Student spotlight: Amanda Coffrin
Whitley Bras, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of North Greenville Athletics
Amanda Coffrin is a full-time student, softball player and wife.
She has had to master the art of multitasking along with managing her time skills. Coffrin is a senior early childhood education major from Mauldin, S.C. She transferred from USC Upstate and has found her home among the Crusader family. Coffrin describes herself as being random, kind and hard-working.
After graduating, she plans to live in North Carolina with her husband who is in the military and is currently located in Jacksonville, N.C. Coffrin hopes to get a teaching job there for a year before her husband goes back to school and she has to find a job wherever he is located. Coffrin and her husband got married in July of 2016, so their two-year anniversary is around the corner.
Being a full-time student, athlete and being in a marriage, Coffrin has had to learn how to properly manage her time. When asked how she has been able to juggle all of her commitments she says, “It’s rough. Honestly, the whole being married part is super easy because he’s [Coffrin’s husband] awesome and he’s always supportive and trying to come to games and stuff.”
She went on saying the school part and the athlete part are kind of hard. It’s hard getting the work done early ahead of time because she’s a procrastinator anyway.
Procrastination is a difficult problem for many students but athletes such as Coffrin are held to high expectations about their grades and involvement within classes. Coffrin also discussed how she would have to miss a lot of classes due to her softball schedule requiring her and the team to leave early for away games.
Student-athletes are expected to have high performance within their sport and have their grades managed with high academics. When giving advice about how college students should manage their time, she says, “Always do work ahead of time.”
When talking about the impact attending a Christian University has had on her life, she says, “It’s definitely brought me closer to God. I would have never thought I would be here. I’ve come to know God better than ever.”
As the motto at North Greenville says, “Christ makes the difference.” Coffrin has been able to grow as an individual, student and athlete. She reminisces about the memories that she has had at North Greenville and says that her favorite memory was winning the conference championship. Coffrin also says, “I love my Junior Cohort. I just love my teachers and the people I’m with and the education program. They’re really all awesome.”
Being involved in school and sports as well as having to maintain a marriage has led Coffrin to have to make sacrifices in her life. A sacrifice that she described was to have to be at North Greenville an extra year due to having to deal with transferring and getting a sufficient amount of credits to graduate. She says, “I do have an extra year here, so that’ll be rough because I was planning on living with my husband next year. So that’s a pretty big sacrifice, but being here to play again was all worth it and he [Coffrin’s husband] said the same.”
Softball is a huge part of Coffrin’s life. She has been playing for almost 18 years and has loved getting the opportunity to be involved in the sport at North Greenville. When talking about the impact that softball has had on her life Coffrin says it has played a huge role. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do without it,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m going to like it.”
When thinking about her future in softball after she leaves North Greenville, she discusses how she eventually wants to become a coach, but not immediately. She wants to take a relieved break from the sport but not for too long. She says, “I do want to coach, especially my kids one day. I don’t know if I’ll coach right away. Maybe help out a little bit or even give some lessons.”
Having the ability to come to school and learn as well as play a sport that she is passionate about causes her to be very thankful for her family and the people around her that have impacted her the most.
When talking about the major influences that she has had in her life, she says, “my parents, and my grandparents and my sister. They all work hard and have always wanted the best for me and have always taught me to just give it your all. They’ve been very supportive even when I wanted to transfer… They were just really happy to see me play again.”
When talking about the people that have contributed the most to her softball career, Coffrin says, “My coaches push me to work hard. Coach Hall and Coach Shellie [NGU Softball coaches] have been awesome, and have always supported me and believed in me. That’s all I really needed was someone who believed in me that I could do it”.
Since Coffrin has been surrounded by so much encouragement throughout her life, she loves to relay that encouragement on her teammates and the people around her. She says, “I want everyone to succeed and I want the team to do well. This team is great and we have a lot of potential.”
Coffrin is eager about the spring season, which just began in February. The schedule for the NGU softball team can be found online.
