Bronco sought to get better
Bronco wanted to be better all-around hitter
Morgan Cournoyer hoped to have better season at plate
BURRILLVILLE – In Morgan Cournoyer’s mind, there was no question four or five months ago what kind of softball season she would produce as Burrillville’s starting first baseman, a spot she’s owned since her freshman year.
“I had a gut feeling things were going to go very well for me, and for us as a team,” she offered recently. “I don’t know why; I just felt it. I spent a ton of time – months – preparing for my senior season, and I thought all of that hard work would show itself.
“I wanted to raise my batting average from my junior year, and push myself to see just how far I could go,” she added. “I also wanted to become as college-ready as possible … I didn’t have the kind of junior season I had hoped for. I made All-Division second-team as a sophomore, but I didn’t make anything last year, so that was pushing me, too.
“I had a lot going on with travel ball, school and getting recruited by colleges; I felt a lot of pressure, and I think I tried to do too much. I don’t think it affected me defensively, but at the plate it definitely did. I don’t think I was 100-percent focused on my plate appearances, and I wanted to get the right this time.”
When she discovered that all of those hopes, all those dreams, all that dedication to her favorite sport had been squashed by a microscopic but stout virus nicknamed COVID-19 back on April 23, she admitted she sobbed.
That’s how deep she felt the pain. “Honestly, I was beyond devastated; I broke down,” the upbeat Bronco stated. “I had worked so hard this winter; I spent so much time trying to get better – and that includes last spring, summer and fall. Then, all of a sudden, it all got erased. I was so hurt when I found out we wouldn’t be going back to school, which means no sports.
“I thought that if the high school season was gone, then so would our club team season,” she added. “I wouldn’t say that I thought, ‘Well, that means I put in all that work for nothing,’ because I was still going to play in college, but it was crushing. I had so much to prove, and then – Boom! – gone.
“I understood why we weren’t going to have the season, because of the pandemic, so that made me less angry at the whole situation, but that took time. When it first happened, I was really upset, and so were my teammates.”
“I had worked so hard this winter; I spent so much time trying to get better – and that includes last spring, summer and fall.”
— Morgan Cournoyer
Just days before the initial spring sports “postponement,” that on Friday, March 13, Broncos’ head coach Bill Lacey had his pitchers and catchers report for “training camp,” but Cournoyer admitted she had headed a group of fellow players who for most of the winter spent two days a week inside the hockey rink’s upstairs “warm-up” room working on their hitting.
“I batted around .350 last year, but I wanted to hit .500 to .550 this season,” she said. “I also wanted to be the best captain I could be (she would’ve been a captain with fellow recent grads Alyssa Simpson and Maddie McCutcheon). Unfortunately, I didn’t reach either goal.”
Cournoyer, however, has perked up considerably over the past few weeks, two outstanding reasons being there is softball in her near future.
She discovered that her summer club travel program – the R.I. Fire-N-Ice Blue contingent – would return to practice (and games, if the governor enacts Phase 3 on July 1), and the fact she’ll be playing fall ball beginning in September at her new school, Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.
“It made me feel much better when I found out we’d have our travel season,” she noted. “While we kept waiting for our high school seasons to start, our (Fire-N-Ice) coaches (headed by former East Providence High mentor Rob Traverse) would stay in touch with us; they’d say, ‘Keep training. We’re going to have something, so don’t give up!’
“Even after we were told to leave school (on March 13), I continued to work out on my own,” she continued. “I’d throw with my dad, I’d so some front toss hitting, tee work or my father would hit me some grounders over at Cass Park in Woonsocket, which is gorgeous! I’d go through positional drills and assorted rexercises.
“I’d have weekly workouts from my coach at Bridgewater State (Lindsey Couturier), and smy travel team would have Zoom workouts etwo days a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
so that helped.” n Cournoyer indicated her love for the sport began to grow shortly after her introduction to it at around age seven. She began playing for a ttravel program when she was eight, and started playing 12 months a year, she said, shortly cthereafter. w “I didn’t have much time for other sports in hhigh school (or as a youth),” she said. “Softball rwas it.”
Lacey can attest to that – and then some. e “I know (the high school campaign’s cancellation) hit her like a ton of bricks; besides the fact she’s my goddaughter and I love her, softball was and is everything to her,” he explained. “It was the only sport she played, so having that happen was really tough.
“She would have been one of my top home run hitters – she hit clean-up for us – and defensively she’s very good. All the girls look up to her for leadership, and she provides it. If I could coach 15 Morgans every year, coaching would be the easiest thing ever did. She’s a great softball player.”
That’s only one thing she hopes to become as a BSU Bear this coming autumn. Another is to do well academically; she wants to double-major in education and sociology with a concentration in elementary education.
“I started working with Burrillville Extended Care, a before- and after-school program for kids kindergarten through seventh grade in October, and I just fell in love with teaching,” she said.
And thrilled beyond belief about playing again.
Cournoyer claimed after she went to her first travel team practice at Aqueduct Field in Cranston last Wednesday, June 10, she hadn’t been that happy in months.
“Right after the cancellation, like I said, I was so upset; I didn’t work out as much, but I still trained with my travel team two days a week,” she said. “I talked it out with my mom and dad (Kelly and Steve), told them about how I was feeling, and that helped.
“I also hung out with my friends; we’d go for hikes or went fishing, and that stuff helped, too,” she continued. When we had that practice, I was so excited, being back on the field. We abided by all the social-distancing rules, all the sanitizing, but it was so great to be practicing like we usually do again … well, except for a couple of detours.
“It finally gave me something normal to do in a very abnormal time, and I loved it.”