Morgan Zerkle & Shonda Stanton: from Marshall to Bandits
AUSL Chicago Bandits

Morgan Zerkle & Shonda Stanton: from Marshall to Bandits

Published on July 8, 2026 under Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL)
Chicago Bandits News Release


Morgan Zerkle and Shonda Stanton are back together again with the Chicago Bandits.

Truth be told, the two will never be far apart. There are too many common threads binding them to each other - the past, the present and most likely the future.

The strongest thread is Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

Zerkle, an outfielder and one of Athletes Unlimited's most decorated players, was a four-year letter winner at Marshall from 2014-17. Her coach then? Stanton, who guided the Thundering Herd from 2000-17 before moving on to Indiana.

Stanton is the first-year coach of the Bandits, and she has a second opportunity to coach Zerkle, who just happens to be the present-day head coach at - you guessed it - Marshall.

So when Stanton signed on to be the head coach of the Bandits, Zerkle was fully on board.

"I was excited for her," said Zerkle, who played under Stacey Nuveman Deniz last season. "I wasn't crazy surprised, because I knew she and Jenny (Bandits General Manager Dalton-Hill) knew of each other, and they have similar values.

"I knew we were looking for another head coach, so I was super excited to hear about it. But I wasn't surprised because I knew she fit in the Bandit culture we had established, so it did make a lot of sense to me."

The college and pro environments are two distinct spaces. Zerkle sees just minor differences in playing for Stanton at the two levels.

"I think at her core, she's still the same," Zerkle said. "She's aggressively minded, but she wants us to swing it. I think she lets us have a little more freedom because she knows we're established players, and she talks about, 'Have it your way and let us be able to support you in whatever that way is.'

"She keeps you on your toes. She's aggressive baserunning-wise, so that's something she has really instilled in us, but she just wants to give us all the confidence."

Stanton has been a college coach for three decades and has previous pro experience with the Akron Racers in National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) in 2007 and 2008. So she is well aware of the subtle differences between coaching at the two levels.

"I would say, where the difference is, as a pro, the expectation is you come in, and they (the players) know how to have the routines to get themselves ready for practice," Stanton said. "What do they need within the training? They know what they need pregame; they know how to recover. As a pro, they are personally responsible for that outcome.

"In the collegiate space, where it's different is that shell probably needs to be a little bit more scripted. I don't care if you're a Little Leaguer or a pro, you're still going to provide an environment that is very similar. You're going to coach the same way. I'm the same exact person that you're going to see if I were coaching my daughter, or if I were coaching our college team, or if I'm coaching the pros. But the difference is it's scripted more in college."

Days of Future Past

No one can predict the future, but Stanton knew she had something special in Zerkle at Marshall all those years ago.

"I guess I never thought about the pro player," Stanton said. "You're out recruiting, and you know, she has a legitimate elite tool in her speed. And at that point in time, she was a little lefty, slapper, and scrawny, and a great kid, great family, good student. So she had all the things that you want in the collegiate space.

"And then, as you get into college, she hits almost 500. She's doing all these amazing things, and she's a tremendous athlete. It hit me: She wasn't All-American."

So Stanton did some investigating - and some coaching.

"I called up some people on the committee and wanted to know more: 'Why was she not an All-American?'" she said. "And I thought I'd better get on this committee so I could check it out firsthand. So I got on the committee and realized it was all about OPS, all about power numbers.

"So I said to Zerk, 'If you want to be in All-American, you've got to be swinging away. I think for her, the challenge was, you could drop down a bunt, and nobody's going to throw you out. And so the tendency was not to want to fight for the hit, and then she ended up getting injured and had to hit more. That kind of was a blessing in disguise, because you wouldn't naturally go back to your small game.

"It made her stay with the long game. And boy has that paid off. But I would say the thing that was special about her was the massive action she took to build the engine."

Stanton also saw the leadership skills that would make Zerkle a leader on the field and an eventual coach.

"I would say it was more the way she went about her work," Stanton said. "She invested in the weight room, invested in the off-season. She was willing to be a team player."

Under Stanton's leadership and her own initiative, Zerkle went on to be a four-year letter winner at Marshall and became one of three players in Marshall history to earn All-America honors, receiving second-team recognition in 2017.

She began her pro career in 2017 and joined Athletes Unlimited at the beginning of its inaugural season of 2020, earning a share of fifth place on the individual leaderboard in the points-based system.

While continuing to play for Athletes Unlimited, Zerkle was named head softball coach at her alma mater on June 26, 2023.

The Coaching Tree

There are times when she's speaking to her Marshall players that Zerkle will catch herself sounding a lot like her mentor, Stanton.

"Yeah, actually all the time," she said with a knowing smile. "You say something, or something happens here (with the Bandits), and yeah, I'm like, 'Ooh, I would say that to my team.' Just a couple of games ago, she told me to slide straight in at home plate, and I was like, 'Yep, I would have told my team the exact same thing.'"

Zerkle said she applies those lessons today, both as a player for the Bandits and as a head coach at Marshall.

"Honestly, it's remembering some of the things from 10 years ago that made me the athlete I was," she said. "I love that she still will give me the green light to steal, even though I am getting a little older. She still believes in me. In that aspect, it reminded me of some of the things that made me a really good player that I could take back to my team - a little bit more aggressiveness, a little bit more energy. I'm more of a neutral coach, a little more reserved, so I think sometimes it would be good to get a little more outgoing with my passion."

All good coaches and managers have their favorite sayings they like to impart to their players.

"She's big on what's important now, and that's something I've taken with me as both a coach and a player," Zerkle said of Stanton. "What's important right now is that I win a game for the Bandits. She always says, 'Don't say sorry, change your behavior,' and that one is a little bit of a reality check. A lot of times, we want to make an excuse or just say we're sorry, and we need to show that up with action. So there's a zillion Shonda-isms that her teams know."

The learning goes both ways. As the two women bounce ideas and thoughts off each other, Stanton says she learns new things, too.

"Yeah, you're going to talk to anybody," she said. "As a coach, you're going to talk to players, you're going to talk to your staff, you're going to talk to other coaches. You never stop growing or learning."

As Zerkle dives fully into her coaching career and enjoys success, she'll do so as a charter member of the Shonda Stanton Coaching Tree, a tree that someday could be filled with branches. That seems just fine with the protégé.

"Oh, absolutely," Zerkle said. "I think she's definitely already established that to a lot of degrees. Maybe I just happen to be the first head coach, but she does have a lot of alumni out there coaching, and I think that speaks to just how much she does instill the game into her players and how fun the game is and learning it and continuing to grow it as well."

The idea of having a "coaching tree" also seems to appeal to Stanton.

"I love that because when people are part of your tree, they make you better," she said. "I kind of say that the student becomes the master, right? But like anybody that's in my coaching tree, as I'm teaching them something, they're teaching me something, and if anything, they have an imprint on my heart because I'm in this profession to love others.

"I understand the greater purpose in life. This is a game we get to coach. If we can be good people and serve others and bless others and always be outwardly looking about how we can impact people, that's what I love about this Bandit environment. You look into the stands and see all these young girls dreaming to be these players. To see the time they (Bandits players) take, the accessibility is unbelievable. I hope that as we continue to grow, we never lose sight of that accessibility in terms of what that means to this next generation."

Bruce Miles has covered sports in the Chicago area for 47 years, including baseball, hockey, football and Athletes Unlimited Softball League. He covered the Chicago Cubs in their historic run to the World Series title in 2016. He has written stories for Athletes Unlimited since 2020.

Follow Bruce on Bluesky @brucemiles2112.bsky.social and on X @brucemiles2112

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Athletes Unlimited Softball League Stories from July 8, 2026


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