Creasy returns to strengthen RU softball

Jennifer Poff Cooper
Contributing writer

Hope Creasy has been playing softball ever since she can remember.

A native of Christiansburg, the Radford University graduate and former softball standout returned to the New River Valley in August 2015 as an assistant coach for the Highlanders.

Creasy came back to Radford after serving as the head coach at Louisburg College (N.C.) for the 2014-15 season. She led them to a 31-15 mark. Prior to Louisburg, Creasy spent two years as an assistant coach at Wittenburg University in Ohio. She began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at Georgia Southern from 2010-12 and was appointed the head coach of the Radford University softball program in 2017.

As a player, Creasy enjoyed a career as a four-year starter, leading the Highlanders to back-to-back Big South regular-season and conference tournament titles in 2009 and 2010.

She was a three-time All-Big South honoree as an outfielder, and is tied for fourth in program history in career home runs (32) and tied for fifth in RBIs (133). For her career, she batted .298 while also hitting 36 doubles and 93 runs.

As a senior in 2010, she was named the Big South Woman of the Year, an NFCA First-Team All-Mid-Atlantic Region selection and an ESPN The Magazine/Cosida Academic All-District second-team honoree. During that season, Creasy ranked among the top 10 in the conference in home runs, slugging, runs, RBIs and total bases, while helping Radford advance to the title game of the NCAA Athens Regional.

Creasy comes from an athletic local family. Creasy’s father, Mark played baseball for Christiansburg High School and her brother, Michael, was a high school athlete there as well. Her mother, Tammy, worked at CHS before her death in 2012.

Her parents helped to coach her in Little League at first; then she moved on to play travel ball in Roanoke at age nine or 10 when it was “time to grow.”

During her sophomore and junior years at CHS, Creasy explored opportunities for post-high school play and was contacted by coaches at schools ranging from Longwood University to Virginia Tech.

She knew she wanted to stay close to home because of her mother’s battle with cancer. Ultimately Radford University “was the best place for me,” Creasy said.

In high school, she excelled as both a pitcher and hitter and after her stellar career at Radford University.

Creasy said, “I needed to venture out and see if I could make it on my own.”

That she found her way back home does not take away from her other coaching experiences. She was enjoying her stint at Louisburg College when she was working at a summer softball camp and was recruited by the previous Highlanders’ head coach to return to her alma mater.

“It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. No place means any more than home,” said Creasy, whose father and other family members still live here.

In addition, Creasy returned to RU because she wanted to give back to the program that had given so much to me.

Creasy helped her alma mater to a dramatic turnaround during the 2016 season of 23 more wins than the year prior, the most improvement of any NCAA Division I team. As head coach, she wants to “help get the program back to where it was and even make it better.”

But she sees the biggest part of her job as establishing working relationships with the women she coaches – then the rest will come. It is a challenge to make sure the girls are confident in themselves in today’s culture where social media only shows things in a perfect light and teaches them that success is how many likes or retweets they get.

Creasy tries to be open to her players, to get to know them, and to invest in them as people. Building student athletes is important to Creasy. This takes time, she said, but is bigger than the game.

“Kids today need someone who cares about and supports them,” she said.

That is why the advice she gives her teams includes taking pride and having a purpose in what they do. She advocates the mantra “Don’t be afraid to fail” because, in a sport where one hit out of three at bats is success, players must learn to cope with disappointment. Pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones is also part of Creasy’s philosophy. Other tenets include respect, holding each other accountable, and doing the right thing.

“I want to mold good people,” Creasy said.

Creasy’s dedication to softball comes from her love of the competitive nature of the game and the challenges it presents. She said it is exciting to go out and try to get better every day.

Another important component is the relationships formed around the game. Starting with her tight-knit, sports-oriented family and including her teammates and coaches throughout her career, the bonds those involved have with each other are special.

“What do you have when you pack up your gear?” Creasy asked rhetorically.

When asked about her favorite softball moment, Creasy answered “winning the Big South championship with my mom there.” She said her parents were undoubtedly her biggest sources of inspiration and advice, teaching her to be competitive, never settle, do what she loves, grow, and learn.

The keys to her success, said Creasy, go back to relationships: the people that surround her and that she surrounds herself with.

“The company you keep is so important,” she said.

In particular, she mentioned her mentors such as former coaches, “people who have done it and I can pick their brains.”
Creasy received her Bachelor of Science degree in sport administration from Radford in 2010 and went on to earn a Master of Science in sport management at Georgia Southern in 2012.

She sees herself continuing in coaching in the foreseeable future. She is “extremely happy” where she is now, and will “see where I can have the biggest impact on young adults” moving forward.

Calling herself adventurous, Creasy said, “Life is a roller coaster. I’ll see where it takes me.”