Berg Named Assistant Coach for 2020 Women's National Team
November 14, 2019 | Softball
Berg will help lead the WNT next July in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – Oregon State head softball coach Laura Berg has been selected as one of the 2020 Women's National Team Assistant Coaches by USA Softball, as announced Thursday afternoon.
Berg, along with Howard Dobson (LSU), Tairia Flowers (CSUN) and Heather Tarr (Washington) were selected from the USA Softball WNT Coaching Pool to help lead the Olympic softball team alongside Head Coach Ken Eriksen (South Florida) at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games as the sport makes its return to the Games for the first time since 2008.
"It warms my heart that softball is back in the Olympics," said Berg. "The experiences this team and these athletes will get to have representing this great country is something you can never forget. I cherished my time as an athlete competing in the Games, and I'm excited to be brought back to help coach in the sport's return."
Berg has been involved with USA Softball as both an athlete and a coach. As an athlete, Berg cemented herself as one of the game's greatest outfielders, helping the Red, White and Blue to three Olympic Gold Medals in 1996, 2000 and 2004, as well as an Olympic Silver Medal in 2008. She is one of four women to hold this accomplishment.
Berg also helped the Stars and Stripes to three Gold Medal finishes at the Pan American Championships and four Gold Medals at the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) World Championships.
Berg joined the WNT coaching staff in 2012 and served as an assistant before being named the head coach for the Junior WNT in 2017 that earned Gold at the World Baseball Softball Confederation Junior Women's World Championship.
"I'm excited and honored to work with a great group of young women and phenomenal athletes," said Berg. "I'm also looking forward to continuing to learn from this incredible coaching staff."
Berg was most recently one of the assistants with the WNT that won Gold at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. She was also an assistant coach for the Silver Medalists at the 2015 Pan American Games, helped coach three Gold Medal WNTs at the World Cup of Softball and coached two Silver Medal WNTs at the WBSC World Championships.
As Oregon State's head coach, Berg has led the Beavers to four NCAA postseason appearances. Under her leadership, OSU set six school records including team-batting average, individual single-season RBI and stolen bases, and career RBI, runs scored and stolen bases. In 2019, the Beavers started the season 8-0, the best start since 2003. Berg has led eight athletes to earn NFCA Pacific Region Honors and 38 student athletes to Pac-12 Postseason Honors. Berg currently has two athletes on the OSU roster that were on U19 WNTs this past summer: Frankie Hammoude (USA) and Grace Messmer (Canada). She also signed recent Olympic Qualifier, Tarni Stepto (Australia), to her 2020 signing class.
For more information on the Oregon State softball team, visit OSUBeavers.com or follow the team @BeaverSoftball on Twitter and Instagram.
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