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Dr. Megan Brown
After a national search following the retirement of legendary head coach Kathy Riley, Longwood athletics director Michelle Meadows named Dr. Megan Brown the new head coach of Longwood softball in August, 2020.
Longwood softball set program high marks in Brown’s third season, including top ten wins over #4 Florida State and #8 Duke, a second-consecutive 30+ win season, and another Big South regular season title. In addition, the Lancers finished the season ranked 57th in the NCAA’s RPI, the highest ranking in school history.
Several players earned high-level recognition after the 2023 season, including Big South Player of the Year/NFCA 1st Team All-Region for sophomore Jaden Pone and the NFCA’s Rawlings Gold Glove for sophomore Emily Vinson.
In her second year at the helm of the program, she guided the team to a share of the Big South regular season title while also making a run to the Big South Championship Game in the conference tournament. The team ultimately finished as runners-up.
At the end of the 2022 season, six Lancers earned All-Big South honors, with Sydney Backstrom winning her second straight Big South Pitcher of the Year award, both coming under Brown. Backstrom broke the program's single game, single season and career strikeouts record in 2022, and she has her name throughout the Longwood record books, ranking second in career wins while in the top five in a host of other categories.
In addition, speedster Jaden Pone was named the Big South Freshman of the Year after leading the team with a .416 batting average. Pone's offensive season led the charge for an offense that racked up 416 hits, more than 100 more than the year prior.
The Lancers went 34-24 against the toughest schedule in the conference, as Longwood faced 14 opponents inside the top 75 of the final RPI standings.
In Brown's first season at the helm, Backstrom was named the Big South Pitcher of the Year while shouldering a heavy load, and the Lancers finished 26-28 against a schedule that was the toughest in the Big South. The team played seven opponents that were inside the top 75 in the final RPI standings in a COVID-impacted season.
Brown came to Longwood with a coaching resume that includes time in the ACC, Pac-12 and SEC, along with extensive playing credentials that include a record-setting All-American career at Florida Southern and six years on the professional softball circuit at home and abroad.
During that time, she has coached under and played for some of the most decorated head coaches in college softball, including National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) Hall-of-Famers Diane Ninemire at Cal and Karen Mullens at UConn, SEC Coach of the Year Tina Deese at Auburn, and 1,200-game winner and NFCA Hall-of-Famer Chris Bellotto at Florida Southern.
Most recently Brown served as an assistant coach at Pac-12 member Cal (2020) and Atlantic Coast Conference member Boston College (2016-19), with prior stints at Akron (2015), UConn (2014), UNC Pembroke (2012-13) and Auburn (2010-11). She has also coached at the highest level of international fastpitch softball, serving as pitching coach and guest player for the Great Britain Women’s National Team from 2011-14.
At Longwood, took over one of the most dominant dynasties in Big South Conference history. Under Riley, who won 722 games in 23 years at Longwood and 812 in 27 years at the college level, Longwood softball has won five of the past seven Big South championships, reached five NCAA Regionals, and twice advanced to the NCAA Regional Championship game.
Brown stepped into her new role armed with a longstanding history of pitching success, which has been the hallmark of her career both as a player and coach. That trend has followed her from the standout collegiate career that landed her in the Sunshine State Conference Hall of Fame, Florida Southern Hall of Fame and the NCAA record books, to her beginnings in the coaching industry as a volunteer assistant at Auburn and her most recent stints with two different high-major programs.
Throughout her coaching career, she has worked under some of the best to ever coach at the collegiate level, including most recently under 1,355-game winner Ninemire at Cal in 2020. With the Golden Bears, Brown worked under Ninemire in the Cal coaching legend’s 33rd and final season before retirement, helping Ninemire cap a career that saw her finish at No. 9 on the all-time Division I wins leaderboard.
Prior to Brown’s COVID-shortened stint as pitching coach at Cal in 2020, she was the top assistant at Boston College from 2016-19 and transformed the Eagle pitching staff into one of the best in the ACC. Under her tutelage, Boston College’s pitchers ranked second in the conference in ERA in 2017 behind only top-10 power Florida State, ranked among the league’s top four in opponent batting average and strikeouts three consecutive years from 2016-18, and led the league in strikeouts looking in both 2016 and 2017. Leading that charge were Brown’s pupils Jessica Dreswick and Allyson Frei, two NFCA All-Region pitchers who left their names littered throughout the school’s record books. Among a wealth of school records, Dreswick set the program’s single-season wins record and threw the school’s first no-hitter of the ACC era under Brown.
That dominance in the circle propelled Boston College to the upper tier of the ACC, finishing in the top four of the league standings three consecutive years from 2016-18. The Eagles reached 30 overall wins and double-digit ACC victories in each of those seasons, leading to the program’s winningest three-year run of its ACC era.
That five-year stretch at Cal and Boston College followed two years in which Brown held assistant coach positions at Mid-American Conference member Akron in 2015 and American Conference member Connecticut in 2014. At Akron, she oversaw the development of one of the best pitchers to ever come through the program in Erin Seiler. Seiler set Akron’s single-season strikeout record with 305 that year, her highest total in a four-year career that ended with her atop the program leaderboards in career wins, complete games and strikeouts. Meanwhile at UConn, Brown learned under NFCA Hall of Fame inductee and 862-game winner Karen Mullins in the last of her 31 seasons leading the Huskies program.
Prior to her return to the Division I level at UConn, Brown cut her teeth in the college coaching ranks at Division II UNC Pembroke in 2012-13 and at SEC power Auburn in 2010 and 2011. At Auburn, she worked toward her doctorate degree while serving the Tiger program as a student manager in 2010 and a volunteer assistant coach in 2011, helping the program reach two of its nine NCAA Tournaments under Tina Deese. Brown also continued her professional playing career while at Auburn, playing the latter half of both of both springs in the Italian Softball League.
Brown’s wealth of coaching accolades followed a playing career that remains among the best in the history of NCAA Division II softball. She was a three-time All-American and four-year ace of a Florida Southern team that finished No. 2, No.3 and No. 4 in the NCAA Division II College World Series from 2004-07 and amassed a four-year record of 200-42. Brown won a school-record 124 of those games with a career ERA of 0.69, two of the 11 school records she still holds. Also among those are 58 career shutouts and 12 career no-hitters, both of which rank among the NCAA Division II top 10 along with her 124 wins and 58 shutouts.
Brown also remains the only player in Sunshine State Conference (SSC) history to thrice earn the SSC Pitcher of the Year award and one of only four to be named an All-American three times. She was inducted into both the Florida Southern Hall of Fame and Sunshine State Conference Hall of Fame in 2013.
Brown continued her softball playing career at the professional level, playing three seasons in the National Pro Fastpitch League, first with the Michigan Ice in 2007 followed by two seasons with the Rockford Thunder. After the 2009 season with the Thunder, she jumped into the international ranks with the Titano Hornets A1 Softball team in Dogana, San Marino in 2010 and 2011, and then with the Oosterhout Twins in Oosterhout, Netherlands, in 2012. Those international endeavors have taken her to softball fields in Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands and San Marino.
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