Growing up in Franklin, Craig Snider was surrounded by friends and family who rooted for the University of Kentucky.

Snider, however, was a Florida State fan.

“I had Florida State gear growing up,” Snider said. “I loved Florida State in the ’90s. That was Bobby Bowden and Peter Warrick and Warrick Dunn and Sebastian Janikowski. I grew up loving Florida State.”

That childhood love has grown to something even more for Snider, who has been the hitting coach for the Florida State softball team for seven seasons. Snider is part of a staff that has turned FSU into a national powerhouse – culminating with the program’s first national championship earlier this month.

Snider’s path to Tallahassee, Fla., began at Lindsey Wilson College as an 18-year-old freshman – he had hopes of walking on to play baseball despite a shoulder injury that occurred in football his senior year at Franklin-Simpson.

Snider said truthfully he wasn’t good enough, so he turned his attention to something else – the chance to serve on the coaching staff for either women’s basketball or softball as part of a Lindsey Wilson study program through the sports department.

He choose softball and was thrust into an assistant coaching role under Tom Opdenbrouw when his assistant left in the fall.

Snider spent two years at Lindsey Wilson, serving primarily as the hitting coach, and said he quickly fell in love with the sport.

“What a great experience for me,” Snider said. “The first year doing it I was like, ‘This is fun.’ I remember the coach telling me, ‘You are really good at what you do, you should go to some camps.’ I did it the next year, started to go to camps and meet people and figured out this is a pretty good path for me.”

Snider’s coaching career moved from Centenary to Oklahoma to Stephen F. Austin – where he would travel down to Florida State 15 hours in the winter to go to their camp and learn from their coaching staff.

In 2011, he became part of the staff – jumping at the chance to join Florida State when he was offered a position as the team’s hitting coach.

Since joining the staff, Florida State has won six regular season Atlantic Coast Conference championships, five ACC tourney titles and has advanced to six NCAA super regionals and three College World Series.

Snider said he has been fortunate to be part of a coaching staff – which also includes head coach Lonni Alameda and assistant coach Travis Wilson – that has developed a nice rapport since he arrived seven years ago.

“The culture we have created is so special – the culture that we are going to develop people first before athletes,” Snider said. “If you can develop people first the winning will sustain itself, but sometimes – when you chase the wins – you will have some good years, but you will have some bad years with adversity. If we develop people first, we will have young women that the winning is sustained.”

The third trip to the College World Series proved to be the charm for the Seminoles.

Florida State won the championship after losing its first game to UCLA 7-4 – a game where FSU had a 4-0 lead. Following that loss, the Seminoles needed to win four elimination games, including beating UCLA twice, before beating Washington 2-0 in the best-of-three championship series.

“After that loss to UCLA with our backs against the wall, we were like, ‘Let’s go play softball,’ ” Snider said. “There really wasn’t much time to think about winning a national championship as much as it was to let’s go play the next team. I think it finally became a realization in that last game.”

Snider said after the game he had 450 texts waiting for him – including family and friends and Franklin connections like former classmate and now WKU assistant softball coach Matt Wilhite and Franklin-Simpson principal Tim Schlosser.

“I answered every one of them,” Snider said. “I told myself if people want to reach out and congratulate me then I will return the favor and say thank you. I started with text messages and then it went to Facebook messages, went to Twitter – all the social medias and emails. It took me a couple of days, but we got there.”

Snider said the question he got a lot was when did he realize this might be the year.

“Everybody is always looking for that moment when it all came together,” Snider said. “I am not so sure it did until the end. We really didn’t put too many complete games together until the World Series. As a coach, it taught me that, no matter what happens in the regular season, if you have a bunch of kids that battle and fight then you always have a shot. I think I learned that more than anything this year.”

Another person who congratulated the team after winning the national championship was recently hired football coach Willie Taggart – a tie to his Kentucky roots that Snider said he plans to take advantage of sometime this summer.

“I grew up watching him play at Western,” Snider said. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to him (yet) because he is a busy man and we’ve been busy but now that it is the offseason I plan on going down there, stopping by and seeing him. I’m excited to share the story with him – of being a local boy that watched him play at WKU.”

While Snider and his family are firmly rooted in Tallahassee, he said he still keeps up with Franklin softball – which was just beginning when he was in high school.

“There is always still a big part of my heart that is rooting for the Wildcats and Franklin-Simpson,” Snider said. “I want to see them do well. One day when I can get back and be a part of it, I will definitely do that in a heartbeat. Franklin-Simpson is pretty special to my heart.”{&end}