June 30, 2015
Josie Earnest just wrapped up her fifth season as an assistant coach with the Commodores. The two-time NCAA Player of the Year and four-time All-American led Vanderbilt to its first national championship in any sport in 2007 as a freshman. In 2013, she was inducted into Vanderbilt’s Athletic Hall of Fame. The Vandalia, Ill., native continues to bowl as she has been a member of Team USA for the last eight years and plans to join a women’s professional tour this summer. She is currently working on her master’s in accounting.
Commodore Nation: How special is it for you to be coaching at your alma mater?
Josie Earnest: I think it is unique. Going through school, I had no intentions of coaching. Once senior year rolled around, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do and the position came open. I didn’t feel like my time here was done. Obviously, I couldn’t compete anymore. But I felt like I had a lot more still to give to Vanderbilt. I felt like I owed them something, because all of the great things I experienced here. And I love Nashville. Everything came together at once, and I was able to hang around.
CN: You’re still competing, too. On your third year with the adult squad for Team USA, and you’re joining a professional tour this summer.
Earnest: I think it has been super helpful to my bowling career to coach. I was able to watch and observe more than just practicing. I learned things from our players that helped me down the line. Honestly, I think probably the best year of my career was at least, up until this point, my first and second year out of school. I was practicing next to none, but I was able to watch and pick up on some things that I didn’t necessarily pay attention to when I was just solely throwing the ball. I think a lot of that is owed in the bowling center watching the girls.
CN: So besides coaching bowling and bowling professionally, and currently taking classes online as a distant student through Auburn for your master’s degree, do you have much free time?
Earnest: Not totally. No, I bowl a couple weeks. And actually more and more of our bowling alumni network are coming back and living in Nashville. So we try to get together once a month. I’m really into the group painting outings. So we do that once a month. I’m not that artistic. We actually got the whole team to do it over spring break. That was fun. That is probably the only real hobby that I have, and I’m not very good at it. But we have a good time with it.
CN: You won your first tournament when you were 4 years old, so bowling has always been a part of your life?
Earnest: Well, my parents bought a center in 1991. So I was 3 years old. It was all I grew up knowing. I played other sports in high school. I played tennis all four years. I was OK. I went to state. Nothing to write home about necessarily. I was always competitive. I always wanted to play sports. Ended up bowling was my avenue to college. That is what my parents told me. They sat me down when I was 13 years old, and I started really tasting what it was like to win. I didn’t really like bowling at that point, because I was around it so much. But they said, ‘You have two options—you can either practice, work your butt off and get your college paid for. Or you can get a job, and pay for your own college. We’ve given you this opportunity and it is up to you whether or not you want to take it.’ I said that’s a hard choice. I think I’ll bowl (laughs). Then I started to like it. You start winning things and you’re like, ‘Yeah, this is more fun than I thought it was.’
CN: Winning a national championship your first year here, what was that like?
Earnest: It is still emotional for me. I’m not a hugely emotional person, but we did a video for the girls and it had infusions of what they’ve done in the past. You get teary eyed just thinking about it. You obviously can’t bottle up what you were feeling in that moment. Everything is going so quickly. But you still have emotion attached to it. One of the things I always tell my parents is that, unless they get rid of me, I don’t think I can leave here until I have another one. That might take forever. I don’t know. And they might get rid of me before then. But I want to relive it, and I want to relive it in a different way. Obviously I can’t throw the ball. But I want to have the ability to help those girls have the feeling that I had in that moment. Not many people get to have it and it is one you’ll tell people about for the rest of your life.
