Ralph Weekly aiming for national title

Ralph and Karen Weekly on the Lady Vols

Something is missing.

Considering the lengthy list of accomplishments already to Ralph Weekly's credit, it's perhaps a bit difficult to identify exactly where the hole on the resume might be.

The wins have piled up to the point that a fourth digit is required to count them all.

Championships? Weekly has them at levels that range from conference crowns in the competitive SEC to nationally with titles in the NAIA with Pacific Lutheran.

There's a haul of 13 international medals to wade through as well, not to mention the individual honors his players have produced or the careers that have launched under his watch.

Simply as it stands now, the Tennessee co-head coach has already done enough during his career in softball without one more game being played to earn admission into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame, which officially welcomed him two months ago.

But if it all ended now, Weekly wouldn't be able to chase the one thing that has eluded him with the Lady Vols so far. And based on the passion that is clearly still evident as he prepares for a 25th season in the dugout, there is nothing slowing him down as UT pursues it starting on Thursday.

"The one thing I want to do, and it was my one goal in coming here because I'd been lucky enough to coach teams that won gold medals and all that, is I want to win a Division I national championship," Weekly said last week while looking down at Lee Stadium from the press box. "I still think we can do it here.

"I'm excited about the game, I'm excited about every year and I plan to coach as many years as I'm physically able. Absolutely, the passion is still there."

Given his love for the game, his profession and his players, in all likelihood even scratching off one more thing from his career checklist wouldn't put out a fire that was been burning for so long.

If there were no fields, Weekly and anybody else serving with him overseas would just make do with what they had.

In Morocco, that meant throwing down four stones in the Sahara Desert.

If there wasn't a fast-pitcher available when they were able to clear out a little room in Vietnam and Weekly wasn't on patrol as an Air Force counter-intelligence agent, he'd settle for slow-pitch softball.

"There's nothing else to do when you're over there," Weekly said. "You could play flag football, but I never was good at that so I played softball.

"Most important about that, I think I learned the importance of fundamentals."

Weekly already had a good grasp on them after playing baseball through high school, though he described his work on the diamond then as average despite being "a pretty good, everyday player."

But the transition to playing softball during his time in the Air Force and then to a role coaching a handful of decorated All-Armed Forces squads helped shape his philosophy for the game — and set a blueprint for the disciplined style he's brought to the Lady Vols.

"I tell kids all the time when we recruit them, I'm not a coach that will tell them, 'That's OK, honey,' " Weekly said. "There are some coaches in our game today that just roll the ball out there and let the kids play. We don't do that. We have a game plan every day. Our teams are fundamentally strong.

"I mean, you're going to do it, you're going to do it right, and if you don't do it right, you're going to do it over and over and over until it's right. That's just my style of coaching."

It's not Weekly's alone, of course.

He has a list of influences in the softball world just as long as the one featuring his personal accomplishments. But the sport and his military background aren't solely responsible for that approach either.

Weekly's eyes light up, and he flashes the smile of somebody waiting to reveal a surprise.

His time as a football coach has long since passed, and by comparison to his life in softball, it was a brief career on the sideline as an assistant in charge of special teams.

But Weekly can recount specific names, game plans and details of the big games he was a part of winning at Pacific Lutheran under legendary coach Frosty Westerling.

And he's also got a play called "Five Fingers" he's ready to draw up that he is certain still can't be stopped should UT football coach Derek Dooley need his help.

"I never had a chance to tell Derek," Weekly said before breaking down his fake field goal. "There is one guy left open every time.

"I swear, it might not work in Division I, but in small-college football, we scored eight or nine touchdowns on it."

Pacific Lutheran put up plenty of points on the way to a pair of national championships with Weekly on the staff, a position offered to him by Westerling based much more on his natural coaching ability and a fast friendship between the two men than football knowledge.

Whereas Weekly already had a background with softball fundamentals from playing baseball, he didn't have much of anything to lean back on as he began working on the football field in 1986 other than what he was able to read and study about the game. But by stepping somewhat out of his comfort zone, Weekly was able to spend nearly a decade with Westerling, learning and cultivating the craft of coaching — which could then be applied anywhere.

"It was a great time, and I learned a ton," Weekly said. "It does help you. First thing is, a lot of coaches don't want to learn from other coaches. Those coaches are wrong. Coaching football, we won two national championships during that time when I was there in football, and those coaches were really good — small-college coaches, yes, but really, really good.

"I mean, I knew a little bit about special teams just basically from reading and studying, but Frosty felt I could coach."

Based on the results, that appears to have been a smart hunch.

The notion of seeing the finish line is quickly dismissed by Weekly.

Going on a quarter-century coaching softball and already in the Hall of Fame, it's safe to assume he is closer to the end of his career than the beginning.

But aside from pouring his energy into a team ranked No. 9 in the national preseason polls, there are recruiting classes put together through 2014 that have him fired up and aiming for multiple trips to the Women's College World Series.

And the players already on campus have a not-so-subtle reminder hanging outside the complex next to Lee Stadium about where their season should end, a banner welcoming a "2012 World Series team" to work each day.

Though, like the coach, the Lady Vols are well aware of what the program still needs to accomplish as well.

"Obviously for our coaches we want them to have that and to be a part of a national championship team," senior utility player Ashley Andrews said. "But it's that way for the players too, and I think he does a really good job of sharing that with us. It's not just for him. He's very good about making clear this is a team, and we want to get there together. We want to get there just as bad as he does.

"That passion is still there. He still wants to win just as much."

Few coaches have done it as often as Weekly.

Now he's just looking for one victory in particular.

Austin Ward covers Tennessee football. Follow him at http://twitter.com/Vols_Beat and http://blogs.knoxnews.com/ward