One of Eastern’s newest faculty members, Brittany Stroop, will be the head coach for the softball team starting this fall. Stroop is taking the lead from Colleen Stuppy, last spring’s interim coach, after the unfortunate death of former head coach Mark Ambler.
Stroop has been playing softball since fourth grade and was the starting varsity catcher at Pottsgrove High School in Pottstown for four years. She is originally from Pottstown, Pa. and completed her undergraduate studies in biology and earned a master’s in education from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in St. Bonifacius, Ohio.
This is Stroop’s second head coach position. Before she came to Eastern, she was the head softball coach at Crown College west of Minneapolis. “I was moving back to my hometown when I heard about the vacancy here,” Stoop said. “It worked out well for me.
“I did not always know that I was going to make a career of coaching,” she said. “It wasn’t until I started coaching Angels Softball, a travel team out of Pottstown, during my summers off from college that I began to think that coaching was a real opportunity.”
However, Stroop is also planning to make use of her degrees. “As of now I’m looking to get into teaching at Eastern as an adjunct professor,” she said. “I’m also looking to go back to school in the near future to get another Masters degree in Kinesiology so I can become a full-time college professor along with coaching at the college level.”
As a softball player, Stroop said her biggest achievement was making it to the NAIA regional tournament her sophomore year and being named “All-Conference” her senior year.
Stroop has very clear goals for the team for this semester. “I look forward to developing the necessary skills and the spiritual abilities of the team,” she said. She also hopes that she can “make a spot in National Collegiate Athletic Association.”
As the Assistant Sports Information Director in the athletic department, Stroop will be in charge of covering the volleyball, field hockey and women’s tennis teams this fall.
When she is not coaching, Stroop said she likes to “play both slow-pitch and fastpitch softball. … I also like to read, hang out with my friends and family, and visit my brother in Ohio.”