Marbury High hires Auburn softball pioneer as coach, athletic director
Marbury High turned to Christina Steiner-Leak to steady softball and oversee athletics, leaning on a coach who built winners at Auburn, AUM, Alabama State and Southern Union.
Marbury High School’s new softball coach and athletic director arrived with a clear assignment: bring steadier routines, a stronger coaching culture and tighter coordination across the Bulldogs’ athletic program. Christina Steiner-Leak was announced June 15 as the latest piece in a Marbury sports department that has been climbing across several teams, and school leaders are betting her background will help turn that momentum into something more durable.
Steiner-Leak’s ties to Alabama softball run deep. She played at Auburn University from 1995 to 1999, was a team captain and earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She also became part of Auburn softball history in 1997, when the program played its inaugural season and Steiner-Leak hit the first home run in team history. Auburn later recognized her role in that early era in a 2022 alumni spotlight.
Her coaching résumé stretches across multiple levels and programs. At Brewbaker Tech, she guided the Rams to the 2023 AHSAA Class 5A state championship. At Alabama State, she helped deliver SWAC championships in 2016 and 2019. At Southern Union State Community College, she reached 700 career wins in 2025, after a first season that finished 15-31 before the program rebounded to place second in the ACCC the next year. Southern Union also noted that Steiner-Leak led AUM to the 2014 NAIA national championship and compiled a 234-97 record there with five national tournament appearances.
For Marbury, the hire comes at a time when the school’s athletic profile is already rising. The Bulldogs’ softball team reached the Class 5A State Tournament in 2023 and 2024, and Marbury has also seen recent success in girls’ basketball, boys’ basketball, girls’ soccer, boys’ soccer and baseball. In Autauga County, where Marbury High sits in Deatsville and serves a student body listed in recent school profiles at roughly 584 to 626 students, that kind of multi-sport climb puts more weight on the athletic director role than a simple coaching change.
Steiner-Leak’s first year will be measured less by a headline and more by what parents and students see day to day: whether softball practices feel more organized, whether expectations are clearer, whether younger athletes see a path into the program and whether Marbury’s teams keep pulling in the same direction. The Bulldogs have already shown they can compete at the state level; the next step is making that standard last.
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