Courtesy of Brian Beard

Jen Burton, the assistant and pitching coach of the softball team, grew up playing softball in Maine. Although she joined her first formal team in elementary school, playing softball with her dad in the backyard is a tradition as old as memory.

Burton dreamed of leaving the state for college, a hope built on her love of travel. Ultimately, she attended the University of Maine (UMaine) but still got the chance to travel with the softball team, pitching in fields across the country. Over her four collegiate years, she was named an Academic All-American pitcher, and her love for softball solidified into a deeper commitment.

“I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about the sport in general,” Burton said. “I wasn’t ready to give [softball] up when my four years were up.”

Burton’s former UMaine strength and conditioning coach had joined the Polar Bear softball coaching team and invited Burton to work with the pitchers in 2000. Twenty-five years later, minus a brief stint coaching at her alma mater, Burton has stuck with the Polar Bears. Her coaching philosophy, however, has evolved with time.

“When I first started [coaching], I was right out of college, and everything was [about] winning,” Burton said. “I was a little bit more tough in the beginning. It’s not that I don’t have high expectations now. It’s just they’re tempered a bit more as I’ve grown, hopefully, wiser.”

Now, Burton emphasizes the importance of individual and group growth, believing that dynamic goal setting will lead the team to success on the field. She hopes to instill in her players a commitment to hard work, compassion and heedfulness to others.

As an elementary education major at UMaine, Burton spent time as a student teacher in a first grade classroom. She explains that first grade is a critical period for academic growth, with students beginning the year largely illiterate and innumerate and leaving with those fundamental skills developed. Like the first grade, she describes college as a transformative time for interpersonal growth and loves watching her players mature.

“You come in as kids and leave as adults, and the things you’re thinking about are totally different. You’re trying to get actual real world jobs, [and] your maturity grows over the four years. You really learn how to be your own person,” Burton said. “You’re not just living under your parents’ roof, you’re learning how to be yourself by yourself for the first time for most people. That’s what I really love to see, is growth in people.”

As her players grow over the course of their college experience, Burton is tasked with adapting her coaching style each year. Each new group of players offers Burton a sense of novelty that she says motivates her to come to work each morning.

“Even when you think you have something figured out, it’s a new group of people, and it’s a new challenge,” Burton said. “[The players are] going to be motivated differently, and they’re going to need different things from me. If it were the same [every year], I would be bored, and I wouldn’t have stuck with it, but that thing that’s always changing is what makes it really fun to stay.”

In 2014, Burton returned to school to study art and photography at the University of Maine at Augusta. Burton continues to ground herself in her love for photography, incorporating her spirit of creativity into the task of enlivening workouts and practices.

“It wakes up the creative part of my brain. There’s so much analytical stuff that’s softball based, and it’s stats and all of these other things,” Burton said. “But I try to be as creative as I can when creating workouts. [The coaches] really don’t like to do the same thing over and over again, we don’t love standing around, so how do we be creative?”

A lot has changed since Burton came to Brunswick, from the softball field’s renovations to the players themselves. However, in every shift, she has found a constant in the type of person who chooses to join the Polar Bear community: helpful, kindhearted and challenge-seeking.

“It’s always people who are willing to help people and who care about the people around them,” Burton said. “I think that’s really what drives people to come here, and I think that’s always been true.”