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Softball coach Sue Enquist retires after being on the coaching staff since 1980. Enquist began as

It’d be easy for me to write about what a great coach Sue Enquist was. It’d be easy for me to write about the 11 national championships or all the Olympians and All-Americans she coached or all the great games I saw that she was a part of.

Most softball fans will remember Enquist, who announced her retirement on Tuesday, for all of the success, her fiery attitude in the dugout, and her ability to wave in a runner rounding third faster than anyone.

But Enquist was so much more than that. I learned this by being around the team for four years. She was also a great mentor and an ambassador for the sport.

Whenever you talk to former players about her, they always rave about the lessons she taught them off the field first.

“Sue was about life as much as she was about softball. What she taught superseded any fielding, hitting or softball lessons. She made sure every player walked away with a degree and life lessons,” said Stacey Nuveman, who set the NCAA career record for home runs while at UCLA from 1997 to 2002.

“She was one of the biggest influences in my life,” said Claire Sua, who played at UCLA from 2001 to 2004 and is now an assistant coach at Cal Poly. “She was always more focused on what kind of person you were going to be in corporate America. She always focused on our careers outside of softball.”

I haven’t found a single exception to that rule – former and current players alike always go on at length about how they became better people and learned life lessons before they say anything about winning national championships.

As good of a coach as Enquist was on the field, it’s better that she cared about her athletes’ well-being more than she cared about winning. In today’s era of college athletics, winning is often considered to be everything, but college athletes are all young and just learning about the real world. Enquist kept that in perspective.

“She’s a great motivator. She wants to always help you grow on and off the softball field, as an athlete and a person,” said Andrea Duran, who just finished her playing career at UCLA and will serve as an undergraduate assistant this year.

“She’s helped me grow as a person and feel more confident in myself, and that helps in all aspects of life. The way she ran her team was a way to run your life. She would always reference ‘when you’re out in the real world,’” Duran said.

“She was great at managing the girls,” said Stephanie Swenson, who played at UCLA from 1998 to 2001 and is an assistant coach at Long Beach State. “When we got too up or too down, she’d put us back in our place. I couldn’t speak more highly of her.”

Aside from being a great coach and mentor, Enquist also helped the sport grow.

While the tendency for most coaches is to be very secretive with information and do everything they can not to help people in other programs, Enquist and another softball coaching icon, Arizona coach Mike Candrea, have hosted clinics for players and coaches and have helped develop equipment and software for softball instruction.

“I was shocked when I got into softball. People were very scared to share information,” said Candrea, who is also the coach of the U.S. national team. “Sue and I tried to be in the forefront to share information with coaches. The game changed because of her efforts. I hope people remember that about me when I retire.”

Also rare is the fact that the coaches of the two biggest rivals in the sport got along so well. Enquist and Candrea competed against each other often, not only during the Pac-10 season but also in the World Series and in recruiting battles. Yet Enquist went out of her way to call Candrea about her retirement on Tuesday night, not long after telling her team.

“Obviously, the first thing I did when I heard from her was dig myself up from the floor,” Candrea said. “We’re very good friends and we leave the game on the field. She was with me when I lost my wife two years ago. The game wasn’t bigger than life.”

It wasn’t as big as the lives she touched, but Enquist was very good at the game itself.

Just as she taught her players to do, Enquist also had to adapt.

In recent years, the sport has changed. All of a sudden, years of Title IX being enforced and money finally being pumped into programs around the country made for a higher quality of play nationally and more competitive teams.

Also, the NCAA Tournament field expanded from 48 to 64 teams, making it harder for teams to win it all.

UCLA teams started experiencing losing streaks and slumps. And that’s where Enquist was at her best.

I’ve covered many different sports and teams at UCLA, but the season that will always stick out for me was in 2005, when the Bruins lost the second-highest number of games in the program’s history but still made it to the championship game.

Enquist had no senior starters on that team and a freshman pitcher – normally a sign of doom for a team hoping to contend.

That team would go for weeks unable to score many runs and weeks seemingly unable to get anyone out.

Enquist never gave up on her team and got the Bruins back on track for a great finish to the season. She had them ready for an epic postseason, in which they won five do-or-die games and were only a couple of innings away from winning a national title.

That was Enquist at her best – making a title run with a team that had no business being there. And the lessons she taught on that title run, as well as many others, are why she’s not only a great coach, but a great person as well.

Life is more important than winning, but when you can excel at both, it’s truly special.

E-mail Quiñonez at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.