Alexis DeBoer carves her own path with the Huskies

Published 10:24 am Thursday, April 9, 2026

CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. — On the third Friday in February, Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer began his day the way most in his profession do — early-morning workouts, followed by a team meeting, then calls and texts with recruits and candidates for a couple of staff openings.

Come midday, though, he sent his staff home for the weekend (this being a dead period for recruiting visits), got in his car and headed to the Birmingham airport. He hopped on a commercial flight to Dallas, where he connected to Palm Springs, Calif. Come nighttime, he was sitting behind home plate at college softball’s Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic for the first pitch of Washington’s game against Saint Mary’s.

Despite having coached at that school, and with millions watching him roam SEC sidelines in the fall, DeBoer, 51, went largely unnoticed, wearing a baseball cap and a winter jacket with no college insignias of any kind.

Earlier that day, hundreds of young fans had lined up against a roped-off area behind one of the fields in hopes of getting Oklahoma softball players’ autographs. Over a two-hour span, not a single person sought out DeBoer’s signature.

Here, in this environment, he is not Alabama’s football coach. He is a softball dad.

“You’ll do anything for your kids,” said DeBoer, who made three trips west for softball in February before his team opened spring practice and another during Alabama’s spring break in mid-March. “When I get a chance, when I can make it work, I’m going to sacrifice as much as I can to be there.”

His daughter is Huskies first baseman Alexis DeBoer, the reigning Big Ten Freshman of the Year, who led her team in batting average (.358), home runs (21) and RBIs (55) in 2025. In an amusing coincidence, her first collegiate game, at an event in Tucson, Ariz., came against … Alabama. She got her first hit in that game. The Huskies played the Tide again in Alexis’ third game, and she hit her first home run.

As a sophomore, Alexis is currently hitting .376 with 13 home runs and 35 RBIs for 22nd-ranked Washington.

One of her 13 homers came in the second inning of that Saint Mary’s game her dad attended. He would see two more over three games before returning to Tuscaloosa that Sunday. And back home, he’s always watching Washington softball, often late at night, either on the Big Ten Network or on a streaming service.

“I always get texts from him before and after the game,” Alexis said. “It’s nice having support coming from a bigger name in college football, knowing that he cares so much about college softball.”

While waiting for Alexis’ games to start, Kalen walked between three connected fields pointing out players he recognized on UCLA, Duke and Texas A&M. Alexis either played with or against them in high school or in travel ball during one of the family’s many stops along his coaching journey — Sioux Falls, Eastern Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State, Indiana and, eventually, Washington.

Alexis first got on Washington’s radar as a seventh grader in Fresno, when her dad was the offensive coordinator at Fresno State. By the time she attended a camp at UW as a high school sophomore, Kalen had returned to Fresno to become the Bulldogs’ head coach after a one-season stint at Indiana. Ironically, Alexis and her mom, Nicole, first met Washington softball coach Heather Tarr in the concourse of Husky Stadium while attending a football game the night before the camp.

Tarr, herself a former Washington softball player and the program’s head coach since 2005, already had an in with the DeBoers. Her college teammate, Sara Pickering, was an assistant coach at Alexis’ Fresno high school, Clovis North.

And then, just a few months later, Alexis’ dad suddenly became the head coach at Washington.

“We went through a normal recruiting process with (Alexis),” Tarr said. “But when her dad was named the head coach at Washington, we were like, ‘Oh, well, this could work out good.’”

It wasn’t a given Alexis, who by then played at nearby Bellevue High, would join her dad on Montlake. She took other visits and seriously considered Arkansas. But after committing to Washington as a junior in fall 2022, she quickly became a regular around the softball program. As did her dad, himself a former college baseball standout at Sioux Falls.

“He would hit with her in our cages,” Tarr said. “We would never see him, but we knew they were always in there.”

Alexis’ senior year at Bellevue coincided with Washington football’s surprise run to the national championship game. Kalen became the toast of college football.

The Huskies’ loss to Michigan was on a Monday. Two days later, Alabama legend Nick Saban abruptly retired. Two days after that, Alabama hired Kalen DeBoer to replace him. Overnight, Alexis’ dad became a villain in the city where she lived and at the university where she planned to enroll. Alexis and her younger sister, Avery, now an eighth-grade volleyball player, got caught in the crossfire.

“Anything you can imagine, we probably got it (on social media),” said Alexis, who completed her senior year online while still playing for Bellevue.

Despite the awkwardness and her family’s move 2,500 miles east, Alexis insists she never considered leaving Washington. She’d become too attached to Tarr and her staff and saw an opportunity to contribute immediately after an exodus of transfers.

Two years later, she’s the star hitter for a Women’s College World Series contender that went undefeated in March. Kalen and Nicole saw three of those wins in person during a weekend series against Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Yes, Michigan, the school that beat Washington in the 2023 national title game.

He was also at Iowa for the tail end of a series the following weekend.

“I usually try to give the (football) coaches at the other schools a heads up when I come,” he said with a chuckle. “And they understand. Most of them are parents, too.”

Despite his many years coaching elite college athletes, Kalen insists he stays in his football lane, as much as he may be tempted to give Alexis tips on her swing.

“I fully turn her over to her coaches — they’re the experts,” he said. “Just like I would want someone else’s parent to turn their kid over to me and trust in what we’re going to do.”

What they do talk about, however, is the mental side of both their sports. Kalen stresses the importance of immediately flushing a strikeout or an error from Alexis’ mind, like a quarterback who just threw an interception or a safety who blew an assignment. And they talk more about her off-field routine than what she does on the field.

“To hear her talk about her schedule and to listen to how disciplined she is, it’s really cool,” he said. “It’s the same things I’m preaching to my players.”

Just as Kalen watches his daughter’s games from afar, Alexis dutifully tunes into Alabama football games all fall. She’s turned her roommates — second baseman Jade Bubke, centerfielder Sophi Mazzola and right fielder Gabi Toney — into Crimson Tide fans as well.

While her dad took Alabama to the College Football Playoff in his second season, the faithful weren’t thrilled with him after blowout losses to Georgia in the SEC Championship Game and Indiana in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl. Games like those remind Alexis why it’s not the worst thing to be 2,500 miles away.

“I feel bad for my family at home, because I just know what they’re going through. Especially my sister, I feel for her,” Alexis said. “We definitely dreaded going back to school (after those losses).”

Kalen is currently knee-deep in spring football, trying to build the Tide back into national championship contenders. His team’s spring game takes place Saturday, and recruits will begin taking official visits soon after that. But he will find a few more opportunities to take in some games, especially if Washington goes on a postseason run. It helps that he has more flexibility than he did as an assistant.

“I feel like I missed out on quite a bit (when Alexis was growing up),” he said. “There were some springs where I was at a new job, and (my family) stayed back and didn’t move till the summertime. That’s five months where you feel like you missed out as a parent for some of the big moments. So when I do get a chance and when I can make it work, I’m going to try to be there and make up for those times I have missed.

“It’s fun seeing your kids grow up.”