Shaunte’ Fremin will serve as the new head coach of the year-old GW softball team this year after the University hired her last month. She will replace Leslie Moore, who left for the University of Pennsylvania in June.

After spending the past two seasons as head recruiter and hitting coach at the University of Georgia, Fremin will begin her first stint as a head coach trying to improve on the Colonials’ 3-36 inaugural campaign.

“The job presents many exciting challenges,” Fremin said. “It’s not

every day as a coach that you have the opportunity to build a second-year program into a dominating force in the (Atlantic 10) and work for an outstanding athletic administration.”

While at Georgia, Fremin helped the Bulldogs get to the Southeastern Conference Championship in 2003. The team had a .311 batting average under her tutelage, the eighth best in Division I softball.

A 2000 graduate of Louisiana State University, Fremin was a four-year starter and team captain for the Tigers. She now spends her off-seasons teaching softball to children ages eight through 18 at the Shaunte’ Fremin Power Softball Fastpitch camp.

All of this experience will be needed as Fremin tries to mold the Colonials into a competitive A-10 team.

“Having been with elite programs I feel I can bring a championship mindset through a blue-collar approach to training and winning,” Fremin said. “You either have to do things better or different to separate yourself from the pack. My hope is through overall improvement we can draw in fans from this community to follow this exciting, fast-paced game.”

Fremin comes into a GW program that could have experienced a significant setback when Moore left to fill the head coaching position at Penn. Instead, Fremin’s positive attitude is already being imprinted on the program.

“I’m excited,” freshman Gabby Culp said. “She comes from two good programs, so I think she’ll be a great addition here. It’s also a big relief that I’m not coming in wondering who this person is.”

Despite the team’s abysmal record in 2003, Fremin said she will use freshmen like Culp, one of 12 incoming recruits, to put the Colonials on the conference softball map. In the meantime, the team will look to take advantage of unsuspecting opponents, she said.

“Our softball program is in an exciting place right now,” she said. “We are definitely the underdog in the conference and that’s a great place to be. I feel that many opponents will underestimate us.”

Because of her experience at LSU, Fremin said she knows what it is like to participate in an up and coming program and hopes to have GW follow a similar blueprint.

“It will be to my advantage that I was a freshman on the first LSU team in 1997 and had the opportunity to see it grow from nothing to a World Series contender in a five-year span.”

Fremin also said education will have the same priority level as winning in her program.

“It’s my job to mold them into champions on and off the softball field,” she said. “Just like I tell my players, ‘I know that I have done my job if you get the opportunity to wear the greatest uniform that you will ever wear as an athlete: a graduation gown and an A-10 championship ring.'”