This softball season is the second year Ava Thorpe has had her dad, James Thorpe, as the head coach of her high school team. (photo contributed by James Thorpe.)
While on the diamond, sophomore Ava Thorpe is able to look over in the dugout and see someone she has known her whole life.
Over this past summer, SHS hired her father, James Thorpe, as the head softball coach. Though this has created some challenges, it has also brought a new chapter in the unbreakable bond between a father and daughter with softball.
It all started when Ava, who was around 4 or 5 years old, would sit alongside her father in his dugout while he was coaching baseball at Perry Meridian. This became something that they could bond over before she was first starting to play softball.
“She has been around the game a long time,” Thorpe said. “It’s just kind of created a bond to where if I went to something that had to do with ball, she went.”
Thorpe had coached baseball for 15 years before he made the switch to softball. He has been coaching for Ava on her travel softball teams since 2018 and is currently the head coach of the Indiana Gator Premier Thorpe 16u team.
Though he has been coaching Ava for travel and now for the school, Thorpe says coaching her hasn’t changed during this transition.
“For me coaching her, it’s no different,” Thorpe said. “The biggest difference is the surroundings and (expectations) … But I would say with her the biggest adjustment has probably just been being in the school and having her dad as the coach.”
Though it is a new experience for the both of them, Ava has had to learn to turn from daughter to player while having her dad as her coach.
“It’s kind of hard,” Ava said. “He’s a little bit harder on me, and I have to learn to get over it.”
This also applies to Thorpe, who has to go from father to coach.
“Sometimes that can be tough,” Thorpe said. “It was very easy when she was younger, (but) as she has gotten older, I try to do that, but there are times where I have to take a step back and be like, ‘This is your daughter, but she’s playing for you in school’ type deal.”
Though they have their own likes, dislikes and opinions, Thorpe considers his daughter as his best friend, and says that he couldn’t ask for a better daughter who knows the role he plays at school and is able to accept that.
“For the most part I am who I am and she is who she is. We’re best friends, and we just have that click,” Thorpe said.
Though Ava has had other coaches, she said she doesn’t want anyone rather than her dad to coach her.
“My dad is my best friend, and I wouldn’t choose anyone else to coach me,” Ava said.