Overview:
Jo Evans, who was inducted to the National Fastpitch Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame in 2015, ranks as the second-winningest active coach in NCAA Division 1 softball with 1,382 victories
Bailing rainwater off UC Santa Barbara’s softball field last month wasn’t on Jo Evans’ bucket list when she took over as the Gauchos’ head coach in the autumn of 2022.
But the 65-year-old, NFCA Hall of Famer also found the fountain of her youth in her return to the grassroots of her profession.
“This has been so rejuvenating, getting to do the hands-on coaching,” she told Noozhawk as she prepared her Gauchos for Friday’s 1:30 p.m. season opener against Northern Colorado in the Stacy Winsberg Memorial Tournament at UCLA’s Easton Stadium.
“Growing a program and taking something from kind of nothing to making it viable … there’s nothing better than that for a coach.”
Evans had already reached the mountaintop of college coaching before coming to Santa Barbara.
She twice guided her alma mater of Utah to the College World Series before taking Texas A&M to the national championship game in 2008. Her teams have gone to 26 NCAA tournaments.
The National Fastpitch Coaching Association didn’t even wait for Evans to retire to induct her into its Hall of Fame in 2015.
Her 1,382 coaching victories in 40 seasons rank seventh all-time in NCAA Division I history. She’s second only to Oklahoma’s Patty Gasso among active coaches.
Evans had already rebuilt a midmajor team at Colorado State and a middling program at Utah before challenging the Big 12 Conference elite during her 26 years at Texas A&M.
But she got a special feeling all its own last season during the Gauchos’ Cinderella run to a school-record 36 victories and the first NCAA regional final in their history.
“It’s invigorating,” Evans said. “And it feels like that because I have a great staff, I really enjoy our administration and I love our kids.
“There’s a special kid that comes to Santa Barbara.
“And what’s cool now is that they’re not just coming for the ocean and climate and the great academics. They’re also coming for softball, and it’s been really great to get that kind of kid.”
Those kids refused to stop playing last year.
They won six elimination games to capture the Big West Conference tournament championship, defeating Cal State Northridge twice in the final after having lost their first game to UC San Diego.
“It was crazy,” Evans said. “I didn’t expect that after we lost the first one, but it was a pretty magical thing.
“That’s never happened in my career, really, to go through a losers’ bracket like that and make that kind of run. It was pretty cool.”
UCSB won two more elimination games at the NCAA regional, upsetting Arizona State and San Diego State after losing its opener to tournament host UCLA. The ninth-ranked Bruins finally ended the Gauchos’ season in the final.
Many Happy Returns
The Gauchos, who will get a rematch with UCLA in their second tournament game at 4 p.m. Friday, return 14 of the 20 players from last year’s team.
They include Big West Pitcher of the Year Malaya Johnson and five other all-leaguers: first-team third baseman Bella Fuentes, first-team outfielder Giselle Mejia, second-team shortstop Tehya Banks, honorable mention second baseman Jazzy Santos, and honorable mention utility player Emily Carr.
UCSB was picked by the league’s coaches to win this year’s championship, receiving six of the 10 first-place votes. Defending regular season champion Cal State Fullerton got the other four votes.
Johnson, Fuentes and Mejia were all voted onto the 11-player, preseason all-league team.
“I don’t care about these preseason ranking things,” Evans said. “What I care about is will that make our team feel like, ‘There’s all this pressure because we’re supposed to do this.’
“I’ve always liked to fly under the radar, and we’re really not going to be able to do that.
“Nobody wants a target on their back … But we need to just keep being us.”
She is challenging her team with a nonleague schedule that includes home games against Kentucky on Feb. 10 and Notre Dame on March 11.
The Gauchos will also conclude this week’s tournament with games against Oregon State and Utah on Saturday, and Utah Tech and Loyola Marymount on Sunday.
“We’re going to play a lot of good teams early on,” Evans said. “We just need to be able to keep perspective.
“Those games are there to help us get better and learn how to compete. Our focus will be to hit the ground running when we get to conference.”
Pitching to Get Started
Johnson, a senior righthander, remained rock-solid during last season’s postseason.
She earned five Big West tournament wins while throwing 548 pitches in 37⅔ innings over the course of four days.
Johnson also got both pitching wins in extra innings in the NCAA regional games against ASU and San Diego State.
“What she did was amazing, to be pitching all those games,” Evans said. “She was so mentally strong.
“She got one rest in the Big West tournament, right in the middle of it, and that was it.
“She was our go-to. We rode her big-time.”
Johnson, who finished with a record of 24-12, tied Shelby Wisdom’s school record for pitching wins despite missing several turns with an injury at the start of the season.
She struck out 122 batters with an earned-run average of 2.95.
Junior Ainsley Waddell, who hit 10 home runs last year, pitched all seven innings of the 8-1 victory over Hawai‘i in UCSB’s fourth elimination game at the Big West Tournament.
“We don’t win the championship if she can’t pitch that game because Johnson was out of gas,” Evans said.
Junior Sam Stoll, who went 5-1 with a 3.22 ERA, is also back.
So is redshirt senior Grace Luderer, a highly touted transfer from Seattle University and the granddaughter of Vin Scully, the late Baseball Hall of Fame announcer of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Luderer was granted an extra year by the NCAA after a rib injury ended her 2025 season.
“If Grace can stay healthy, she’ll give us a lot of quality innings,” Evans said. “She and Johnson, along with some good young ones — freshmen Ella Myers (Monterey High School) and Sophia Clark (San Diego’s Cathedral Catholic) — give us more depth on the mound, that’s for sure.”
UCSB has plenty of talent behind the plate, led by sophomore Delaina Ma’ae. She batted .311 with seven homers as a freshman.
“We had other catchers, but Ma’ae was just lights-out at the plate,” Evans said. “We couldn’t take her out.”
Redshirt senior Daryn Siegel, a career .240 hitter with 103 games under her belt, is also back.
“We also have a freshman, Cat Benitez (Garden Grove’s Pacifica High), who is doing a pretty good job, too,” Evans said.
“We have a lot of depth back there and can take a little bit of load off any one of them.”
Bella of the Ball
UCSB has a veteran infield. Fuentes, a senior third baseman who set a school record last year by driving in 62 runs, was picked along with Johnson to D1 Softball’s Preseason D100 Mid-Major Rankings.
Fuentes hit 11 homers — fourth most in school history — and also belted two triples and 12 doubles while batting .298 last season.
“She struggled with her offense a little bit her first year,” Evans said. “But they have a college league during the summer down in Orange County, and she went down there and played in that the last two years.
“And man, when she came back after her sophomore year, you could tell.
“She’s a lot more comfortable and relaxed, less stressed out about at-bats and being more mature about it. She stepped up big with RBIs and defensively, too. Just went out and made plays.”
Banks, a junior defensive whiz at shortstop, made a big jump with the bat last year by hitting .304.
She batted .154 the previous season as the backup to 2024 All-Region star Maddie McNally.
“She got a lot more confident at the plate and started attacking the ball early,” Evans said. “It made a big difference.
“She’s a really great baserunner … really aggressive. It’s fun when she gets on because we can do some things.”
Santos, a .299 career hitter, has started 145 games at second base during her three seasons at UCSB. Her team-best 43 runs scored last year were the third most in Gaucho history.
Carr, a junior who hit five of her six home runs in last year’s league play, is battling top recruit Jaelyn Toledo (Santa Ana Mater Dei High) for the starting job at first base.
Evans has a few more decisions to make in the outfield after last year’s graduation of Alexa Sams, a .300 hitter, and Golden Glove centerfielder Erin Mendoza.
Mejia, who batted .376 with 35 runs scored, is the only returning starter.
“She’s a hitting machine — just super-consistent,” Evans said. “We’ll have some juniors out there but, aside from Giselle, none with a lot of experience.
“Erin leaves a big void in center.
“We do have Katie Terrazas, who keeps getting better and better. She just doesn’t have the experience of Erin, who played in the College World Series before transferring here from Oregon State.”
Field of Streams
Last month’s rainstorms have limited UCSB’s preseason training.
“We just replaced our outfield and then it rained like 10 inches in the span of a week or so, so we didn’t get onto our field until last Monday (Jan. 19),” Evans said.
“We couldn’t do anything live, so we’re kind of behind.”
She does have an experienced staff to get her team up to speed.
Pitching coach Amy Hayes spent 14 years as the head coach at Bradley while Rachel Huggins, who also coached at Bradley, is described by Evans as “one of the really great young hitting coaches in the game.”
Joy Jackson, meanwhile, has coached Evans’ defense for three decades.
“I’m definitely not doing this by myself,” Evans said.
“It’s a balanced staff that chooses to be here because they love to live in Santa Barbara and love what we’re doing here,” she added. “It’s a collaborative effort, for sure.”
And that includes bailing rainwater off the field.
“We’re blue collar, that’s who we are,” Evans said. “That’s what you’re signing up for when you choose to come here.
“We pull weeds. We landscape. We rake the field. We drag the field. We do it all.
“Our kids, every day, are involved in that, too, although not on game days.”
Their assignment on those days is to just keep pouring it on the opponents.
