A longtime baseball coach who has guided softball teams in West Texas for the past five years will lead Pine Tree's softball program in 2011.

Scott Lewis, a native of Alpine, brings 25 years of baseball experience and five years of softball experience to the Lady Pirates in District 14-4A. Lewis was a college baseball player at Arizona and Baylor. He has also served as a head baseball coach at Tahoma, Marfa, Alpine, Midland and Odessa Permian.

After coaching baseball for 2½ decades, Lewis moved home to Alpine, where the softball job was available. Once his son graduated high school, Lewis jumped at the opportunity to coach softball when Pine Tree athletic director Huey Chancellor contacted him.

"He said, 'You want to come out here and coach softball,' and I said, 'Why not?," Lewis said. "So I came to East Texas and here's where I am now."

Longview is more than 600 miles east-northeast of Alpine, which is north of Big Bend National Park and about 2½ hours southwest of Odessa.

Lewis said his coaching strengths are hitting and defense, but pitching is a bit more complicated, especially in softball.

"Pitchers, that's a whole different kettle of fish. I'm still learning that," Lewis said. "All my pitchers that have gone on to college, I've picked their brains during the Christmas holidays or I'll go to clinics, so I know the basics. But a lot of these girls do their own lessons. They know as much as I do already, so I just try to emphasize what they already know and work them."

Lewis made a point to emphasize his belief in volume and repetition.

"I'm huge on more is better. Some people get something perfect in just a little bit, (but) I want 300 cuts, 400 ground balls," Lewis said. "We don't have that many practices and we've got very few coaches, so I can't go sit down with one person constantly. Even in hitting if I'm not coaching them they may perfect their own imperfections if they swing 500 times a day."

Lewis said the time he has spent with the Lady Pirates so far has been enjoyable. Pine Tree graduated several of its key players in the offseason, including Carmen Gadt, Rachel McJimsey and Rachel Bartlett, so 2011 will feature a young Lady Pirate team.

"They're real young. We've only got four seniors," Lewis said. "We'll probably go out there starting two freshmen, two sophomores and one junior. We're going to be very young and pretty inexperienced, so we'll just try to work and get them to where they think they can play."