LAKE WALES — Lake Wales has had just three softball coaches — one coached for just a year — in 40 years of softball but will be looking for its fourth head coach following the 2026 season.
Mike Settle, 56, in his 11th year as head coach, announced he is stepping down following the season as he was named the first softball coach at Florida Polytechnic University. He started work there on Monday but will finish out the high school season.
“Just the chance to build a program from scratch is what really excited me the most,” Settle said. “I’ve been saying this for years. If you can recruit this area well, you can be successful.”
Settle has hit the ground running.
“I’ve been recruiting already and got stuff lined up for the next couple weeks just about every day to get recruits to come and so far, so good,” he said.
Florida Poly, which announced earlier this month that it will be starting an athletic program with eight sports, specializes in STEM education.
“They are limited compared to some of the other schools, but the analytic business degree is something that I think can be really helpful in recruiting these young ladies to come there,” he said. “There’s been a few that told me they wanna be engineers. Some of them even said they’ve looked at applying to Polytech and just basically thought their softball careers were over,” Settle said. “You’re going to get a heck of a degree from Florida Polytech.”
Settle has been at Lake Wales for 20 years and has been part of the softball program for 17 years, six as an assistant under Nancy Denton then took over the program when Denton retired after 28 seasons as head coach. She returned when Settle asked her to work with the pitchers.
In his 11 years as head coach, Settle has compiled a record of 148-82. He was an assistant on Denton’s 2013 state championship team and led Lake Wales to the state tournament three times in 2018, 2022 and 2023, winning the school’s third state title in softball in ’23.
Settle said leaving the players was the toughest part of his decision.
“I’ve been at Lake Wales High School for 20 years and for the first time in 20 years I drove by the school today and didn’t make that right hand turn in there,” he said. “It was a little tough. I sat down and talked with my family about it, my wife and my two kids, and we just thought this was a great opportunity for me. I think it’s going to be a great thing. I really do.”
Before leaving, Settle is excited about the rest of the current high school season. The Highlanders won their first nine games of the season before dropping two in a row just prior to spring break. They are a strong contender to return to the state tournament for the third time in five years.
Settle said Lake Wales will post the head coaching position at Lake Wales once the season is over.
“I’d be willing to help them,” he said. “I think me, Josh (Havens, athletic director), and Nancy are going to kind of get our heads together and try to figure out of the people who applied who we feel would be best to keep the thing going that Nancy started and that I’ve been trying to keep going since, uh, since she left. It’ll be a job that I would feel is people would want because we’re young.”
Lake Wales has been one of the premier softball programs in not just the county but in the state since Denton started the program. Lake Wales’ three softball state titles are tied with Lake Region for second in the county behind Bartow’s nine, and the Highlanders have been to the state tournament nine times.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lake Wales’ Settle leaving at season’s end to start softball at Florida Poly
Reporting by Roy Fuoco, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
