We sat down with Coach Taryne Mowatt-McKinney to talk about some of the biggest lessons she’s learned throughout her coaching career. One of the most important: getting to know your players. For Mowatt-McKinney, those relationships do more than strengthen the connection between a coach and athlete. They help coaches make better decisions and, over time, build the trust needed when those decisions aren’t easy. A player may not always agree in the moment, but when that relationship has been built, Mowatt-McKinney says there’s an understanding that the decision is being made in the player’s best interest or the best interest of the team. It’s a perspective shaped by a career spent at the highest levels of the sport. Mowatt-McKinney helped Arizona win back-to-back national championships as a pitcher in 2006 and 2007, earning Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player honors in 2007. Now a coach at Mississippi State, she helped lead the Bulldogs to the program’s first Women’s...