NATCHITOCHES -- Northwestern State senior Brittney Jones launched a solo home run Wednesday against No. 15 Baylor over the fence in left center field, the ball bouncing in the grass and stretching toward Prather Coliseum.
 
Baylor coach Glenn Moore, an NSU alum, knows that feeling all too well.
 
Moore, an NSU softball student assistant and eventually full-time assistant from 1990-93, worked with the Lady Demons in the spring when he wasn't practicing as a tight end for the Demon football team.
 
Wednesday's visit was Baylor's fourth to Natchitoches under Moore, who said he takes his Bears on a tour of his alma mater and of Natchitoches, which still is a special place for the wildly successful coach who has built Baylor into a perennial Top 25 program.
 
"We want to come home," said Moore, who married NSU track standout and Campti native Janice Miller. "We are proud of NSU, and our athletes know this, and they also love coming here.
 
"We take them to places where they filmed Steel Magnolias or show them where the best Division I-AA football team in the Southland Conference played. I tell them how many softballs I hit on top of Prather Coliseum."
 
The burly Moore played football and baseball at Southwest Mississippi Community College, but he said fast pitch softball was his favorite sport growing up in Liberty, Mississippi.
 
"My dad started my brothers and I in the sport when I was 12, and it was always my favorite," said Moore who played in the Mississippi Men's Fast Pitch League and McComb Men's Fall Fast Pitch League for 12 years. "Upon coming to NSU with my best friend and catcher Steve Pezant (current Louisiana State Trooper), coach Rickey McCalister allowed me to work with his pitchers.
 
"I loved it and knew I wanted to do it full time."
 
Under McCalister, NSU's winningest softball coach with 245 victories in eight seasons, Moore helped the Lady Demons to their first Southland Conference regular season title in 1991 with All-American Rhonda Rube leading the way.
 
McCalister said Moore always had the knowledge to become a top-flight head coach, and he's developed a presence throughout his coaching career that's included three WCWS trips, 13 NCAA Regional appearances in his 19 Division I seasons (16 at Baylor) and more than 800 career wins (20 seasons overall).
 
"He was a loyal assistant even as a student, very respectful," said McCalister, who threw out the first pitch Wednesday as Baylor won in extra innings 3-1 and added four seventh-inning runs in a 5-0 victory to cap the doubleheader. "He related well with the kids, which would have been his peers at the time, but they respected him back then even as a student coach.
 
"In college, Glenn was always mild-mannered and I didn't get to see a person who had to assert himself yet because he wasn't in charge of a program. But once he took over his own program (at William Carey), that competitive fire he's always had took over, and he has really done a great job. I'm still connected to him and his family. I taught his wife Janice in high school. Glenn is like a son to me."
 
Moore said he still employs what he learned from McCalister nearly 30 years ago.
 
"I loved working with and learning from someone who had a brilliant strategic mind for the sport," Moore said. "I could play the game, but Coach McCalister taught me the nuances and how to run a program.
 
"Much of what I still do today came from what I learned from not only one of the best softball minds but a great man. I still call on him for advice each season, and I'm very blessed to have a resource like him. I love him like a brother."
 
Moore came to NSU to play football for coach Sam Goodwin after nearly going to Delta State before a coaching change.
 
Moore's mother wanted he and Pezant to find a Natchitoches church to attend, where Moore met his future wife Janice Miller, a Campti native.
 
"We attended a Westside youth meeting (our first night), and these twin girls walked in late," Moore said about Janice, who set NSU's career mark in the high jump and won a conference championship. "After meeting them, I told Steve I was going to marry her.

"Nine years later I finally convinced her I was the one."
 
Moore added that although he may not have bloodlines that run in Natchitoches Parish, his affinity for the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi River is just as strong.
 
"We love this place. We love the people," Moore said. "I fell in love with Natchitoches before I learned to spell it -- a long time before that."
 
His family ties aren't the only thing bringing Baylor softball back to Natchitoches. NSU's softball success, which includes two NCAA Tournament appearances and a Southland Conference regular season title since 2013, means a test on the road.
 
"I do want to come back to the place that gave us our start, but I also respect the NSU program that is a very competitive program," Moore said. (NSU coach Donald Pickett) has been good to play on our campus in the fall and give us high quality competition, so if us coming to Natchitoches in the regular season helps his program, then I want to do that.
 
"And the food that (NSU softball supporter) Layne Miller and Steve Pezant cook isn't available in Texas."
 
Miller invited Moore to play fast pitch softball in a game against the famous traveling softball team "The King and His Court," and Moore played so well he spent three years touring the country as part of the group.
 
Pickett and the Lady Demons (9-13-1) will start their 2017 Southland Conference tour with a trip to Lamar for a three-game series beginning Friday.
 
The Lady Demons will play a Friday doubleheader at 5 p.m. with the finale Saturday at 2 p.m. in Beaumont, Texas.
 
NSU is coming off a 10-17 conference record in which the Lady Demons missed the league tournament for the first time since 2012.