How former Butler volleyball star Stephanie Mock Grubbs is breaking new ground as Astros’ strength coach
“Fire” seems to be thrown around a lot when describing Stephanie Mock Grubbs.
Former Butler girls volleyball coach Meghan Lucas called Mock “a little firecracker” on the court as a teenager. A young adult Mock earned the nickname “Fireball” as an interning strength and conditioning coach for Clemson baseball.
Where there’s smoke, there must be fire.
Mock Grubbs’ career has caught — well — fire. She was hired in the winter to be the Houston Astros’ assistant strength and conditioning coach. She’s the only woman in such a role in MLB after Andrea Hayden made history in 2019 when she was hired by the Minnesota Twins. Hayden left the organization in 2021 for a job with Stanford.
“I think my superpower is just being able to bring high energy every day to the players,” Mock Grubbs said recently.
The 5-foot-3, 2008 Butler High graduate is in an exclusive club. Increasingly, professional and college men’s teams are hiring women into previously male-only roles. But there are still few of them.
Marissa Figueroa was an assistant athletic trainer for the Buffalo Bills for four years until recently, as is Tiffany Morton for the Kansas City Chiefs for nine years. The Portland Trail Blazers hired Dr. Courtney Watson last year to be their head athletic trainer.
Mock Grubbs has been featured on MLB.com, Chron.com and other national media outlets in recent weeks. She’s aware of the attention, and welcomes her role in influencing future generations of female strength and conditioning coaches.
“There’s a buzz,” Lucas said about one of Butler’s own making national headlines.
“I can never dodge my gender. ... I was holding (6-foot-4, 237-pound designated hitter) Jordan Alvarez’s band for band sprints the other day” and was trying not to get dragged behind him, she said, laughing. “I just want to do a great job for other women to be entry point behind me.”
Mock Grubbs, 33, was hired in January after nearly four years as the assistant athletic director for sports performance at the University of Pittsburgh and as a seasonal intern for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
She spends nearly every day at the ballpark, home or away, generally starting by noon for a 7 p.m. game. She will get her own morning workout in, get coffee — sometimes when she’s on the road during a FaceTime coffee date with her husband, Houston Texans director of reconditioning and speed development Ryan Grubbs — work out Astros players before the game and stay until almost midnight.
“I think my personal mantra is get comfortable being uncomfortable,” Mock Grubbs said. “Every day brings on new challenges, but it’s just so rewarding.
She loves it. The Astros have gravitated to her.
“The players who have just been in it for a long time have just been like, ‘Steph, you have so much energy,’” she said.
To help players warm up during spring training, Mock Grubbs would play catch on the warning track. But she wasn’t very good. She was a star volleyball player at Butler before playing at West Virginia, she didn’t have much experience throwing a baseball.
She was determined to get better during the spring.
“On the road (before one game), I played catch with (shortstop Jeremy) Pena, and everyone was like, ‘Yeah, Steph, you’ve been practicing!’”
Longtime Butler volleyball coach Meghan Lucas, who recently retired, beams at the thought of Mock Grubbs’ trajectory.
She remembers the tiny defensive specialist always smiling, even “if we just got our butt kicked.” But Mock Grubbs lacked confidence to understand she had Division I talent. At a showcase, Lucas remembers her saying, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“(But) the West Virginia coaches showed interest in her and her eyes lit up,” Lucas said.
Mock Grubbs spent the next four years at WVU but didn’t know what she wanted to do for a career for some time. She realized her true passion was being in the weight room; Lucas had noticed years before she never shied away from conditioning drills.
Mock Grubbs was hired by WVU as an intern, then interned at Pitt and later Clemson, where she earned her “Fireball” nickname under baseball coach Jack Leggett. Her parents supported her through years of unpaid internships, she said, something she’s grateful for.
She was later hired full-time and progressed through Clemson’s strength and conditioning department before landing jobs at Mississippi State and then Pitt.
Then came the call to the big leagues.
“She’s in a man’s world right now,” Lucas said. “And she’s pretty much showing them how it’s done.”
Mock Grubbs still tells Lucas, who would visit her former player at Pitt on occasion, she wouldn’t be in this position without “strong women like you.”
“Over time, I’ve always had a lot of mentors at all my stops,” Mock Grubbs said. “The coach Lucases that I had at Butler (and others).”
Mock Grubbs calls this “Phase 2” of her career.
Phase 1 was when she got hired by Pitt and returned home for a few years. Phase 2 is breaking new ground, working with a professional team and establishing herself. It’s also the first time her and her husband are able to live in the same city, although their teams’ conflicting seasons mean there’s still not much time at home together.
But, her mind working with the same frenetic energy she brings to the gym, she’s already thinking about Phase 3.
“I’ve always been told carry yourself like the position that’s above you. I’m not going to come into a role and be complacent,” Mock Grubbs said. “This is just the beginning, I hope to go from an assistant strength coach to a head (performance coach).”
Mock Grubbs has been asked to speak at conferences. She wants to be another “entry point” for other women looking to further diversity in the strength-trainer demographics.
“She’s doing something that hasn’t been done before, and that’s cool,” Lucas said.
“I always just make sure I let her know how proud I am of her.”
But for now, Mock Grubbs is still learning the ropes as a first-time MLB strength trainer. The season isn’t even a month old, she still has to maintain her same level of energy for another 130-plus regular season games as Houston tries to return to the World Series for the first time since 2023. Three of those games will be June 3-5 when her Astros visit her hometown Pirates.
That’s fine with her.
“Our (head strength and conditioning coach), Hazael Wessin, he’s been a big supportive of me, ‘Steph, this is cool,’” Mock Grubbs said. “I never want to take attention away from the team, we’re trying to win a World Series.”
