Founding of a Family

As Maryland’s new softball head coach Lauren Karn stepped to the podium for her introductory press conference, the culture she seeks to build within the Terps’ softball program was evident in the front row of the press box at Tyser Tower. With her husband, Justin, and their two children, Mickey and Sophie, seated just off to her left, she wanted to create a familial culture in Maryland softball for years to come.

“It's a great time to be joining the program with the momentum that we have, along with some really exciting things to look forward to,” Karn said. “We're going to work hard to stay focused. Our processes that we're going to put in place will allow us to compete for a Big Ten Championship.”

Karn has a distinct emphasis on her family by blood and her family on the softball diamond. The job at Maryland brings her close to her family, who primarily lives on the East Coast, after spending six seasons as the head coach at Oakland University in Auburn Hill, Michigan. Some of her family members live in Annapolis, and several of Karn’s relatives are UMD graduates.

With all of the support from Philadelphia to New York City to just down Highway 50, Karn’s connections to the East Coast run so deep that she said, “we’re home.”

While she was far away at Oakland, she developed a new family on the softball field with the players and the coaching staff for the Golden Grizzlies. In Karn’s six years as a head coach, she became close with the people that she saw every day, and is hoping to develop yet another family on the field at the Maryland Softball Stadium.

“As everybody knows, the people that you work with end up becoming your family because you spend so much time with them,” Karn said. “They became my family very quickly. And they were an extremely supportive group for me as my husband and I were navigating college athletics with two young ones without any family nearby.”

Family and the diamond is a uniting force for Karn, and her husband, Justin, who also reports to work on the diamond, was the head coach for the Madonna University baseball team for four seasons in Michigan. The level of understanding that the two of them have developed for the ups and downs of college athletics has become an integral part of their family life.

“We talked about it all the time; if we didn't marry each other, we don't know what our careers would look like today,” Karn said. “The amount of support and understanding that he has for what this job takes and the way that he is just such a teammate of mine prepares me for maybe moments that I've not fully prepared for myself and just wants the best for me has been an unbelievable experience in our relationship.”

With all of that emphasis that Karn puts on family, she now gets to apply her care for family to Maryland softball, which is coming off a 38-19 for one of its strongest seasons since the turn of the century. Her priorities are to continue the program’s upward trajectory while not sacrificing the college education that is essential for her players beyond their four years.

“You think of all the promising opportunities ahead, and here in Maryland, those await,” Karn said. “To compete at such a high level with athletes who are like minded and have goals that align with yours, you're gonna find yourself able to fulfill all of the potential that you have and without having to sacrifice a degree or a career that you so choose.”

To go along with her head coach experience, which featured back-to-back Horizon League Coach of the Year accolades at Oakland in 2022 and 2023, Karn has walked the walk of the student-athlete experience. In the mid-2000s, she starred for Saint Joseph’s, as she finished her pitching career with 534 strikeouts, a school record at the time, and she additionally tossed a perfect game in her freshman campaign.

In understanding the life of a student-athlete at both the player and coach level, she now begins the quest of building on Maryland’s stellar 2023, which resulted in an appearance in the NISC postseason tournament. And while Maryland hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament, she has built one program into a consistent competitor and believes she can do the same in College Park.

“If you want a genuine, really good experience where you can be a well-rounded person and win championships, this is going to be the place for you,” Karn said. "We're going to strive to win a Big Ten Championship. We're going to talk about it and we're going to work toward it. We're going to have processes in place to get there. But at the end of the day, your well-being overall, your mental health, your physical well-being, your academic standing, all of that is going to be really important, and I'm going to make sure that you can be successful in all of those areas while competing for a championship.”