ROCK HILL, SC--Winthrop softball coach Mark Cooke has been around the sport his entire life and over the past two summers has taken his passion and love for the game to Poland.
 
Cooke learned the game from his parents. Both played fast pitch softball and he picked it up from them at a young age.  "I was always at the field with them practicing and getting better. As I got older I would hit ground balls," said Cooke.
 
Who would have thought that was the beginning of a journey with softball that would eventually take him to Poland.
 
Cooke is a native South Carolinian, and had no previous connections to Poland until his involvement with Little League Softball gave him the opportunity to travel to Eastern Europe where he has taught children of all ages about the sport he has been playing his entire life.
 
The clinics were held in Kutno, Poland, but softball players from all over Europe and Africa came to learn the game from Cooke. During his first trip in 2014, Cooke worked only with players, but this past summer he worked coaches as well.
 
The goal of Little League Softball in offering these clinics is to develop the European nations in the sport of softball. When Cooke first heard about the opportunity he jumped on board right away.
 
"The first year was quite an eye-opening and fulfilling experience," said Cooke. The players in Europe aren't taught the skills of softball. They just play with pure athleticism. "They are tremendous athletes. They just had no background in the sport." But none of that stopped them from giving everything they had to get better, according to Cooke.  "Everything I showed them, they tried with 100 percent of their ability. And it hooked me."
 
Cooke's motto in Poland is, "We out work everybody." This past summer he worked with the Poland 12-and-under team. "They needed a lot of help, but they were like sponges," he said.
 
One of the teams lost their first game of the week 30-0. After Coach Cooke worked with the team, they improved greatly completing its next seven-inning game losing 10-2. Remember, these were 12-year olds improving over the course of only a few days.
 
"We were at the field at 9 a.m. and we got done around dark," said Cooke.  More impressively, the coaches at the clinic would spend even more time with Cooke after the camp was over. "They actually spent more time one on one with me later after clinics and camps trying to develop a coaching style. They had the same drive as the players and the same passion to want to be able to get their players better."
 
Cooke says softball players in the United States have no idea how lucky they are. The softball team Cooke worked with last summer had two softballs for their entire team. His Winthrop team has "too many to count."  Cooke was able to get softballs donated and gave the team two dozen softballs and gave each of the players their own softball to take home. For every player on the team, it was the first softball they had ever owned.
 
Even more incredible was the attendance of the players in the clinic. Cooke worked with them in the morning, after lunch and after supper. According to Cooke, the players in between sessions rode their bikes home and then back to the fields. Some players were riding their bikes as many as four miles each way, something that was unaware to Cooke. "They didn't even tell me they were riding bikes that far. They just wanted to play. Only one kid missed one day out of seven," he said.
 
Cooke has enjoyed his time in Poland over the last two summers.  So much so that he couldn't wait to say he was going back. "The day I got back I called and told them I was coming back next year."
 
The little things are always what make an experience great, but the big things help too. During the final of the Little League Softball World Series in Portland, Oregon there was a feature on the Ugandan National Team. The choice of headgear for Uganda's coach was a Winthrop Eagles visor from the clinic Cooke taught in Poland.
 
Now in his 27th season as Winthrop's head softball coach, Cooke said the atmosphere at Winthrop is what makes it so easy to stay. "We're here with the players all the time. It's like a family here," he said. Seeing results after putting in hours of hard work becomes so much more rewarding for coaches like Cooke, and that's what makes him such a great coach for the players in Poland.
 
Little League Softball is looking to expand the program to Puerto Rico, a more developed region in the softball world, and Cooke is eager to begin helping out those players as well as the players in Poland next summer.
 
Of course, he is most excited about Winthrop's upcoming season as well as the future of the program. Perhaps one year soon, a player from Poland or even Puerto Rico could be wearing the garnet and gold Winthrop uniform.