Brandice Cutspec looked through the chain link fence and realized she needed to be back on the other side of it. Badly. Yes, the barrier that kept her from her personal field of dreams was once self-imposed because being a community college assistant softball coach isn’t quite akin to taking a vow of poverty — but it’s in the discussion.
But Cutspec realized that marketing pet food and then running her own marketing and design company wasn’t going to give her the voice or the fulfillment she wanted in her life. You don’t get back to the other side of the fence plugging pet food or designing websites.
Which is where the Voice comes in. The Voice — her Voice — could get Cutspec back to the field. She’d literally talk her way back to the Santiago Canyon College softball field, back to the other side of the fence.
“I literally got to the point where I realized I needed softball back in my life,” she said. “I realized I do love it more than anything else and kept asking myself, ‘How do I get it back?’ Well, they needed an announcer, so I went back as an announcer. It’s me. Done. I would have gone back as a volunteer coach. I didn’t care how I got back to the field. I needed to be back on the field.”
And that’s how SCC found its next softball coach. Only the second one in school history.
One year after announcing lineups, Cutspec is making out lineups. One year after announcing who’s coming to bat, Cutspec is figuratively — if not literally —back in the batter’s box. She’s back on the field, back on the other side of the fence.
The first-year SCC coach has a big act to follow. She took over from her mentor, former coach and former boss, Lisa Camarco, who built the SCC program from scratch when it began in 2007. Camarco retired as coach after leading SCC to state championship appearances in 2014 and 2016. The 2016 team won SCC’s first state title, becoming the first team since 1996 to lose the first game in the…
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