul Fiskum, then the dean of NWAC coaches. “He asked why I was doing this and I said, ‘You’ve got to win,’” she remembered. “And he told me, ‘You’re not doing it for the right reasons. This could be the last two years of softball for a lot of these kids.’ And he was right. I want this to be such a good experience that they wish it was a four-year school when they have to leave.” So maybe that’s why Skaife’s best memories aren’t necessarily walk-off homers and no-hitters, but moments like Mindy Kelly’s boyfriend popping the question at the end-of-year banquet amid screams and tears. The Sasquatch do six fundraisers a year so they can splurge on yearly trips to Phoenix or Hawaii. They also help give back by partnering with donors like Cronin Construction, and this year their hits and strikeouts have raised nearly $2,700 for Team Gleason. Still, the competitive coal burns. Just ask the umpire who tossed her from the first game of a doubleheader – and found the lineup card for the second game under a mound of dirt on home plate. “I didn’t want it to blow away,” she said. “That would have been unsportsmanlike.” Possibly, that ump is unlikely to swallow Shuster’s reasoning that Skaife gets the most out of her players because “she’s like our mom.” OK, a sarcastic mom. “That leather thing helps with the catching,” she needled backup Katelyn Geyer at practice the other day. It’s the mom thing that’s triggering this retirement at age 51, however long it lasts. Daughter Camryn and son Dylan have tagged along on CCS road trips for years, but are now consumed with their basketball endeavors – and mom Skaife doesn’t like it that coach Skaife has had to miss five AAU tournaments this spring. “I’m doing it for the right reason,” she said, “but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss it with all my heart.” Turns out the buying in is a lot easier than the getting out.