Help wanted: college softball pitching coach.

Bachelor’s and master’s degrees from an Ivy League institution required. Ph.D. from Harvard preferred.

Wait, what?

That’s not exactly the job description new Idaho State softball coach Harold Simmons wrote for his first pitching coach, but it’s what he got.

Katie Camacho Orona, who also happened to be a pretty good pitcher herself, as well as having college coaching experience, has one of the more unique résumés of any college softball pitching coach you’re likely to see.

She graduated from Brown with honors with a bachelor’s degree in public health, then earned a master’s degree in public health from the same school. She’s currently working on a Ph.D. from Harvard in health policy.

On the softball field, meanwhile, Orona pitched four seasons for the Bears, then took a job as an assistant on the Brown coaching staff for a couple of seasons, before stepping away from the sport to work on her Ph.D.

“It’s a little bit different story,” acknowledged Orona, 30, in a recent interview. “It’s a little murky, but that’s the story.”

And just to make the story a bit more “murky,” Simmons called and offered Orona the coaching position without ever having met her formally — although they both traveled in similar softball circles since she was a high school pitcher and Simmons was coaching a rival high school in Colorado in the 2013-2015 timeframe.

“I technically probably met him without knowing it in 2013 at the Colorado state softball tournament,” said Orona. “When we played Erie, where Harold was coaching. We played each other in the state tournament that year — my team won, I’d like to say that. We beat them in the quarterfinals and won state that year.”

Simmons continued to follow her pitching career, which included earning honorable mention All-Ivy League as a freshman, ranking second in the league in complete games and third in strikeouts as a sophomore, then recording a solid 3.46 earned run average as a junior. Her senior year, she encountered a new pitching coach who was determined to tear down her delivery and rebuild her from the bottom up. It did not go well.

That experience has informed Orona’s coaching philosophy since.

“My philosophy is that everyone is different,” she said. “What I’ve seen through experience is that typically pitching coaches say, ‘This is how I do it, this is the program you’re going to follow.’ Everyone is different, everyone throws a different way, thinks a different way, has different cues. It’s important to know the players.”

While Simmons and Orona never formally met before he offered her the ISU job, they had a meeting of the minds, if you will, through a number of phone conversations over the years. Orona was coaching Team Mexico in the Triple Crown International Challenge, a youth fastpitch softball event in Westminster, Colorado. Simmons spoke with her occasionally while recruiting some of her players.

“You’re chatting with her in the recruiting world and all those things,” Simmons said. “When you’re doing that, you’re always chatting with people about their philosophies and their thought processes — obviously for her, on the pitching side of things.”

At one point during those conversations, Simmons asked Orona what her “real job” was. She told him she was finishing her Ph.D., and he raised the prospect of her returning to the coaching world while finishing her dissertation.

“She thought it through, looked at it and thought it really could be an option,” said Simmons. “So, then we really dove in and started chatting about pitching, and being a part of the staff and recruiting — all the things I already knew she was good at... So, I really wanted to find out what she was about on the pitching side of things.”

Simmons and Orona violently agreed on the concept that each individual athlete is unique and you have to adjust your coaching style to the needs of the athlete.

“There’s reasons why we recruited you,” Simmons said of his coaching philosophy with all his players, not just pitchers. “Why did we recruit you? If you get here and we find out there’s some aspect of your game that’s kind of failing you and really does need to be changed, then we’ll help you change that. But we’ve gotta have buy-in from the coach and the athlete. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work.”

Simmons was also attracted to Orona’s academic background, especially in these days when data mining and research are becoming so much more a part of the coaching profession.

“Obviously, her IQ is super high,” Simmons said. “...So, what I love about her is she essentially does research for Harvard. That is diving into pitching data, that is diving into all the things that we want, all the things that we think research says, ‘This will help pitchers be better.’ She is on board for diving in, researching and learning all those best practices.”

Hoping to complete her Ph.D. work next spring, Orona says she’s still committed to the coaching profession, at least for the foreseeable future. She noted, however, that ISU also offers a health program that might offer her a teaching opportunity, or she could consult in the health field while continuing to coach.

Orona has her work cut out for her in her first season with the Bengal pitching staff. ISU, which won both the Big Sky Conference regular-season and postseason tournament titles last spring, lost four of its top five pitchers to graduation or the transfer portal. Megan Meracle, who had a 9.00 earned run average in just eight appearances, is the only returner to the staff who appeared last season. ISU has two junior college pitchers coming in — Aubrey Hansen from Salt Lake Community College, and Paige Warren, from McCook Junior College in Nebraska. Kaliann Scoresby, from Idaho Falls Thunder Ridge High School, has battled a series of injuries since starting her ISU career in 2025, and has appeared in only five games over two seasons.

“Right now, the pitching staff looks small, there’s no way around that,” said Orona. “You can’t put a good spin on that.”

ISU is hopeful that some new graduate transfers will become available mid-year, and they have been engaging with some transfer portal pitchers already this summer.

Simmons said the days of a softball team identifying one stud pitcher and counting on them every outing are over.

“The offensive side of the game has grown exponentially,” he said. “The bats are hot. The hitters have revamped the way they’re approaching training and everything that goes into that. Video and data, all those things, now you can’t just keep running out that same pitcher because hitters are making that adjustment. Staffs are getting bigger. Most people are using five pitchers during the course of the year. Heck, the big schools right now, I don’t know that they’re using them, but they’re holding eight or nine pitchers to keep them from the rest of us.”

Three’s CompanyOne interesting aspect to building an entirely new coaching staff is finding housing for all your new staff. Simmons, Orona and Garrett Fisher have taken a unique approach to the problem — all three are sharing an apartment.

“We’ve been forced to get to know each other,” said Orona with a laugh. “It’s been fantastic.”

Orona has found her own place that she will move into Aug. 24, and Fisher is looking for his own apartment in the meantime as well.

“You just gotta get here anyway you can,” said Simmons, whose wife and children are still living in their home in Colorado. “None of our families are with us, and so we had a place we could have for the month of August.”

Simmons is looking for a home to buy in Pocatello, but in the meantime, he’ll probably bounce back and forth between his assistants’ apartments. Both Orona and Fisher come from softball families, and both will probably get two-bedroom apartments so their families can come and spend time here during the fall season.

Simmons said he has lined up five exhibition games so far for the fall — Salt Lake Community College, the College of Southern Idaho, Snow College and Utah Valley, all of whom will come to Pocatello, and a road trip to BYU. He’s also waiting for the new coaching staff at Utah State to get settled and perhaps they’ll play a home-and-home this fall.

The ring ceremony to honor last season’s Big Sky champions will be held Oct. 10 during homecoming weekend.

Another Addition to the Coaching StaffOne coach who isn’t looking for a place to stay is new offensive coach Billy Butler, a former major league All-Star designated hitter with the Oakland Athletics, Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees. Butler, 40, was signing his personnel papers on Monday, on his way to becoming an official member of the staff.

Butler, who served as a hitting coach for the Idaho Falls Chukars, has been living in eastern Idaho for a while. “He’s going to be an offense guy,” said Simmons. “Obviously he’s a big name, and just a really good person that’s done a lot of great things for Idaho softball in general.”

Rounding out Simmons’ staff will be Kennedy Dudley, who completed her Bengal playing career as ISU’s starting third baseman last season. She’ll be a graduate assistant on the staff — unless the recent change in eligibility rules opens up the opportunity for another season of competition for her.