There`s not a lot of job stability in softball, even for winners.
Jim Kulawiak was an immensely successful high school softball coach, amassing a 261-31 record and a state championship in 11 years at Morton West in Berwyn and then Morton in Cicero. Then he got laid off.
So now he`s an immensely successful college softball coach.
Kulawiak, 34, took over the North Central College women`s team in Naperville this year, and he`s coached the Cardinals to a 16-2 record and a first-place 8-0 mark in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin with four games to go before the May 5-6 championship playoffs.
The Cardinals, 11-8 and 15-19 the last two years, also entertain hopes for an NCAA Division III tournament bid.
Are you watching, Morton?
”He demands excellence, and everyone`s responded to that,” says North Central pitcher Lynnea Loudenbeck, a senior from Marengo who sports a 9-1 record. ”We have a lot better attitude this year.”
Kulawiak introduced the team to Major League ”mechanics of hitting”
videotapes and extra batting practice and has turned the Cardinals into an offensive machine. As a team, they are hitting .330, which Loudenbeck says is .100 above last year, when they were shut out five times.
The team started out with a 13-game winning streak before falling to Lake Forest in extra innings April 18, and it is outscoring opponents by a 9-2 average.
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Kulawiak says he always wanted to coach at the college level, so he feels the budget cut that cost him his teaching and coaching jobs at Morton last year was a long foul ball that blew back fair for a grand slam-”
Although,” he says, I was hoping it would be a decision I`d make, instead of being forced into it.”
He hopes the job will turn into a full-time position with the school. But for now he has just a part-time, one-year contract, and he`s learned not to rely on an impressive won-lost record.
”They could tell me tomorrow I`m gone,” he says.