The cool thing about great coaches is they're usually great all the time.

Not just when they're winning championships or getting elite players to sign with their schools. Not only when it's a crucial end-game situation and they've got to make a split-second decision.

They're great when the cameras aren't rolling. When they're in private meetings with their players. When life throws them curveballs that no one ever could have expected.

When it comes to that, there are few greater coaches at any level than FSU softball's Lonni Alameda.

The Florida State and greater Tallahassee softball communities have been in love with Alameda for the dozen years she has been on campus. The rest of the Seminole fan base jumped on board when she led her squad to the 2018 national championship.

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Alameda not only puts an incredible product on the field each season -- the Seminoles either reached the NCAA Super Regionals or the Women's College World Series each of the past seven years -- but she represents the university in a fantastic way. Her teams play hard, they have fun, and they embrace their fans in a fashion seldom seen at big-time college sports programs.

It's why FSU's softball stadium -- and the parking lot across the street -- have been packed for every home game for years. It's not merely the fact that this particular group of Seminoles wins a lot of games; it's how they do it.

But where a coach like Alameda is most influential is during the darkest times. Times like the one her players experienced just over three weeks ago.

Like many college coaches around the country, Alameda was meeting with her players that Thursday afternoon, on March 12, to discuss the emerging health concerns surrounding the coronavirus.

Around noon that day, the ACC and other conferences abruptly pulled the plug on their postseason basketball tournaments. A couple hours later, all ACC athletic events and practices were suspended "until further notice."

The FSU softball team was scheduled to play a huge series at Duke that weekend, and Alameda gathered her team together to explain that the games weren't happening. While trying to provide a calming influence during a time of incredible uncertainty, she told the players they now would have spring break off and that the coaches would let them know what would happen next.

"I was up there, 'Hey guys, we're gonna be on hold a little bit. Not a big deal,'" Alameda recalled. "I was in the middle of the conversation for our plan during spring break and what we were gonna do. Then right away comes a tweet that says, 'Championships are going to be canceled.'"

The "championships" meant all NCAA tournaments for the remainder of the school year. There would be no NCAA Regionals or Super Regionals. No Women's College World Series.

The shocking news didn't come in from the FSU administration. Or in an email from the NCAA. It appeared on Twitter, with a reporter quoting an anonymous source.

One of the Seminoles' star players stood up while Alameda was speaking.

"Our season's done," she said.

Just like that.

A program that has a legitimate chance every year to win a national championship -- a team that did just that two years earlier -- was suddenly done for the year. Every NCAA spring sports season was over before it really even started.

"Our seniors started crying right away. It got really quiet," Alameda said, expressing a hint of frustration that the news didn't come through proper channels so she could have been the one to tell her players.

"That's just the way the world is right now," she said. "It's not anybody's fault."

Soon, the entire team was struggling to hide their emotions. Tears flowed as players poured from a meeting room into the hallway.

"In the moment, it was very tough," she said. "It was like you're in the postseason and you just lost the final game."

As concerned as she was for her players, particularly the team's five seniors, Alameda was heartened by their next meeting that Saturday.

Once the disappointment about their situation had sunk in and they learned more about the gravity of the pandemic, the Seminoles' players quickly started looking beyond their own concerns.

"Two days later, we sit down as a team, completely different," Alameda said. "Everyone was seeing what was happening in the world. Everyone knew what was happening with their families. All of the sudden, sports became so insignificant."

After taking about a week to regroup, Alameda's staff had little choice but to start looking to the future. They held their normal postseason staff meetings to reflect on what went right and wrong the previous year -- truncated as it was -- and they also held virtual meetings with returning players to discuss areas of emphasis for the off-season.

"We're moving on to the next step in our lives," she said.

But moving on doesn't necessarily mean going back to the old way of doing things.

During these challenging few weeks, Alameda and her staff have deliberately pushed their players to focus on life beyond softball.

When they communicate individually or as a group, they spend much more time discussing their personal lives and the health of their loved ones than they do the sport that brought them together.

Alameda has encouraged each of her players and coaches to think of themselves as "teammates of the world."

"So now, when we talk about softball, it's fun," Alameda said, adding that the competitive nature of college sports sometimes diminishes those feelings. "I think we've lost a little vision of that."

There's no way of knowing when people in America will be cleared to start playing competitive sports again. There's no guarantee that all -- or any -- FSU sports will be held during the 2020-21 academic year.

But whenever they do come back, Alameda is hopeful they'll return with a restored spirit. A renewed purity.

In much the same way that many have taken this down time to reconnect with friends and family, Alameda has a feeling athletes and their families will reclaim the enjoyment that attracted them to sports in the first place.

"How amazing is sports going to be when it comes back?" she asked, rhetorically. "Sometimes, we feel it's our job to play sports and have fun. We need to remember that we GET to play sports."

Before this pandemic and the cancellation of all these seasons, Alameda said, a player might have been devastated by going 0-for-4 in a big game. Now, after all that's transpired over the last month, they might have a new perspective.

The same for a player who misses a big shot in basketball or drops a crucial pass in football.

"Whether I make it or not, I got the chance to do it!" she said.

And with any luck, the veteran coach suggests, that sentiment could permeate sports at all levels.

"Maybe that Little League dad won't get so upset about the umpire," she said. "Maybe they'll say, 'We're getting to play baseball! How great is that?'"

Having covered sports at every level over the last 25-plus years, I'm predisposed to believing those feelings won't last very long. That while they certainly could exist in the beginning, we'll eventually all go back to the way we were before.

Listening to Alameda talk about it, though, she really makes you want to believe. The same way she inspires her players to perform at their highest levels, it's not long before she has you believing sports can be taken back to a simpler time.

That after losing something we all love so much, we won't be so quick to take it for granted next time.

"It's going to be so awesome when the gates open back up," she said, "and we can all high-five again."

Sign us all up for that, Coach.

Contact managing editor Ira Schoffel at ira@warchant.com and follow @IraSchoffel on Twitter.

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