Taft's Atkinson hopes to make most of interim head coach tenure
Dec. 16—Morgan Atkinson's college coaching career began as she sent a flurry of emails to junior college programs up and down the state, hoping one might be looking for an extra coach.
After just one full season as an assistant, she found herself at the helm of one of those programs. Former Taft College head coach Gaby Brixey's unexpected departure in late July thrust her colleague Atkinson into the role of interim coach.
While Brixey left to tackle rebuilding a dormant program at her alma mater of West Hills Coalinga, Atkinson prepared to shoulder the burdens, administrative and emotional alike, of a head coaching role.
"I was super happy for her to get an opportunity where she thought she could grow more and she could be better," Atkinson said, with a few months of distance. "It was honestly just really nerve-wracking at first."
She had graduated from tiny Salem University in West Virginia in 2021 after starting for the Tigers between 2017 and 2020. Now here she was, charged — along with retained assistant Brinley Rosenberger — with overseeing a team of women not much younger than herself.
"I couldn't have asked for a better group, honestly," Atkinson said, "because they've shown me so much respect, just from the jump."
While her ascent came as a surprise to all involved, Atkinson's arrival in college coaching was no accident.
"I literally knew I wanted to coach as soon as I started playing softball," she said.
Morgan Gamboa, who was two years behind her at Frontier, bonded with Atkinson as a freshman when they realized they had first the same shoes and then the same name. Even then, Atkinson displayed one defining attribute: her intensity.
"I can remember one time specifically, her senior year," Gamboa recalled, "we were down that game, and this girl went balls to the wall ... all gas, no brake, she laid out for the ball."
She added that this quality transferred to the dugout, where Atkinson "could get anybody up and screaming in a game that we were down." Gamboa suggested that this passion could transfer well to any group of players Atkinson coached. During college, Gamboa added, Atkinson had branched out to other positions beyond her main role as a catcher and was "always about growth on the field."
All the while, she developed her coaching repertoire, giving lessons over the years. She took great inspiration from Vanessa Jimenez, an assistant coach at Salem. Atkinson's biggest coaching job before Taft, though, was a short stint with the club team Central Cal Athletics under another mentor of hers in coach Brandon Sanders.
"When she came on she was really new, new to the coaching side of it, so I kind of viewed her as a player still," Sanders said. "She was kind of still in that mindset, fresh out of college, but trying to get her legs under her in the coaching aspect."
