Balancing graduate-level coursework, mentoring younger players and maintaining your own softball training seems like a difficult set of tasks. 

To former Shockers CC Wong and Sydney McKinney, they are. But the joy they get from the sport they know so well helps ease the balance. 

“I’m trying to find time to be a human in it all,” Wong said. “But I love what I do, so it’s not hard to find the time to be human. It’s not like I hate what I’m doing, so it’s an easy thing to juggle. There’s worse things to juggle than what we’re doing. It’s just time consuming. But, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now.” 

Wong and McKinney both transferred in and played at Wichita State within the last six years. Wong, as a senior in 2024, and McKinney, from 2019-23. 

“My year here was one of the best and most positive environments that I’ve been in,” Wong said. “I wanted to stay in that, and I want to be a coach. … I want to learn from them and continue to grow.” 

McKinney explored options post-graduation and picked up a job at Marshall as an assistant coach. After spending a year away from the place she rewrote records at, she missed her people. 

“One day, I was at Coach B’s eating with Coach E, Coach B and their families, and they wanted me to come back. I wanted to come back, so it was just kind of a perfect fit,” she said. “They feel like they’re my other moms, so I think it’s just cool to be able to work with them now and still be mentored by them every day.” 

Both McKinney and Wong work as defensive coordinators while playing for professional teams. Wong plays for Team Canada, and McKinney plays in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), a top-tier professional circuit that recently partnered with the MLB. 

McKinney and Wong work with Lauren Lucas, another former Wichita State softball player.

Lucas, a 2025 alum, currently plays in a professional league in Mexico and isn’t with the team, however.

Economon, affectionately known as Coach E, said that seeing Wong and McKinney grow both as players and coworkers is “really cool.” 

“They were such gifted athletes, and I remind them a lot that as gifted as you are physically, your maturity takes time … the ‘aha moment’ is different for everybody,” Economon said. “I got to watch Syd much longer than I got to watch CC, but there was some of the same stuff that happened for CC in one year that I watched Syd do over five years, and that was really cool.

“I can see them understanding the game at a higher level, because they’re so much more mature than they were when they got here. They take what’s useful to them as players, and then they try to translate it to our kids in maybe a different way than I do it.” 

Economon also said that she’s been able to let Wong and McKinney in on more of the behind-the-scenes work coaches are tasked with, but overall, much of her coaching style translates into how she interacts with coworkers. 

“What you see is what you get,” Economon said. “I don’t want to paralyze the players … so (Wong and McKinney) get the full explanation.” 

Both Wong and McKinney said that the Wichita State softball program, and the people within it, are large reasons why they came back to work post-graduation. 

“They are basically my second chance, because when I transferred from my other school, I was very not in a great place mentally. I wasn’t happy. I wanted to quit softball,” Wong said. “I will forever be indebted to that for giving me that second chance and being able to love what I want to do again. 

“I don’t think I would have (made Team Canada) anywhere else, I think this was the staff that made me make Team Canada … I will love this place until I die.” 

McKinney also said that Wichita State is a great second-chance school for players. She said that a lot of other programs try to reinvent players into play styles that fit the program, but the Shockers work to uplift them where they are already at. 

“We really embrace the weird and bring out the best (in) individual players and their personalities,” McKinney said. “That’s what drew me here. That’s why I love it here.” 

When mentoring the younger players, both women take lessons they received from time spent in the program, and the negative emotions they don’t want the younger players to feel, and work around those. 

“How I felt at my old school, I don’t want people to feel like that,” Wong said. “So I think that’s what is rooted in how I want to treat the kids.” 

Wichita State will spend its first month this season on the road before its home opener against Kansas on March 4.