FAIRFIELD — The sound of metal cleats clicking on the dugout ground.
The smell of freshly cut grass and dragged dirt.
The camaraderie on bus rides back from a big game.
The chant of “DPT” — which means Dedication, Pride and Tradition — while breaking from the team huddle.
“I’m going to miss all of it,” Brenda Stieger said. “I’m going to miss seeing the benches empty and watching the girls start to slowly trickle in to get ready for practice.
“Some of them would say, ‘Hi, Coach.’ Some of them wouldn’t even say anything to me.
“They’d just go about their business and get ready for softball.”
This time, it was Stieger who got ready.
She prepared to take a long trip down memory lane.
But first, she took a long glance at Fairfield High School’s softball complex. Then she entered the team’s new fieldhouse.
Stieger, in detail, reminisced about the last three decades at the Indian helm that ultimately secured her spot as the school’s all-time winningest coach.
“It’s about relationships,” she said while holding back emotion. “It’s better to walk away when you’re able to say I did everything I could every day that I went out there on the field.”
Stieger recently announced her retirement from coaching after 29 years of leading the Fairfield softball program.
She compiled a 555-198 record and currently ranks 14th on the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s all-time list. The Indians won four Greater Miami Conference titles and 11 district championships under her watch.
Fairfield, in 2024, reached its first state tournament since 1991 — the year Bill Stewart, Stieger’s husband, was the coach.
“I know it’s the right time for me,” she admitted. “I know there’s always another player that you want to coach that’s coming through. I know there are young girls in this program that I would have loved to have seen all the way through, but I didn’t feel like I could give it everything it takes.
“I don’t see myself as anything special. I felt like that was my job. If you’re going to do the job, it had to be done in a way that you can live with yourself.
“That’s all I ever wanted to do. It just became a way of life for me.”
Coaching was inevitable
It did become a way of life for Stieger.
She had always been involved with athletics — either playing sports as a youngster or watching her father coach.
So, being a head coach at some point was inevitable.
“I always appreciated all of my players whose dads were standing outside the fence saying things to them and signaling to them,” Stieger said. “I appreciate that because my dad was up in the bleachers saying things. I could hear him with encouragement or with a cue to do something.
“I always appreciated that. I understood that.
“You just never thought about what year it was. The next year always came. That’s what I got from my dad. You just went out there and had a job to do.”
Stieger played for Fairfield under the program’s first-ever coach, Monica Mitter, and graduated in 1983. She went to Alice Lloyd College in Kentucky, where she was coached by her father, Jerome Stieger.
“I got a lot of my ethics, determination from my dad,” Stieger said. “My dad has always been my teacher — my professor.”
Stieger started coaching the Fairfield varsity softball team after a brief stint as the junior varsity coach. She was inducted into the Butler County Softball Hall of Honor in 2015.
But Stieger said the accolades weren’t why she stayed in the business as long as she did.
Stewart was the team’s statistician, and Stieger’s daughter Alexa Stinnett was an assistant on her coaching staff for 10 years. Stieger said she appreciated all her assistant coaches she worked with in the past — noting her final staff consisted of all alumni.
“I enjoyed everything that came with it,” she said before laughing. “Yeah, I yelled a lot, and I got on people. I was demanding. I think back to times when I wish I wouldn’t have been so tough because you think, ‘Man, she’s just a kid.’
“But a lot of my girls came back and told me that if I wouldn’t have pushed them, they wouldn’t have been able to do what they had done.”
Inside the new fieldhouse — built last year — hangs sponsored signs with names of those same players Stieger coached in the past.
She continually glanced at the jersey-shaped insignia.
“I see success,” Stieger said. “I see kids that are good people. I guess I’m really proud of that. I don’t know that I did anything special. I feel like I did what everybody would have done. I feel like they deserved to be pushed, and because of pushing them, they will achieve.
“Sometimes constructive criticism is difficult — especially for women to take. Emotions get involved and you have to kind of learn what type of kids there are, too — who needs a tough push and who needs a gentle push.
“I think at the beginning of my career, everybody got the tough push. Then, as I got more comfortable and more confident in myself, more of them got the gentle side — at least that’s what my players who kept coming back told me.
“‘You got soft, Coach,’ they’d say. I don’t know if I got soft, I just understood it better.”
Stieger said the 2024 Indians knew her best.
“They were a smart team,” she said. “When you’re young and you don’t want to be challenged, you think you have to know everything.
“As I got older, I realized you didn’t have to know everything. I opened up to them and asked them what they thought and what they knew.
“With that 2024 team, it worked best that way.”
A run to state
Stieger didn’t know if it would ever happen. She said the stigma of how hard it is to reach the state tournament is real.
“I just remember a picture taken of us walking toward the field with Firestone in the background.
“Right there I’m thinking, ‘My God. We finally got here.’”
The Indians had won 19 of 20 — including 10 straight — to reach the Division I state semifinals during that 2024 campaign.
The Fairfield softball team soaked in the opportunity to play on the big stage at Akron’s Firestone Stadium before bowing out to eventual champion Austintown-Fitch.
Stieger soaked it in just as much.
“I talked to a lot of coaches,” Stieger said, particularly making note of former Ross coach Paul Fernandez. “He said it may not have been the year that they won it, that would be the team he thought that had the most potential. To win it, it was just the right time at the right place with the right competitor.
“It takes luck, and it takes different matchups. Everything has to fall into place, and it is not easy to get there.”
Stieger said she resigned herself into believing that reaching state as a coach was not something she’d get to experience.
“But when it happened, it was even sweeter,” she said with a long, sensitive pause.
“With the girls that we did it with, it was much sweeter for the kids. It was the families and just the great support from that group. We essentially had two solid years with that group.
“Everything wasn’t always perfect. Just like every team, we had our ups and downs. It was a season where all the puzzle pieces fit.”
‘You play how you look’
Stieger never forgot a conversation about something as simple as having the school name on her team’s jerseys.
But she took it to heart through the years.
“There are a lot of Indians in this area,” Stieger said. “We’ve always had Fairfield on the front of our uniforms. We wanted to let people know that we were from Fairfield.”
Her Fairfield Indians never wore shorts, either.
“There was a timeframe where everyone was in shorts and gym shirts,” she said. “I was like, ‘What is happening here? These aren’t unis.’”
Stieger said keeping up with college programs enforced the idea of having two full sets of uniforms and then alternating them.
“I started noticing all of that stuff. I felt like we kind of started a trend around here.”
Her Fairfield Indians added stirrups, too.
“I always felt like you play how you look, and that was always a big thing to me,” Stieger said. “It goes with hustling on the field — looking like you should be out. It’s those little things that really do matter. I don’t know that it’s a hard thing about coaching, but it is something that has to be consistent with any coach at any time.
“If you stay consistent, it becomes a learned habit,” Stieger added. “I didn’t invent any of this. There are so many coaches out there that I learned from — incorporating things that you learned into what you do.
“You play the way you look. We looked like we were ball players. You wear your hats, and you don’t tie your shirts up. You don’t have your shirts hanging on your pants. All of that’s part of discipline. That was always a big thing for me. It’s something that I’ll miss.
“I hope whoever comes in and makes it their own that they take care of it. I hope they demand that those little things are what makes Fairfield Indians softball so special.”
