Downingtown High School alumna and former Exton resident Judy Lawes has led a remarkable career in softball coaching, writes Neil Geoghegan for The Daily Local News.
Lawes has coached softball at Kutztown University for 38 seasons, achieving a winning percentage of .64%. Her win total currently puts her in seventh place in all-time NCAA Division II history.
As a child, Lawes moved from North Carolina to Florida to Connecticut before settling in Exton. She attended Downingtown High School and later Shippensburg University, playing both high school and college softball.
Lawes was first hired as a head softball and tennis coach and assistant basketball coach at Kutztown in 1987. She later dropped tennis and basketball to focus on softball, and she has held the position ever since.
Her years of coaching has led the team to nine PSAC Eastern Division titles and 23 NCAA Tournament appearances.
But Lawes’ career goes beyond just championship titles. She got to coach her daughter Rachel on the team from 2013 to 2016.
Though she has led the team to great success, Lawes shared that her connections to her players mean the most over her decades in the role. Lawes said, “The relationships you make with these kids is the thing…I just hope they all had a good experience. That it was fun.”
Read more about Judy Lawes and her decades-long career coaching collegiate softball in The Daily Local News.
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