Nicole Terpstra-Wondaal got quite a reaction from her three children about a month ago when she played them a video of her pitching for DePaul in the 1999 College World Series.
“They watched it and said, ‘Mom, you look so weird,'” Wondaal recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah. I was young.’ I was 21 years old in that video.”
At 37, she’s still young. But she most definitely has some serious history.
In November, Wondaal received a call from Illiana Christian athletic director Lance Davids. He was looking for a new softball coach that had roots with the program and a reputation for success.
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He landed the mighty oak.
In the history of Illiana softball, Terpstra has to be the defining name.
During the four years from 1992-95 in which she was All-Private School League and all-everything with the newspapers that covered her, she posted a 70-8 record.
Like a lot of pitchers back then, Terpstra used the riseball to string strikeouts in major proportions. In her senior year alone, she had 268 in 163 innings, with 17 shutouts, six no-hitters and three perfect games.
Softball was a very different game back then.
“When we threw it was 40 feet (from rubber to the plate), so if you had speed you could get it by people,” Wondaal said. “There was no reaction time (for the hitter). By the time you released, you were four feet off the (rubber) and really on top of the hitter. The riseball looked like a meatball coming in there. But it hopped right over the bat.”
She went on to have a stellar college career at DePaul, winning 93 games, posting a 0.99 ERA and recording 549 strikeouts.
After graduating from DePaul, Wondaal plunged right into coaching. She was an assistant at T.F. South for one season, ran the program for another, went back to DePaul as an assistant for two years, and then spent one season as the head coach at Illiana. The Vikings won a regional title before Wondaal left to become a guidance counselor at Lake Central in Indiana.
Her life since then has been anything but boring. She and her husband Mike have three children, all of whom play sports.
Jackson, 12, loves basketball and golf. Maya, 8, wants to be a softball pitcher. Emmitt, 5, plays everything and anything.
Wondaal, a three-sport athlete at Illiana, spends plenty of time coaching them. She also has been a pitching coach. One of her recent protégés is Oak Forest’s Emily Norton, who led the Bengals to a state title during her sophomore season in 2009.
“She was not only a great pitching coach, but she was a great mentor,” Norton said. “She taught me to be mentally tough and confident in my abilities. She also taught me to stay positive and control what I’m able to control which, as I get older, I realize is something that goes beyond the (pitching circle).”
Returning to high school coaching is something Wondaal says she has been thinking about all along. But the call from Illiana in November came about two years before she was planning to answer any phones.
“At the time we had all three kids in sports, and we were coaching two basketball teams,” Wondaal said. “My husband immediately said, ‘Absolutely, you need to do this. It would be so much fun.’ I thought, ‘Are you crazy? How are we going to juggle all of this stuff?’ We prayed about it, talked it over, and six weeks before tryouts I said yes.”
She’s returning to a vastly different game than she left after the 2005 season at Illiana.
“There are so many more tools to get knowledgeable. When I played there wasn’t Internet. How antiquated is that?” Wondaal said, laughing. “Now you can get on YouTube and see all of the videos of top coaches in the nation. You can get online and you can learn.
“The access to knowledge and learning the game has made a huge difference in how you teach your players.”
Wondaal is anything but antiquated. At her age she could go 25 more years as a coach, no problem.
“I have lived a very blessed life,” she said. “My husband and I are living all of the dreams we ever talked about when we were dating. God has made it all possible. It’s been an amazing life.”
With so much more to come.
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