END OF A LONG ROAD

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

In their own respective ways, Paula Young and Carolyn Morrison remember how things used to be with Baylor Athletics.

For Paula, it was coaching softball when it was "basically a walk-on program," the Bears played their games at a little league complex and drove to away games in vans. Carolyn was part of an antiquated accounting system that included writing out deposit slips by hand and meeting up after football games to count concessions money and "divvy it up."

"Now, oh my goodness, when you don't even file paper, nobody even needs a file cabinet in their office anymore," said Carolyn, Baylor Athletics' director of business operations, "even though we do keep a few things. But the technology is the biggest thing that has changed."

Along with Emmitt Flores, assistant director of ticket operations, Paula and Carolyn are retiring at the end of the fiscal year on May 31 with a combined 90 years' experience with Baylor Athletics.

Working in event management and facilities for the last 24 years after a 20-year coaching career, Paula said she has enjoyed being "able to help our coaches, because when I coached, we didn't have one of me."

"It's nice to take a lot of things off their plate and know that anything that happens outside the lines, we've got it," she said. "It was hard a little bit, at first, not coaching. But I really enjoy what I do now. And that's maybe one of the hard things about deciding to retire, because I really enjoy who I work with, where I work and just being able to help our coaches."

That includes current Baylor softball coach Glenn Moore, who has led the Bears (35-21) to four Women's College World Series and a matchup this weekend against No. 4 national seed Florida (49-12) in their seventh Super Regional.

"We had gone to LSU for a tournament, and I liked the way he coached – aggressive, he had power, he had speed; he took chances on the bases. And it impressed me," said Paula, who served on the hiring committee when Moore was brought in as the head coach in 2000. "I got to call him and say, 'Hey, would you be interested in this position?' I knew his faith and that he would be a perfect fit. I think he even had a chair in the dugout for Jesus."

It was a far-different Baylor when Paula and her twin sister, Pam, came to the school as freshman softball and basketball players in 1976. The Bears were playing basketball at the Heart O' Texas Coliseum (now the Extraco Events Center), predominantly a rodeo facility, while the softball field had a chalk line marking the outfield fence.

"(Softball) was the love of my life. I had been playing softball since I was 8 years old," Paula said. "Mom coached our first teams, the first five or six years. It was just something I couldn't imagine doing without because our summers were filled with that.

"We started traveling with a women's slow-pitch team here in Waco when we were still in high school. Weekends, that's just what you did. We were fortunate that Baylor had a softball team back then because not many universities did."
Paula and Pam Young

Inducted into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011, Paula captained the 1980 Baylor softball team as a shortstop and was named the Texas AIAW Player of the Year, helping the Bears to a seventh-place finish in the AIAW national tournament.

While working on her master's degree, Paula served as a graduate assistant for softball coach Bob Brock before taking over the head coaching job in 1981 when Brock went to Texas A&M.

As much as it hurt when the softball program was dropped in 1988, Paula said she "wanted to stay here and be a part of the athletic department and part of Baylor as long as I could." She stayed on as the first head coach for the women's golf team until softball was brought back in 1995 when the Big 12 Conference started.

"(Then-athletic director) Dick Ellis called me and said, 'I'm fixing to make you happy. Because we're joining the Big 12, we'd like to bring softball back. Would you restart the program?''' Paula said. "I didn't hesitate. I told him, 'I would love to.' That's my first love. I loved golf and I loved the players we had, but that's my main love, and I wanted to get back into that."

The highlight of her second stint with the softball program was the opening of Getterman Stadium in Paula's last season in 2000.

"Construction was still going on. We didn't have the chairbacks, we didn't have the metal benches," she said. "The fans had to sit on concrete, but we didn't have that many fans back then. Softball wasn't at the level that it is now. But it was still neat, because nobody else in the country had something like that. We still had a chain-link fence for an outfield fence, but it was a beautiful place. So thankful to Ted and Sue Getterman for building that stadium."

While Paula missed coaching, she said the event management and facilities position was a perfect fit for her, "because I love planning."

"That was something I did when I was coaching because we didn't have a whole support group," she said. "There was no marketing group back then, for anyone. Our athletic trainers were students. Athletics communications wasn't like it is now. So, totally different. But I liked the planning and preparing for events."

Saying retiring now "just feels right," Paula plans to fill her time with golf, travel and maybe sailgating on the houseboat she bought with her sister, Pam. But she can also yell at umpires now for "the first time since I've been here."

"I'll be back," she said. "(Volleyball coach Ryan) McGuyre and his entire staff were great to work with. Coach Moore and the entire (softball) staff, they're great. I look to come back and support them in any way I can."

'We Lived a Lot of Life Together'

Going back to their days at Behrens Drug Company and then Cardinal Health Distribution, Morrison and Nancy Post have "lived a lot of life together." For the last 21 years, they've worked side by side in the Baylor Athletics business office.

"I think the world of her," Post, Baylor's Associate AD for financial management and reporting, said of Carolyn. "Obviously, I've been her supervisor, but we just work side by side.

"In our world today, where we have such little human contact, people appreciate the human element that Emmitt provides in the ticket office. And it's the same with Carolyn and Paula. People genuinely like Carolyn and Paula."
Carolyn Morrison

Twenty-one years ago, when she was working as a registrar at Jefferson-Moore High School in the Waco ISD, Carolyn came across a job opening in Baylor Athletics that was "half ticket office, half business office."

"I knew Nancy, and I knew she worked in athletics," Carolyn said. "So, I called her and just asked if she thought I could do the job. And she said, 'You should apply.' When I called, I had no idea she would be interviewing me. But she thought, 'Yeah, let's get her in here.' And it's been fun. It's been such a great place to work."

For Carolyn, one of the biggest perks of working at Baylor has been her three sons, Paul, Mark and Ben, all graduating from the school. Paul graduated in 2009, Mark got his master's in 2013 and Ben finished in December 2016.

"I started on June 30, 2003, and the very next year my son (Paul) came here," she said. "All three of them went through here. And it was so worth it."

Carolyn got an associate's degree from a Nazarene college in Kankakee, Ill., before the family moved to Waco for her dad's job with the Veterans Affairs center in Waco. She went back to get her bachelor's degree through MCC's program with Tarleton State in 2012 when her son was a junior in high school.

"Back then, they took work experience and turned it into credit hours, so I didn't have that much to do," she said. "My baby (Ben) was still at home when I did that, and that was hard. I remember that first night I came home from a night class at about 9 o'clock, and my husband (George) had waited up and asked me what was for supper. And I said, 'This is not how it's going to be.' We got that straightened out."

While she still processes all the money that comes in from ticketing every day, Carolyn said "it's so different."

Carolyn Morrison

"We've had this (scanner) for about a year now, and it just scans the checks," she said, "so we don't even have to write up the deposits anymore for checks. It's just so efficient."

Outside of Carolyn's day-to-day duties in the business office, Nancy said she "really leaned on Carolyn in terms of the equestrian championships." Baylor hosted the NCEA National Championships for 17 years at the Extraco Events Center before they were moved to the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Fla., three years ago.

"She really stepped up and stepped into things that she would add on to her job, all the travel arrangements I asked her to be a part of," Nancy said. "For the championships, she would go out there and basically spend a week doing whatever was needed, from an office perspective, while Paula and I ran around like crazy. Paula did so much on the facilities side for the championship."

Like Paula, Carolyn wants to travel, but her retirement is also a chance to spend time with her five grandchildren and do some volunteer work through her church.

"I knew I was never going to have all the money I wanted, but you just get to a point where you would so much rather be at home than working. And I've always said, 'Man, when I retire, I'll be able to do this mentor thing and I'll be able to do Meals on Wheels and just the lunches they have.' It's hard for me to get to those when I'm here.

"(George and I) haven't really traveled a lot, except in the United States. George loves Gatlinburg (Tennessee), and I go to Branson (Missouri) at least once a year. But there's still places I want to go."

END OF A LONG ROAD

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