Full Great Women Great Danes Interview Transcript
UAlbany's Great Women Great Danes is a new series that will be published during Women's History Month. The series will feature Great Danes, past and present, and celebrate the women of UAlbany.
Q: As a student-athlete, you played both softball and basketball at UAlbany, can you tell me about your experience?
A: Well, it was very different back then. There were multiple students that played more than one sport. Some people were playing soccer, basketball, and softball; you know, it was way different. We overlapped, but we went to both [sports] … I remember playing a little bit of a fall season, but not like we do now. Then we had to go to basketball preseason conditioning. So, that was, I guess, a little more challenging. Basketball continued into February, so there were times that we were playing games and missed softball practice. But I mean, there was a good bunch of us that played multiple sports and we were going from one practice to the next. There weren’t the rules in place back then - with limited hours. But then, if you got an injury in one sport the other coach was mad about it. It was challenging in that respect.
I found that it just gives you a different perspective, you're training in a different way. And then it also makes you excited, instead of you just playing basketball all year round, you get to play something else. You get the variety. I deal with recruits that are coming in, and I’m like ‘I want you to play volleyball with your friends, play soccer with your friends, whatever’. You can get hurt stepping off the curb, it’s just gonna help you. It gives you a break from playing softball all year round … which is what they are doing now, they're playing all year round. There’s fall-ball, they’re playing winter tournaments in domes, they’re playing high school, summer ball. They are making them practice and then they play all summer long … the entire summer. I look for multisport athletes because I think they are much more athletic and more refreshed and not burned out because they get to play something else. They play soccer, basketball or whatever and then they get a break from softball.
Q: Can you bring me through the path that brought you back to UAlbany to coach (after graduation)?
A: I was coaching high school in Voorheesville. Our team was in the sectionals and I ran into somebody that I had known in college. She was a soccer player, not from UAlbany, and she was coaching the team we were playing. After the game, we were catching up and I said “Oh, I didn’t know you were here” and she said “Oh, I didn’t know you were at Voorheesville.” She continued, “Well actually I’m not going to be here anymore. I took the UAlbany job” … I was like “What?” and she said, “Yeah. I applied for the UAlbany soccer job and they offered me the softball job”. She continued, “Would you consider coming to be my assistant?” She told me it didn’t pay very much, it paid a thousand dollars. I said “Oh, well let me think about it.” I was thinking like, “okay… go back to UAlbany and get to coach. You’re not coaching for the money anyhow, in high school you’re not making any money.” She called me the next day and I said yes on the phone. I went there in the fall for the first time and met her in the office. I don’t think I had met anyone, maybe a couple of random kids came by that I met, but I didn’t know any of the kids and she said, “Well, the problem is I need to have back surgery and I am going to have it next week, so I need you to take the team.” I had just gotten hired, I just finished the paperwork and I was like “okay… I don’t know any of the players’ names, I don’t know what they look like, I don’t even know where they even play” … She said, “Well you’re going to have to take them in one van and coach them in a fall tournament. Just ask the kids. This girl is a senior, she will be able to help you.” So, I was talking to the kids in the van asking who plays where, who can do this, and took them to the tournament and now I’m coaching this team … I don’t know how to do anything here and I barely knew the kids. She was out with back surgery for like six weeks and then it got to be eight weeks and then I kept saying like “Hey, I don’t really know how to do any of this stuff, when are you coming back?” She was like “Oh, I’m not doing so well” and never came back. So, she was only here one day with me and I had to figure it out. I coached the whole fall by myself and I got the job officially in December, of ’94. Then ’95 was my first coaching season, we were Division III … it was the last year we were Division III.
No one had recruited for that first season. I was still playing competitively at that time. I was playing on a women’s major fastpitch team at the time and one of my friends was finishing up her degree at UAlbany. She had pitched at Arizona State, had gotten married and had a child. Her husband was in the Navy, so they were living in Scotia and she had one year of eligibility left. We played summer ball together and she told me she was finishing up her degree. She told me she had a year of eligibility left and I told her, “You have to come and play.” She said “I can’t. I have a two-year-old kid.” I said, “Bring him to practice, I don’t care, what you do. We will figure it out.” So she did. She wound up pitching for us. She was ridiculous. She was the best hitter, they walked her the whole season. We wound up making it to the New York State Championship that very first year. That is how I first met Joe [Reardon], my assistant coach. We played them, he was the coach at New Paltz and we played them in the semi-finals or something like that. We played them in like a 17-inning game and won, 1-0. That was ’95. That was how it all started.
Back then, there weren't really trainers at practice. There was not really a support staff; you had to do basically everything yourself … for example, you had to do your own weight training and keep track of the players’ academics. I didn’t have another person to drive the vans for the longest time. It was just crazy. The stuff that we did back then, the seniors drove the other van and it was nuts. That’s how I started here, that was my first season. Then, the very next year we went Division II. We were behind the eight-ball for Division III because nobody had recruited, we were playing with kids on campus and a super-star pitcher. Then, Division II came and we were really behind. I was recruiting kids literally in the summer to come for that fall. We were behind then but we managed to do fairly well in Division II. We were in a competitive conference, the NECC, for four years. Just when you got caught up and got some kind of cycle going, we moved up to Division I. That’s a big jump. At that point, we had a trainer with us, more people in the weight room, more academic support, so we could spend more time coaching which is what we really needed to do.
[After all of the adversity she faced, Head Coach Cannata led her team to their first America East Regular-Season Champion Title in 2004, their third season in the conference. A year later, the Great Danes won the America East Championship Tournament.]
Q: What made you want to be a coach and why choose softball when you played two college sports?
A: Well, I think when I was little … Growing up, I used to watch the Mets and the Yankees and I always thought I was going to be the first female manager of those teams. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s how I learned the game, just by watching and listening to the announcers and what they said. We would just imitate our favorite players when we were playing in the street, non-stop. We grew up just listening to the announcers; hearing this is what you do in multiple situations, like hitting behind runners, etc. That’s how I learned. I was playing competitive softball, so it was natural to go coach a high school team. Somebody had asked me “Hey, can you go coach this?”; another friend that I had played basketball and softball with here. She was teaching at Voorheesville and coaching at Voorheesville. I coached there for eight years before I decided to make the move to UAlbany. It was fun to go back here, to my alma mater and coach.
Q: So the job kind of just…you said it fell in your lap, but there wasn’t really any part where you knew, for sure, what you wanted to do?
A: Back then [coaching] wasn’t sustainable to do for a living like it is now. These kids that I am coaching now can say, “you know what, I think I want to be a coach. I am going to go be a GA somewhere for a year or two and then try to get an assistant job.” There was nothing. I was making 5,000 dollars as the head coach. You have to have another job. You couldn’t make a living by only coaching. You had to do something else and then you… most of the time you had to be a teacher in order to get out in time to come to practice. That was the difficult part of it. I’m sure a lot of people would have gone into coaching if it could be a full-time job but it wasn’t. Very few, like the elite of the elite like the UCLA’s, the Arizona’s, the Pac-12. Back then, there was no SEC softball; the Big-10 and the Pac-12 were probably the only conferences that had coaches making a living. I’m sure they were doing a bunch of other stuff as well. When they hired me full-time here, I was also the aquatics director. I had to take the lifeguarding course and all the other classes to do that. I had to do hours and hours in the pool for those. Then, I ran the pool that we don’t have anymore. That was my actual job and then, I coached softball.
Q: You talked a couple of times about playing professionally. Can you talk about that a little bit more, like who you played for, how long you played and how that affected any of your decisions here?
A: I played back before there was a pro league. They called it Women’s Major Fastpitch. You played against the best of the best in the nation. Lisa Fernandez, Michelle Smith, Dot Richardson - those people were on teams that we played and those were the players that played in the first couple of Olympics. We played on a team called the Jimmies; and eventually it changed to the Adirondack Ice. We played against those players in a league around here [Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey]. Similar to travel ball these days, but on a higher level. In the end, we all played in the nationals against the top players in the country. That’s all there was back then. Once I started coaching, I didn’t have any desire to play anymore. I was probably in my early 30s, so it was at the end of my career there as well. You’re doing it all year round and it was too much. In the summertime, I had to be out recruiting other kids to come here and if I was playing on the weekends, I was missing out on opportunities. I may have played for two more years before I closed that chapter.
Q: You have had a lot of success - you are the most winningest coach in UAlbany softball history, 7-time America-East tournament champion, 6-time regular-season champion, 7 NCAA appearances, including a trip to the regional final in 2007. You have multiple awards for yourself, your entire coaching staff, and your players. What does that mean to you? How does that feel, especially knowing where you came from and how you started your career?
A: There’s nothing as good as winning a championship. That’s just the elite of the elite, just winning the championship and getting to go to the tournament. It is nice to see your players and coaching staffs get recognized in that way. That’s all nice. Honestly, a regular-season title is almost harder sometimes because you have to be consistent throughout the whole year. You have injuries and different things and during the regular season, you have to really just play really well every weekend. For the conference tournament, it’s just the team that has the best weekend. You’re seeing teams, especially in basketball that are bottom seeds winning. They’re playing the best at that time. We have won from the four seed, we have won from being the five seed. That’s just peaking at the right time and getting the kids to play their best at the end. When you win the championship, the feeling on the field is something that you can’t really describe … I always say the best part of the whole thing is when you go and you watch the selection show and you see your name come up on ESPN and the kids get so excited and all of that. You think “Oh god, I’m going to Oregon.” and that is like the best moment in time for the kids. The kids that come through here … every kid that has played four years has gotten an opportunity to go to a regional and has a ring. We are hoping to keep that intact. Everybody has had that experience. You go to the Hall of Fame room and everyone is there and you put the TV on and everyone is thinking “Oh-My-God”. Cool for the kids, and the coaches are thinking “Oh god, we are playing the number one team in the country.” Those seeds do not take the brakes off ever. They don’t sub out. They do not think, “Oh let’s let Susie hit, she hasn’t played all year.” They don’t do that at all. They’re trying to beef up their stats, they just pound it.
Q: You and your 2017 team won the 100th DI conference title for UAlbany, was that an extra-special occasion for you and the team?
A: I did not know that was going on at the time so it wasn’t something to think about … honestly, in 2017 we were not doing well during the entire year. I was starting to question myself as a coach. I want to say we had like two weeks left in the season before we started to gel … You start to question yourself and think you gotta do something different. We kept trying different things, it was just not working … Two weeks left in the season, we started to play a little better. We finished the regular season when we went up to Maine and won. We only wound up playing two games and swept them, they were at the top of the pile, in first place at the time, I think we knocked them to second. We were thinking, “Oh. Wow.” Then, we were playing in the championship thinking “if we even win a game it will be a big step.” Then … we just kept winning. They were playing and it was like all of a sudden, they got it! Everything we were hammering on them all year long, now all of a sudden they just got it. It was a crazy, crazy championship. I didn’t know it was the hundredth. Charlie Voelker and Jerry Koloskie were there and they came out on the field and Charlie said, “I didn’t tell you this but it was the hundredth championship for UAlbany. I answered, “Oh my gosh. I am glad you didn’t tell me, it was stressful enough.” I didn’t know until after the fact.
Q: How does it feel that young women and girls look up to you because of your success?
A: I mean, it’s hard for me to visualize that happening. I know for coaches … I think I can see it more with younger coaches that I have tried to have an effect on, like younger coaches that are coming up, whether it be here or softball or just coaching anywhere. It’s easier for me to try to help them … I’ve made all the mistakes, it’s easy to try to steer them away from that kind of thing. We used to be in the offices over in PE and there were a bunch of coaches over there all the time, so I was always trying to help them. It’s hard to continue to help, we are pretty isolated here because of being in separate buildings, but I tried to do that for the younger coaches and players that want to be coaches, whether it be high school or college or whatever. I just try to coach them through some of the pitfalls and all of the mistakes that I made in my career. With our athletes here, we try less coaching and a lot more of the total picture of life. We try to prepare them for other things, like the career world and life after college. We have had a lot of kids go on to play overseas after they left here but most kids are just going to go into the workforce. Their bosses are not always going to be nice and gentle, they will need to know how to stand up for themselves. So in that kind of situation, we try to just prepare them a little bit for what's coming after graduation. They get it … usually by the time they are juniors, they’re not affected by it anymore, they are just like “okay whatever”. The underclassmen take a little bit of time to realize it’s not ever personal. So when I'm mad or yelling at them, it's always about getting them better. They finally get that, I think, as they get older and it doesn't phase them. But again, you’re going to go into the workforce and your boss is going to say, hey, this isn't how I want this done and you can't be upset about it, you have got to be able to just put your head down and get to work. It is kind of a life thing.
Q: How did the women around you help you to become the athlete in person you are today?
A. That’s a good question. I think you take a mix of the good and the bad. I had some coaches that I learned I didn't want to be like. I’m really not a morning person and when I played basketball here we lifted right before practice or right after practice in the afternoon and then when I went to softball, the softball coach didn't want us to go out or do anything fun, so we had to lift at six in the morning. When you're not a morning person, six in the morning is ridiculous. We would roll out of bed, basically put sweatpants on over our pajamas, and walk down to the weight room. It was totally not productive because we were so tired. We would finish and then go roll back to bed. It was terrible. Back then I was like “okay, if I ever become a coach I will never make them lift in the morning or run in the morning or we’re not going to practice in the morning.” Honestly, over the years, it has gotten us so many recruits *Cannata says while laughing* … I mean some kids would say, “Yeah, that was the turning point, it was between you and this school and they practiced in the morning.” That was … it's one of our biggest selling points that I don't like to do anything softball-wise in the morning. Joe [Reardon] and Kate [Gentile] always want to go earlier on the weekends, I usually veto it. I’ll say about eleven is the earliest we ever go on the weekends. I have held true to my word, it's very rare but sometimes some kind of facility thing comes up and we have to go earlier; it throws me off for the whole day.
Q: What does Women's History Month mean to you?
A. I think that it is so broad and encompassing of all the women that have set standards and done things that everyone else is basically afraid to do. It takes somebody really strong to be like that. Then, you have somebody come along and they just go out there and they do their thing and they're the first one to do it and then all of the sudden everybody looks and says, “Wow, I can do that too”. I think, coaching-wise it's not always easy being a female coach. Now that the jobs are paying more, you have men coaching a lot of the teams. In the early days, it was all women because there was no money in it. Now, you see the SEC schools, there are predominantly male coaches. Those are big-money jobs. They are … you look at almost the majority of the coaches in the big-money jobs are males now. It's like you have to just be tougher. The umpires are mostly men; it's very rare that you have a female umpire. It's kind of a male-dominated position. You have the baseball coaches coming over, you have the top men's softball players coaching now, so the females have to be a little bit tougher and work a little bit harder. You have to not back down. You have to not be intimidated by the things that are going on. It's a little more challenging to be a female in coaching and so, in that respect, I think that trickles down. That's not anywhere near the phenomenal things that many other women like RBG and countless others have done for the country. We're just a small part of it but I think as a female, you have to just be a little bit tougher and have to help the younger females come along and not be intimidated by things that may happen. That's the only thing you can do, anything to help and pass it on to younger coaches of all sports and younger players. For them to stand up for themselves, and our athletes on the team, as well. I think my role is to act as a strong female role model for those around me. That would be the best way for me to give back.
For more interviews from the Women's History Month #GreatWomenGreatDanes series, click here.
