The last two months have been nothing short of a whirlwind for Taryne Mowatt-McKinney.
Mississippi State Softball’s pitching coach spent her May on the road en route to the Bulldogs’ first-ever Women’s College World Series appearance. Mowatt-McKinney got just three days at home after MSU’s season ended before she had to hit the road again.
Mowatt-McKinney hopped on a plane to Florida to join the Athletes Unlimited Softball League’s Chicago Bandits at their spring training, and begin her stint as a professional assistant coach.
“It honestly sounded like a great opportunity with how this league has kind of taken off and the support that it’s gotten,” Mowatt-Mckinney said about the chance to coach professionally. “It felt like the right thing at the right time for me.”
Mowatt-McKinney said she had only three days with her pitchers before the start of the season but has the Bandits at 6-7 and in playoff position with 12 games to go. She said she is “learning a lot in a very short amount of time.”
“Its been really fun to see just how people operate from different colleges,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “I just feel like I’m learning a lot about how I can improve my game as a coach.”
Mowatt-McKinney will be taking her new coaching skills back to one of the country’s top pitching rotations. The Bulldogs finished last season with the ninth best team earned run average in Division I. MSU’s main starters Alyssa Faircloth and Peja Goold, who is now in the AUSL with the Oklahoma City Spark, were both ranked top 100 players in the country last season by Softball America.
Her pitching staff improved its ERA from a 3.74 in 2025 to a 2.41 in 2026. Coaches around Mowatt-McKinney have been balancing AUSL coaching with transfer portal recruiting, but she said it’s not something she’s been worried about because she feels her rotation is already set.
Faircloth is a rising senior, coming off an All-American season, and looks to be paired with rising junior Leila Ammon who had a 1.85 ERA in 19 appearances.
“I have a really, really, really good pitching staff at Mississippi State returning,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “I feel very comfortable and excited where my Mississippi State pitching staff is at.”
Mowatt-McKinney said the biggest difference in coaching professionally is the lack of practices. She said the Bandits have had just three practices so far due to the surplus of games and traveling, giving her a tough time in preparing her pitchers.
Another difference for Mowatt-McKinney is the AUSL’s reliance on technology and analytics, something she isn’t used to but hopes to use when coaching MSU.
“I’m really kind of hoping to learn how they make decisions on analytics,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “I was just in a meeting talking about, like, ‘analytics wise, what is it that you guys look at when you’re in season to help you make decisions?’ And I’m hoping to take some of that back with me to Starkville.”
Bringing her play style into her coaching philosophy
MSU fans who are new to softball may be unfamiliar with the legend that is Mowatt-McKinney in the circle.
She was an All-American pitcher with the Arizona Wildcats, winning back-to-back national championships in 2006-07 and the 2007 WCWS MVP. She still holds the WCWS record for wins (6) starts (8), strikeouts (76) and innings pitched (60) in a single WCWS, all in 2007.
She was the sixth overall pick of the Washington Glory of the now-disbanded National Pro Fastpitch league, and for five teams across six seasons as a pro, including a stint playing for the Chicago Bandits.
She’s nearly 20 years removed from her legendary performance in Oklahoma City but said she feels like she hasn’t “grown up much.”
She admitted she looks different and is “significantly older,” but Mowatt-McKinney said her approach to coaching isn’t much different from her method of attacking hitters in the circle.
“Whether it was as a pitcher in the circle or as a coach, like I have always been very competitive, but it’s never been flashy, it’s never been loud,” she said.
Mowatt-McKinney credited her ability to separate wins and losses from everyday life as what kept her efficient when facing a heavy workload as a pitcher, something that’s helped her in coaching.
She’s coached since 2012 with stops at California Baptist, Ole Miss and her alma mater Arizona before landing at Mississippi State. She coached against the Bulldogs in a Starkville Super Regional in 2022 with Arizona, and said the event showcased what MSU’s softball program could become.
In 2026, the Bulldogs won its first-ever super regional game, and took down softball-powerhouse Oklahoma to reach its first ever WCWS. Just like the program, the sport of softball is growing too.
The 2026 WCWS was the most-watched on record, and game two of the WCWS Finals featuring Texas and Texas Tech is the most-watched college softball game on record with 2.5 million viewers. The AUSL had its first season in 2025, and has games broadcasted on national networks like ESPN and CBS Sports.
“I remember being a player in thinking that our sport was exploding onto the scene because they had finally decided to broadcast every single game of the World Series,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “Well, now they broadcast all the games, basically. And now they’re broadcasting pro games.”
Mowatt-McKinney said the growth of the sport has been “really exciting to see.”
“These athletes are so exceptional,” she said. “And the way that they’re running the league now, it’s incredible to see how far it’s come from when I was a player.”
Jake is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for The Dispatch.
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