Bandits Q&A: Jenny Dalton-Hill and Stacey Nuveman-Deniz
Ahead of the inaugural season of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), league reporter Savanna Collins sat down with each of the four general manager and head coach pairs. This edition features Bandits GM Jenny Dalton-Hill and Head Coach Stacey Nuveman-Deniz.
Jenny Dalton-Hill and Stacey Nuveman-Deniz have admired one another from afar. They say their paths have crossed but they’ve never got to be on the same team – playing or coaching – until now. The pair will lead the AUSL’s Bandits together, choosing players in an allocation draft in early 2025, selecting athletes from the college draft later in the spring, and ultimately chasing the inaugural championship.
Dalton-Hill is a three-time WCWS champion with the Arizona Wildcats (1993, ’94 & ’96). She was the first college softball player to hit .400 with 50 home runs, 200 RBIs, and a .800 slugging percentage in a career. Dalton-Hill played for Team USA during college and then for the USA Baseball women’s national team; now she works as a softball analyst for ESPN. Nuveman-Deniz is a three-time Olympic medalist (2000, ’04, & ’08). She became the head softball coach at San Diego State University in 2021 after 13 years as an assistant coach for the team. She joins the AUSL with pro coaching experience, leading the Chicago Bandits to the 2018 NPF Championship.
The following interview has been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.
Collins: You all are the one franchise that’s coming in with a logo and a name that people not only know but love. What do you hope Bandits fans and alumni feel when they see this team take the field again and what do you want to uphold for them?
Nuveman-Deniz: When the teams were announced and we found out that we were attached to the Bandits, I actually got a little emotional because my experience with the previous iteration was incredible. I really feel like it changed the trajectory of my coaching career. It reignited a fire that I needed. It showed me what professional softball can actually look like because, in my opinion, the Bandits did it right. They treated the players right. They had a fan base. They had alumni who cared and came back with support and were passionate about it.
I get the chills even saying it now because I feel like that’s a secret weapon that we have. It’s AUSL now but the feelings and pride are still there. We’re the only team that has that and I think that’s something that I’d like to use to our advantage as well. I feel fortunate to be able to be in this gear again and hopefully have another amazing experience.
Collins: Jenny, the title of general manager is different than any you’ve ever had. What comes to mind with that?
Dalton-Hill: You’ve got to have the people at the top that are running the ship. For us, I love the ability to have a partner in crime. I’ve coached at D1, I’ve coached in high school, and I’ve coached with Team USA. Sometimes when you are in a GM or head coach role, you wear so many hats and it can get overwhelmed with all the things you have to do. My goal is to take things off of Stacey’s plate to allow her to be able to fly. It may be some of the difficult conversations, it may be sitting at a desk doing the boardroom kind of thing. I know how good she is on the field and I don’t want her to have to worry about any of that. I want her to be able to deal with the players, deal with the coaching, and let me deal with all the behind-the-scenes so that she can be the amazing coach that I know she is.
Collins: Stacey, you came in with the pro coaching resume. You led the 2018 Bandits to the NPF Championship. What does it take to win a title?
Nuveman-Deniz: The dynamics are unique in that you don’t have a long runway to build a team or a family unit. My aspiration is to create something where the players feel like they’re playing for more than just a paycheck. I feel like, at the professional level, the teams that do that in any sport [go] a long way in the competitive environment and win championships.
I really do believe that translates on the field that we’re going to work hard and we’re going to compete our butts off. But we’re also going to have fun and enjoy each other’s company. It’s not just hard-nosed. They know that I have a personality and I’m a competitor, but I also want to be fun to be around. I want you to feel like you can trust me, that we can laugh, and then we can flip the switch and go for blood. It’s not going to be easy, but I think that environment can be created and that will pay dividends on the field on game day.
Collins: What type of team do you want to build in year one?
Dalton-Hill: I want our group to be hungry to be together. They don’t have to be best friends, but when we take the field and we’re in between the white lines, I want them to know that every single one of them has each other’s back. I think that’s what made our culture at Arizona very successful. I think that’s probably exactly what happened at UCLA, but I think more than anything, if you know you’ve got somebody behind you to back you up, even when you fail, you’re not afraid to go hard. So that to me is super important.
Nuveman-Deniz: A diverse roster so we’re difficult to beat because we’ve got a lot of different looks. That’s for the pitching staff and types of players: speed players, power players. We talk about building culture and that starts with the people in the room. It’s hard to build a culture if you’ve got a bunch of “me” people. I want this to mean more. I hope that when these players leave this six-week time together, they will look back and say, “You know what? That was really fun. We won a lot of games, we won a championship, and we really felt like we did something special together.”
Maybe I’ll find out that that’s harder to do than I think but why can’t that work in a special way in this environment? So it’s not about us really teaching them anything, it’s about molding the group and making it a family atmosphere. I think if we can do that we’re going to be really successful.
Collins: You two have played in and seen many different phases of professional softball and baseball for women. How do you feel empowered to be in this position to continue that work and leave the game better than you found it?
Nuveman-Deniz: When I got the first call asking if I would be interested, it was a no-brainer. The foundation is finally solid and it feels like the infrastructure is just on another level. [AU] players are treated as professionals and that’s what we yearned for. We did a lot of things for very little money or no money because we wanted to build the game. I have no regrets about those things but ultimately for this to be sustainable, it has to be something that players can do on a full-time basis. That’s not going to be immediate, it’s going to take some time to build that. But with the foundation that Athletes Unlimited provides, we can create something that’s sustainable and is an opportunity for women to continue to play the game past college and do it for a living. If we can get to that point, I think we have hit the grand slam that we’ve always hoped that we would.
Collins: We’re in a hitters count.
Nuveman-Deniz: Yes, we are. We are in a hitters count. 3-0.
Dalton-Hill: Well and 2-0 was my favorite [laughs]. 2-0 they’re going to give me something pretty much on the white.
When I was interviewing with the athlete advisors and with Kim Ng, she asked, “Why do you want to do this?” And I told her how we’ve had softball in a lot of different ways and a lot of different structures. This is the first time where I feel like everyone’s unified pulling the same way. I thrive in a team environment. And this finally feels like we’ve got a team because we can sit in a boardroom and the four GMs and the four coaches can have conversations about how to push this forward, not how can you make me better or her worse. By having a team approach off the field, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to be cutthroat on the field. I want to win and I hate to lose. But I love the fact that everybody’s picked up an oar and is rowing in the same direction.
Launching in June 2025, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) is a professional women’s softball league featuring four teams playing a 30-game season in a traditional format.
Savanna Collins is the Senior Reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Twitter @savannaecollins.
