Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Softball

Jen Sewell completed her 18th season at Southern Illinois University in 2025 after taking over as head coach during the 2022 season, and led SIU back to the ...

Laurin Watts completed her second season as Southern Illinois' pitching coach in 2026. Watts was announced as the team's pitching coach on July 16, 2024, by head coach Jen Sewell. Southern Illinois had one of the conference's top pitching staffs in 2026 under Watts, finishing the season with a team ERA of 2.91. This ranked second in the league. Against Valley opponents, SIU's ERA was 2.11, also ranking second in the MVC. Two pitchers received All-Conference recognition at the end of the year as Brooklynn Danielson was named the MVC Freshman of the Year and earned a spot on the All-MVC First Team, while Emily Delgado was named the MVC Newcomer of the Year. In her first season in the role, the SIU pitching staff had the second-best team ERA in the MVC at 3.18. Southern Illinois won its second consecutive MVC regular season championship in 2025. "We have been anticipating this big announcement for a while now and I'm so glad we were able to get Laurin on board with us here at Saluki Softball," Sewell said. "Laurin is one of the top up-and-coming pitching coaches in the country. Her name just kept coming up every time I asked about who is the next big pitching hire." Watts came to Southern Illinois after spending five seasons at Southern Utah. In the fall of 2023, Watts was promoted to Associate Head Coach of the Thunderbirds. During her time in Cedar City, Watts worked with both the pitching and catching staffs, and also served as the program's lead recruiter. "Laurin is not onl

Meade Smith is one of the top strength and conditioning professionals in college athletics with a proven track record of helping athletes maximize their potential. He joined the staff at Southern Illinois in May of 2016 after serving as head strength coach at SIUE from 2011-16. In 2019, he oversaw a complete renovation of the Saluki weight room. A 2000 graduate of Missouri, Smith played two seasons with the Tigers’ baseball program and earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and fitness. He earned his master’s degree in exercise physiology in 2004 from Southern Illinois, where he served as graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach. During his first stint with the Salukis, Smith was mentored by Eric Klein, who is now the head football strength and conditioning coach at UConn. Smith’s core strength and conditioning principles focus upon training movements not muscles, ground-based training programs, explosive training, an accent on core training, and an emphasis on injury reduction. “The primary focus with all performance programs is to build a strong athletic foundation while focusing on each student-athlete’s individual needs,” said Smith. “This is accomplished by developing comprehensive training programs that put a major emphasis on movement training, explosive power development, foot speed and agility, linear and lateral speed, proper resistance training techniques, functional strength, injury reduction, and energy system development.” Smith is a certified strengt

Mia Trejo finished her first season as an assistant coach for Southern Illinois in 2026. Jen Sewell announced the hiring of Trejo as an assistant on July 26, 2025. In Trejo's first year as an assistant, SIU went 34-17 overall and 21-6 in MVC play. Offensively, the Salukis scored 276 runs which ranked second in the Valley. "Thrilled to have Mia on staff with us this year working with our defense and our offense," Sewell said. "Our goal was to bring in a player's coach who believes in our culture and has a championship background. Thanks to our administration, we have the resources to recruit a big time coach and recruiter like Mia into our program." Trejo comes to SIU by way of Utah State, where she worked as an assistant for two seasons. Under Trejo, the Aggies set new program single-season records in 2025 in home runs (66), batting average (.345), slugging percentage (.557), and on-base percentage (.428). Other records that were set in the spring include runs (340), RBI (319), and total bases (807). Utah State also had seven all-conference players in 2025, the most in program history. In her first season at Utah State, Trejo and the Aggies achieved their best 24-game start since 2017 when they began the year 15-9. In non-conference play, the team went 17-11, one of the best marks in the recent history of the program. Prior to Utah State, Trejo had previously spent time at her alma mater, the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), as a graduate assistant in 2023. Trejo played