Early in the morning in late March of 2002, Frank Greene walked a Florida beach in search of precious mementos. He combed the sand and scooped up seashells, one apiece for each of his players still asleep while resting for a spring break trip game day. More than 20 years later, Greene hardly recalls his exploration that day on the beach – but his players have never forgotten. It may have seemed small at the time, but it wasn’t.
It was one of those simple acts of thoughtfulness that people remember. On those seashells, Greene scrawled words of encouragement for his players. At least one of those players has held onto that seashell for more than two decades as a symbol of a moment in time that will always feel near and dear.
As Greene presented the seashells to members of the 2002 Concordia Softball team, he warned them, “These days will be fleeting. Grab onto this memory.” Those are roughly the words that Jenn (West) Wormer (2002 graduate) remembers from that journey to The Sunshine State her senior year. Says Wormer, “It was always bigger than softball for Coach Greene. Yes, he liked to win games, but the bigger plan was never lost on him.”
The ’bigger plan’ helped guide Greene as he sought to do everything in his power to provide his student-athletes within the Concordia Softball program a first-class experience. His ability to care for his players – and to make that sentiment apparent – served as a competitive advantage as Greene elevated Bulldog Softball to a new level of legitimacy and achievement. Over 11 seasons as head coach, Greene compiled 293 wins (most in program history) and steered Concordia to three GPAC championships in a thrilling four-year span from 2005 through 2008.
Greene led the program into a new era as the Great Plains Athletic Conference took shape beginning with the 2001 season. Serving as head coach of a college softball program had not exactly been part of Greene’s plan when he majored in Broadcasting and Communication at Wayne State College. Roughly 30 years after his college graduation, Greene received a phone call that changed the course of his adult life. Greene went all in with everything he had.
Says Greene, “I just felt like I owed those kids everything we could give them. We gave them as much as we could. It was fun. We had our ups and downs – everything.”
Serving others through the game of softball
Frank Greene became ‘Coach Greene’ not because he looked at softball as a career path but because he understood how the game could help build communities. When Greene saw little infrastructure for the sport in the town of Columbus, where he worked at Dale Electronics from 1978 to 1990, he simply started a softball association for both youths and adults. Said Greene, “Once I worked with the young kids and their coaches, it got me excited. I wanted to coach again. I loved playing the game – I played both men’s slow pitch and fast pitch.”
When Frank and his wife Cindy moved the family (children Lana, Dara and Adam) from Columbus to Seward, Coach Greene started up another new youth program – the Seward Jazz, an outfit that continues to thrive in the present day. As a youth coach, Frank had an additional opportunity to bond with his daughters, one of which played in a league he had built from the ground up.
To this point, softball wasn’t what paid the bills for Coach Greene. After running the video department at Dale Electronics, Greene went on to work at SmithKline Beecham Animal Health in Lincoln and then as Director of Organizational Development and Education at Bryan Memorial Hospital. He also worked in the College of Business at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Greene became the Head Softball Coach at Centennial High School in Utica, Neb. Later in the 90s, Greene was introduced to Concordia as both a business teacher and an assistant softball coach. Greene spent two years assisting Tim Preuss, who stood at the helm of the program from 1996 through 2000.
Everywhere he went, Geene made people more excited about the game of softball and the ways in which it brought people together. Though he worked in business (even running his own at one point) and kept involved in the radio and communications field, Greene somehow always made time for softball. More accurately, he always made time for people.
Considering the many irons he had in the fire, could Coach Greene possibly make time to be a college head coach? He was confident he was up for the challenge.
Greene takes reins at Concordia
A catcher out of Columbus, Neb., Jennifer Wormer was a junior during Greene’s first season as Concordia’s head coach in 2001. As Wormer recalled, “When Coach Greene came in, he hit the ground running. He worked tirelessly to build the program. I don’t think he stopped to take a breath. He was always building our practice and game schedules and he was the first coach that made it possible for us to travel for a full week of spring break. We went to Arizona and played for a full week of softball. We went and played at Disney World in Florida. We chartered a bus and played a full week.”
It was a running joke with Greene and another faculty member that the new head coach was 75 percent softball and 50 percent business. Greene was teaching as many as three classes per semester (typically two in the spring) while attempting to pour every resource he could into a softball program with a limited budget. The challenges failed to dampen Greene’s enthusiasm for the role.
When Preuss (also the football team’s defensive coordinator at the time) decided to step away from the head coaching position, his first call went to Greene, who had relinquished his assistant coaching duties after the 1998 Concordia season. Greene didn’t have to think twice when he was ultimately offered the ‘part-time’ head coaching position by then Director of Athletics Grant Schmidt (also the men’s basketball coach).
“I said, ‘Definitely. I’m all in,’” Greene says of the opportunity. “’I’d love to be the head coach here.’ I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. You never know for sure. When they hired me, we had a lot of work to do. We didn’t have much of a budget, so that’s when I started some fundraisers for the softball team. The kids were very helpful. Brand new uniforms will do a lot to motivate kids.”
The resourcefulness of Greene gave the program a significant boost. In efforts to raise funds, Greene and his team sold fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July, ran softball tournaments that generated several thousand dollars and sent letters to family members to ask for funds. Those funds went right back into the program, allowing for equipment upgrades and the spring break trips that became some of the very best memories for many of Greene’s players. He got things done that had never happened before in the history of the program – like online audio broadcasts with his friend Mike Meyer on the call.
All of these things were noticed by the players. A shortstop and native of Jefferson City, Mo., Meredith (Peters) Marsh filled a key role as one of the all-conference performers that helped make the Bulldogs a championship program. She credits Coach Greene as a game changer and a trailblazer. There was no detail too small when it came to building a healthy program. Under Greene, recruiting also expanded as his involvement with Triple Crown Sports out of Fort Collins, Colo., helped open doors to new pools of talent.
Said Marsh, “With his business background and love of business, he was concerned about everything that went into the program. He got us access to things that had never been done in softball at Concordia. Our spring break trips slowly grew each year. He would always be getting new uniforms and equipment and bringing in other coaches that could help us in different aspects of the game. He was so good at bringing in everything we needed to be successful. One year he brought in a dietician to try and make us all healthier. He worked with athletic trainers more than ever before. I think he was the beginning of all of that.”
All the little things added up to big results for Greene and his Bulldogs. As Greene remembered, his first season got out to a rough start as Concordia went 1-10 over its first 11 games while up against staunch competition. That team then went 21-9 over its final 30 games and helped set the stage for 12-consecutive winning seasons. Typically, the Bulldogs would hit their stride within conference play after taking on rugged nonconference slates.
Greene refused to fatten up the record by playing patsies. Said Greene, “We didn’t duck anybody. We were going to play whoever was tough if we could get them. We went up to Sioux Falls one year and beat Augustana, and that was a big deal because they were a Division II team. We wanted to play the best.”
The best for Concordia Softball was yet to come. From 2005 through 2008, the Bulldogs went 72-21 in GPAC league games while winning two conference regular season championships and one GPAC tournament title.
Coach Greene’s legacy
It’s been more than a decade since Coach Greene has roamed the third base coaching box at Plum Creek Park, but he hasn’t missed a beat when it comes to the way he cares for his former players. When the 2005 GPAC Championship team returned to campus in 2019 to take its place within the Concordia Athletics Hall of Fame, Greene wanted to do something special for his players, something he wished he could have done 14 years earlier. Greene purchased GPAC Championship rings for each of his players.
It was an uncommon show of generosity and love. Said Meredith (Peters) Marsh, “Coach did a lot to make that weekend really memorable. He made it all about us. He rented a place for us to all get together with our families. He got all of us conference championship rings. That was something he always wanted for us. It was great to see everybody. Coach continued what he had always done. He worked really hard for us to have a great experience and for us to be recognized for all our accomplishments.”
To be sure, Coach Greene was proud whether his teams won or lost. As a teacher, Greene wanted them to learn something along the way. When the 2005 team ventured to Savannah, Ga., for spring break, Greene and assistant coaches Randy Folkerts and Mindy Miller took the group on a tour of a southern fort and plantation that provided an education on what slavery had been like. As part of the trip, the team stayed in a cottage on Tybee Island. As a first-time college assistant, Folkerts soaked up plenty about what it meant to run a softball program.
One time when Folkerts suggested that Greene make sweeping lineup changes, Greene decided to stand pat – and it worked. The two coaches and Seward community members worked well together, even if they may have had differing political opinions or NFL team allegiances.
Said Folkerts, “It was an experience. I think the girls learned a lot from him about life. You’re not going to play softball forever. Later on in life, you’re going to need these skills. Not everything is going to go the way you thought it was going to. That’s true in life. You find that out real fast. Playing softball for Frank went beyond the game. I don’t know if all coaches teach that way. He was there for the players and to teach them the right ways to act on and off the field.”
The list of First Team All-GPAC honorees that Greene coached on the conference championship teams included Judy Alswager and Rebecca Shaffer in 2005, Samantha Hellbusch in 2007 and Sarah Bergen and Clarissa Eloge in 2008. Eloge was then named the GPAC Player of the Year in 2009. Greene also coached program all-time strikeouts leader Nicole Sempek and NAIA All-American Celine Lassaigne, who went on to serve as head coach of the French National Team.
The 2005 squad still owns the school record for wins in a season with 36. Said Marsh of that group, “I think that ’05 team really was a product of quite a few years before that. Our team chemistry and the way the program had grown, all of that kind of paid off. Coach brought in some new pieces. Our team chemistry and the people in the program were really special that year. We had all been working for it. Coach definitely kept that in front of us. He wanted to see us have that success.”
Specific wins from the years gone by are difficult for Greene to recall. He spends a lot more time thinking about the players he coached, the relationships they formed and some of the details that went into building those unforgettable trips filled with softball, laughter and seashells, of course.
Says Greene, “All of these things combined came together. We had raised more funds and always tried to travel to one coast or the other (for spring break). Some of the kids had never seen the ocean. We rented pool houses and each one slept seven people. It was really cheap to get that for a week. It was $265 for the week. We cooked our own meals, and we had a swimming pool right there.”
If Coach Greene could have given his own right arm to make a dream come true for one of his players, he just might have been willing to do so. There are so many stories that attest to his kindness and caring nature. Emilie Lewis still remembers when Coach Greene stayed with her at the emergency room and Jennifer Davis credited her coaches and teammates for getting through her bouts of homesickness.
When you played for Coach Greene, you mattered. Says Marsh, “I hope it really gets highlighted how much he built the program to be on the same level as other successful programs at Concordia. He invested so much of his own time, energy and resources to make that happen. He gave us everything we needed to be successful. I’m just thankful for all he did for us in our four years and I’m glad he’s getting recognized.
“It was a family atmosphere. He and Cindy had the whole team over at their house fairly regularly for barbecues. Most of us got to know Cindy just as well as him. I think that was good for a lot of us who were farther away from home.”
Jennifer (West) Wormer will likely never let go of that seashell because of what it symbolizes. Says Wormer, “He's a great coach, but he’s an even better human. He loves the game. When you think of the word ‘passion,’ you think of Coach Greene. He’s so passionate and it was contagious. He’s a great communicator and a great leader. He built a culture that was something some players never get to experience. It was so special. You were playing for the girls around you. I think any player on that team would have run though a brick wall for him. He gave 110 percent to our softball program and to each of his players. He cared about us as humans above everything.”
She added, “I challenge anyone to talk to Coach Greene for five minutes and not walk away inspired.”
Such sentiments are enough to overwhelm Greene, a treasured Concordia coach, teacher and broadcaster. The Grand Island Senior High School graduate of 1966 has been other places. As someone with a master’s degree from Colorado State University, Greene will tell you he’s “still a Ram.”
He’s also forever a Bulldog. As Coach Greene thinks back on the journey, he fights back tears. He’s always been one to get a little emotional, especially when thinking about something that reserves a piece of his heart. To think he’s now going into the Concordia Athletics Hall of Fame, Greene swells with pride.
“It’s been home to me,” he offers. “I’ve felt at home here. We all know that this is a special place. Here I go again – but it is. It’s a safe place to send your kids. This is a very special place. It’s been good to me. I got to coach here, I got to teach here and I got to broadcast here. It’s been a delight to me. I was just hoping to do something to help.”