Dryden’s Marisa Runyon joins Cornell softball coaching staff

The word ‘homecoming’ is often associated with high school and colleges where former students return to their alma maters to celebrate, usually centered around a football game.

For Marisa Runyon, her homecoming is of a different kind, one that brings her back to a place she grew up just one town over from.

Runyon has joined the Cornell softball team as its assistant coach. The Dryden native will team up with first-year head coach Tara Tembey to establish a new chapter for the program. 

Runyon compared the feeling of getting to coach on East Hill to a kid on Christmas morning. That is to say, she is clearly ecstatic about the opportunity.

“Thank you [to] Tara for taking a chance on me,” Runyon said. “She has been incredible since day one. We have a very, very strong relationship already. I wholeheartedly believe in the vision that she has for the program. I am just absolutely ecstatic to be here and ready to get started.”

Runyon lived in Dryden until she was 13 years old when her family moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One of the youth teams she was a part of was the Ithaca Diamonds, an under-14 travel team. Fast forward to this year when she had her interview at Cornell, and those early memories of her softball career came flooding into her mind.

“We walked into our indoor facility, and it just brought back a memory,” Runyon said. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I practiced here.’ I didn’t remember it until I actually walked in. There were some nights that we had come up here and we had practiced. It’s just a great feeling being back at a place that I really do call home.”

Since leaving Tompkins County, Runyon’s softball journey took her around the South, where the sport has long flourished. She played college ball at a softball powerhouse—the University of Alabama—from 2014 to 2017, helping the Crimson Tide appear in three Women’s College World Series.

After graduating, Runyon returned to Myrtle Beach to coach at her alma mater Carolina Forest High school for two years. She then got her first collegiate coaching job as an assistant at Lynn University, a Division II school in Florida. After one COVID-shortened 2020 season, she moved up to the Division I level to be an assistant coach at Tennessee Tech for the 2021 campaign.

Runyon moved back to the area last year in Richford. As she gets back on the coaching saddle, she hopes to bring that strong softball culture she experienced during her time in the South back home and take the local softball scene to the next level.

“I want to do everything that I can to help grow the game in this area, as well,” Runyon said. “I understand that it’s grown significantly since I grew up, but it’s a special area here. I just can’t reiterate enough how excited I am to just get going and get to know the girls and see what we can offer this year.”

Runyon and Tembey take over a program that is looking to turn things around. The Big Red have not had a winning record since 2012 and have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2010. While the overarching aim will be to make it back to the big stage, Runyon knows it’s going to take incremental improvement each and every day in order to do so.

“The ultimate long-term goal is to win the Ivy League championship,” Runyon said. “But if we can sit there and every single day our energy is consistent, our effort’s consistent and we buy into each other as teammates and as a coaching staff, then I really think the best is yet to come for this program. But again, that one percent better every single day is going to be our daily goal.”

Alongside a winning mentality, another thing that Runyon hopes to instill in the Big Red is preparing for life after softball.

“Obviously, I want to be competitive on the field and we’re going to win games. I’m very, very confident about that,” Runyon said. “But softball isn’t forever. It’s not who you are. It’s what you do. With Cornell specifically, having a degree from here speaks for itself, but it’s the life lessons that are fulfilling, and I really hope I can have that impact on the girls.”

While the regular season doesn’t get underway until February, the level of excitement to begin a new era of Cornell softball is already at towering heights.

“On day one when I was introduced in our group message, every single one of the girls reached out to me individually and said ‘hello,’ introduced themselves, said how excited they were, some little blurb,” Runyon said. “I’m going to tell them how much that meant to me because not everyone does that, so I think that itself speaks volumes.”