Pitt has hired Jodi Hermanek as its new softball coach, the university said Tuesday.
A 14-year head-coaching veteran at the Division I level, Hermanek spent the past 10 seasons at Ohio University, where she led the Bobcats to a 40-17 record and Mid-American Conference regular season and tournament championships in 2018.
“We have great expectations for this program and conducted a national search for a new leader who is prepared and confident in their ability to exceed those expectations,” Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke said in a statement. “We found that leader in Coach Hermanek.”
In her 10 seasons with Ohio, Hermanek led the program to two NCAA tournament appearances, in 2014 and 2018, the former of which was the program’s first such appearance in nearly 20 years. During that decade, Hermanek compiled a record of 289-252. The final three seasons of that run saw the Bobcats go a combined 119-58, which included winning at least 40 games in each of the final two seasons. They went 99-136 in the four years preceding her arrival (2005-08).
Prior to her time at Ohio, Hermanek was the head coach for four seasons at Southern Utah, where she led the program to two Mid-Continent Conference championships.
At Pitt, she inherits what appears to be an ascendant program, one that won an ACC Coastal Division title and made the conference tournament championship game in 2018 before narrowly missing out on what would have been the second NCAA tournament berth in program history.
A graduate of Colorado State-Pueblo, Hermanek replaces Holly Aprile, who left last month after 11 seasons to become the head coach at Louisville.
Hermanek becomes only the third coach in program history and the eighth head coach Lyke has hired in just 17 months as the Panthers’ athletic director. Of those eight, Hernamek was the only one who was a sitting head coach.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: August 7, 2018, 9:01 p.m.
