March 8, 2025, may not be the most important date of Megan Bartlett’s life, but she probably added it to her list of favorites.
If you didn’t know, Megan Bartlett is the married name of the former Megan Ciolli, a three-sport athlete and 2001 Indiana Miss Softball Award winner at Terre Haute North High School a couple decades ago.
After North, she played four seasons (2002-05) as a center fielder on Notre Dame’s softball team, winning the Big East Player of the Year Award in 2004 and helping the Fighting Irish reach the NCAA tournament all four times.
After graduating with a bachelor’s in business administration (the first of three degrees for her) in 2005, she became an assistant coach at Loyola, Northern Illinois, DePaul and Purdue.
Then Bartlett snagged her first head-coaching job at Ball State in July 2015, where she racked up a record of 141-108 over five seasons (2016-20).
An offer Bartlett couldn’t refuse arose following the 2020 pandemic-ruined season and Bartlett moved her family — husband Mike (a former pro hockey player) and future superstar daughters Vivian and Maren — south so she could serve as an assistant for University of Texas softball coach Mike White.
By the end of the grueling 2022 campaign, Bartlett, White and the Longhorns had worked their way to the Women’s College World Series best-of-three championship series against Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. They lost both games to the favored Sooners, but just getting there — especially after finishing third in the Big 12 Conference regular season — was an incredible journey.
In June 2022 came the big break Bartlett had been waiting for — an opportunity to coach one of the most highly respected NCAA Division I softball conferences in the country — the Big 12.
Arizona State, which had captured the Women’s College World Series title twice in the past (2008 and 2011 under Clint Myers), hoped to find a new program leader and its administrators apparently noticed how confidently Bartlett carried herself for Texas’ staff under the national spotlight. From Bartlett’s perspective, there was a longstanding softball tradition in Tempe, Ariz., to use as a recruiting tool.
Win/win.
Now we’re not going to lie to you. Bartlett’s first two seasons with the Sun Devils turned into learning experiences. They finished 22-26 in 2023 and 20-31 at the end of an injury-plagued 2024.
But 2025 marked her third season there, her veteran players had matured and an influx of young, hungry athletes isn’t hurting at all. Arizona State took records of 24-12 overall and 6-6 in the Big 12 heading into Wednesday night’s home clash with No. 18-ranked Oklahoma State.
The Sun Devils recently beat rival Arizona, ranked 12th in the most recent ESPN.com/USA Softball Collegiate Top 25 Poll, to keep the Wildcats from sitting atop the Big 12. No. 14 Texas Tech leads at 8-1, followed by Arizona at 8-4. Meanwhile, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Brigham Young and ASU make the top half of the conference cluttered with talented teams.
In fact, Arizona State appeared in the “also receiving votes” category of the ESPN.com poll last week, despite dropping two of three games to Arizona two weekend ago. Graduate student/outfielder Kelsey Hall of Sacramento, Calif., is one of Bartlett’s top offensive performers, sporting a .372 batting average with eight home runs, a team-high 38 runs batted in, six doubles and 12 walks through the Longhorns’ first 36 games.
Hold on a second. I almost forgot to describe what happened to Bartlett on March 8, didn’t I?
On that day, the Sun Devils broke a 4-4 tie against BYU with a run in the bottom of the eighth/final inning to provide Bartlett with her 200th career victory as a Division I head coach. Afterward, ASU players dumped ...
