As the Cardinal Huskies’ softball team enters a pivotal season brimming with young talent and starting anew in the Northeastern Athletic Conference, they will do so with a new leader. Former Berkshire bowling and junior varsity softball Coach Kevin Johnson has been selected as the program’s newest softball coach after being formally approved by the Cardinal Board of Education on Jan. 28.
“There is a lot of young talent so that is why I really wanted to do it and develop the young girls and turn the program into something that was going to be very competitive for years down the road,” the first-year coach told The Weekly Villager on Feb. 10. “Even this year we will be very competitive. It just felt right, and it felt like something I needed to do and wanted do.”
Johnson arrives in Middlefield having served as the Berkshire varsity bowling coach and junior varsity softball coach for the past four years. He stepped down as the bowling coach before the 2025-26 winter season because of the demands of his full-time job but still planned on coaching junior varsity softball and also assisting the Badgers’ varsity softball program.
According to the 1993 Berkshire graduate, current Badgers varsity Coach Joe Medlen, Sr. encouraged him to apply for the Cardinal varsity coaching opening.
“He helped me make that decision,” Johnson noted. “He approached me and said ‘Hey Cardinal is looking for a head coach.’ He said, ‘I think that you would be a great fit’, and I talked to Athletic Director Jimmy Soltis, and it just worked out. I really wasn’t actively looking, it just popped up that they were looking, and I just felt like it was something that I wanted to do.”
Johnson takes over for Haley Adams, a 2016 Cardinal graduate, who served as the varsity coach for five seasons prior to Johnson taking the helm. Johnson said that he is arriving at a point where the Huskies are in a prime position to make a statement in their first season in the Northeastern Athletic Conference, and credited the job his predecessor did to help Cardinal get to this point.
“I kept what the girls are familiar with,” he added. “It is going to take them a little while to get used to my coaching and I am going to have to get used to them. There is going to be that little getting used to each other factor but Cardinal was left in a pretty good place, they have a lot of great talent.”
Johnson’s coaching career started immediately after he graduated from Berkshire, returning to the varsity baseball program where he spent three years as a varsity starter, as the junior varsity head coach in 1995. He spent one season as the junior varsity head coach and then coached another season as a junior varsity assistant before stepping down.
He said that he always felt drawn to coaching, wanting to teach sports the same way he learned them when he was a student-athlete.
Johnson returned to his alma matter in the winter season of the 2021-22 campaign to take over as the bowling coach and was selected to become the junior varsity softball coach, under longtime coach Dave List.
After List retired after the 2024 season, Johnson stayed on as the junior varsity coach under Medlen.
Johnson expressed his gratitude for being afford coaching opportunities at the same school he attended.
“I enjoyed it and I feel that I did a good job when I was there coaching and I am going to miss coaching the girls but by the same token, I am excited because I get a new opportunity and I can really start my own legacy and program,” he said.
Although Johnson is a newcomer to the Huskies’ softball program, he is not an unfamiliar face as several of the players already know him from his work with the Berkshire varsity softball team, especially during the 2025 season.
He acknowledged that there will be some growing pains as he and his new team get accustomed to each other but will relish the new opportunity that the Huskies will have in the NAC and is looking forward to the Battle of Kinsman Road duel against Berkshire this season.
“Berkshire and Cardinal have always been a rivalry and this year we are playing Berkshire under the lights,” he said. “We are going to have a game under the lights, so we are excited about that when we get to coach against each other and have been teasing each other about that one.”
