Blaze Q&A: GM Dana Sorensen & Head Coach Alisa Goler
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 Blaze GM Dana Sorensen and Head Coach Alisa Goler. The following interview has been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.
Dana Sorensen and Alisa Goler’s paths may not have crossed before the AUSL launch, but they’ve gotten to know one another well and quickly. The pair will lead the AUSL’s Blaze together, choosing players in the Allocation Draft in early 2025, selecting athletes during the College Draft later in the spring, and ultimately chasing the inaugural championship together.
Sorensen is a former Stanford pitching standout who played in the National Pro Fastpitch League (NPF). She owns a pitching instruction and sports performance training business. She also works alongside Nate Walker and Diamond Solutions to provide pitching data and analytics strategies for collegiate softball programs. Goler is in her fifth season as the head softball coach at Western Illinois University. She had a seven-year career in the NPF where she was named Rookie of the Year in 2011 and earned two All-NPF Team commendations. She worked with the USA Elite team and the USA 18U Junior National team this summer. Goler was a three-time All-American at the University of Georgia.
Savanna Collins: In your own words, how excited are you?
Alisa Goler: I just think it’s unbelievable. I keep joking that I feel like I wandered into the room and no one’s kicked me out yet, but it’s amazing. I loved my time playing despite the ups and downs, and I just am so lucky to be surrounded by people who all believe in the product right now.
Dana Sorensen: Over the moon. For me, to be with the other GMs, who I played with growing up, through pro ball, the national team, and now we’re this many years later in our professional careers. I’ve been out of the team coaching for a while, but I’ve owned my own business and run my own business. Being able to take softball, professional coaching, and the business element and put ’em together and get to hang out with some friends and talk the game… I mean, does it get any better than that? I don’t think it really does.
Collins: Dana you work a ton in softball analytics, statistics, and data. How do you think equipping pro players with that kind of information can push the game forward?
Sorensen: I think it brings sophistication to the game. It brings a plan. Everybody is talented in this league so you cannot just show up, have your best A-game, and assume that’s going to work. You have to have a plan. And that’s where data and analytics come in – putting our players in a position to maximize their success because we have looked at their strengths and weaknesses.
Sometimes in this sport, it’s a one-on-one game disguised as a team game. Everybody needs an edge so I’m excited to bring that to the table. [It’s] something that we’ve been bringing to the colleges for the last few years, and a lot of these players may not have had access to it if they’re a few years out from college. It’s going to be fun to kind of teach them and introduce some new concepts.
Collins: Alisa, you have an established program at Western Illinois University. You’ve coached within a national team program. How would you describe yourself as a coach? What’s your philosophy?
Goler: Gosh, I think if you ask my Western players, they probably answer differently [laughs]. I think at the end of the day, I’m adaptable. Every team’s DNA is going to require something different from you. What I would say would ring true is the ability to have honest conversations with people. You have to have that. That could be tough conversations and I can’t back away from that. I would hope that when my players talk about me, they say that I care about them as people. I’m always checking in on how they’re doing. I’m a big mental health advocate and I am a servant leader. That’s my job as a coach.
Collins: As a pair, you get to create the Blaze, especially through the Allocation Draft. What is a franchise player to you?
Sorensen: You want the top talent, no doubt. That’d be silly to say we didn’t want the top talent, but you need those players that are glue pieces that maybe statistically speaking aren’t in the top third, but they’re the players that keep the team together. They’re the voice in the clubhouse. They’re the energy in the dugout. A lot of times on a team, it’s not the best player that everybody looks to – it’s the voice that carries the most weight, the player that shows up every day and puts their work in is a team player.
Goler: They need to be the best teammate first and foremost. Especially having a small roster like this; it’s a grind. The person-first mentality is important. The talent’s going to be there, we know that, and we could all sit and rattle off names that we know are talented. But it has to be the right fit for your coaching style and your management style as well. I think most of us would say that the best players were people who we knew had our back.
Collins: You’ve both played at a high level. What do you want to give these pros that maybe you didn’t have?
Sorensen: Giving them access to more information. We did not have access to information. We were lucky enough to have statistics. That was it. We have all this technology, but can we give you access to information that matters? That’s usable, that’s digestible. How do I grow my game from the information? That’s how we progress the game forward. Looking back, we were flying blind. So I want to give sight to our athletes.
Goler: That was a Stanford degree [laughs]. My answer would be just a little different because when I think about my time in the pro league, I played for four different franchises and lots of different coaches. Mine would be the areas that I felt maybe were lacking throughout my experience: the consistency of having coaches that were all in and believed in the product. And that’s our job. I feel very passionately about that. I don’t believe that we should be having people involved in this that aren’t all in. We talked about it last night too. You heard everybody say that.
Launching in June 2025, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) is a professional women’s softball league featuring four teams playing a 24-game season in a traditional format.
Savanna Collins is the Senior Reporter for Athletes Unlimited and the AUSL. You can follow her on Twitter @savannaecollins.
