Michele O’Toole enters her second season as the Monmouth University pitching coach after a stellar first year tutoring the Hawks pitching staff. Under the tutelage of O’Toole, the same four pitchers from the ’06 season improved their ’07 staff earned run average by over half a run per game and lowered opponents' batting average against by more than twenty points. O’Toole helped Kristine Sawlsville set a new Monmouth single season strikeout mark of 167 punchouts as a sophomore. O’Toole’s instruction also helped lower the All-Northeast Conference First Team hurler’s earned run average to 1.59, good for a top-50 mark among all Division-I pitchers. Sawlsville was the first Monmouth pitcher to be named to the All-Northeast Region team, posting a 17-7 record.
This year, O’Toole will have three newcomers to work with in the circle. If all stay healthy, this should be the most complete and effective pitching staff the Hawks have fielded in the current decade. Overseeing every aspect of pitcher training, from live coaching to workout construction to video and scouting analysis, O’Toole will aim to have the 2008 staff post the best numbers and results in recent history.
Monmouth marks the second collegiate coaching job for O’Toole, who served full time as the first assistant coach for the softball program at Providence College in Providence, RI from 2002- 2004. In those two years at the Big East program, O’Toole led Providence to a dramatically improved win-loss record. She helped the Friars surprise all in the conference and the northeast region with a fifth place finish in the Big East after the squad was predicted to round out the field in eleventh place.
O’Toole joined the Hawks' coaching ranks in fall 2006 after a great record of success at the Division I level as a player and coach. A former Hawk from the University of Hartford, O’Toole was a three-time America East all-conference honoree. Inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame in 2003, the 2-year captain appears in Hartford’s record book as a pitcher, fielder and hitter. O’Toole ranks in their all time top five in seven different pitching categories, including the current mark of third on the all time win list and in career earned run average.
During the summers of her college years, O’Toole posted impressive numbers with the Blue Jays Class A women’s ASA softball team. As a pitcher for the Blue Jays, she helped them finish 7th in the nation for Class A in 1993. With a personal win-loss record of 23-1, she earned Second Team ASA All American honors in 1995. Before the Blue Jays, O’Toole pitched four summers with the North Jersey Shilohs, including one when MU Softball Head Coach Carol Sullivan was one of her catchers.
O’Toole, a native of Livingston, NJ, received her Bachelor and Master Degrees in Education at the University of Hartford. She is a full time elementary education teacher in South Plainfield, NJ.
