“As a dad, it’s the greatest thing ever,” Wayne Henson said. “It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time.
“It’s hard to be a dad-coach,” he added. “It’s hard to be a daughter-player. I don’t know if all dad-coaches have this — but luckily for me, mine is pretty freaking good. So that makes my job easier.
“It makes the noise from all the outside surroundings pretty much nonexistent.”
Evelyn was the only senior on an Edgewood softball team coached by Wayne.
So a lot of noise Friday morning for the Henson family came from having to prepare for a Division II district final game against top-seeded Kings.
Then around lunchtime, the noise got louder.
“It all started with us being excited about coming here to play today — knowing that we had a tough game, knowing that it could be one of our last games,” Wayne said. “We were taking all of it one game at a time.
“We just played our last home game,” Wayne added. “We got out our last cries and hugs and kind of moved on to this one.
“We knew what to expect coming in.”
What Evelyn didn’t expect was to have to join an emergency Zoom meeting hours before Friday’s game.
It was with Purdue University Fort Wayne — the school where Evelyn was going to play softball.
“My wife’s like, ‘What could it be?’” Wayne said.
“Me, I’m like, ‘I don’t know, maybe a coaching change?’”
There wasn’t a thought of something negative coming out of this Zoom meeting.
After all, Purdue Fort Wayne was runner-up in the 2025 Horizon League Tournament.
“Maybe they’re getting a new field?” Wayne suggested.
“We were trying to think of a positive thing.”
Wayne was halfway through lunch at work when he got a message from his wife telling him to come home.
The Zoom call wasn’t a positive one.
Purdue Fort Wayne athletic director Kelley Hartley Hutton and every softball commit and current player were summoned, according to Wayne.
“The softball program was done — effective immediately. Baseball as well,” he said.
The thought earlier in the week was: “You graduated.”
The thought changed to: “What are we going to do? She worked really hard to get here.”
The thought hours before Edgewood’s tournament game: “I knew tonight was going to be a struggle for her.”
Wayne felt his daughter’s world crashing around her. But he also felt optimistically that there could be a new world of opportunity for her.
“I wouldn’t say we’re going to have to start over because coaches know who players are,” Wayne noted. “But it’s late in the recruiting game at this point.”
“It’s just kind of devastating because I thought Fort Wayne was really my home,” Evelyn somberly chimed in. “I really didn’t want to play anywhere else.”
Quickly, all of that had to become old news.
“I knew we had a game to play,” said Evelyn, the Cougars’ catcher. “And we did just that.”
“I don’t know if I could catch with tears in my eyes,” her coach-dad said. “That’s kind of tough. But I know she did it for a couple of innings.”
Kings didn’t make things any easier for Evelyn, Wayne and the Cougars.
The Knights put up four runs in the first inning, two in the second, three in the third, two in the fourth and four in the fifth.
Knights pitcher Neely McElhaney took a perfect game into the bottom of the fifth.
“The emotions kind of got to her in the third inning,” Wayne said of his daughter. “She came up to me, and I saw her crying.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, you can’t do this. Knock it off.’
“I’m thinking she’s worried about what happened earlier today. But she was like, ‘This is the last time you will ever coach me.’
Wayne gave her a hug.
“I told her, ‘I’m never not going to coach you,’” he said. “‘You can call me before your college games. You can call me after your college games. I’m going to watch them. I’m still going to be there.’
“‘I will always be your coach.’
“Once I think we got down pretty good, it hit her. This is the last game I was going to coach her. All the emotions from today were just coming out. I would have been like that, too.”
After Edgewood suffered a 15-0 defeat to Kings, Evelyn embraced Wayne.
She embraced Wayne not for being her coach. She embraced him for being her father.
“This was the most amazing experience ever,” Evelyn said. “Anybody that gets to be coached by their dad is a lucky person. I couldn’t imagine anybody else being my coach.
“We’re best friends on and off the softball field,” Evelyn added. “I am the player I am today because of him. Because of him, I know I’m going to play softball somewhere in college.
“I just don’t know where right now,” Evelyn forced out a smile. “But I will.”
About the Author