Southington softball team enjoyed perfect opening day
SOUTHINGTON — Nobody could remember the last time they had a tryout on the actual Southington softball field, outdoors, this early, in March.
Not even Davina Hernandez, who’s coached the team for the last eight years. Usually the Knights — the 2019 Class LL champions — are in the gym. There’s been snow on the field. Or it’s freezing.
Saturday, it was warm, blue sky, a little breezy. Perfect.
“Perfect opening day,” senior captain Nicole Greco said. “I mean, our field is covered in goose poop but other than that, it’s pretty nice.”
She laughed. Greco is laid up now with a torn ACL in her left knee she sustained in July but she’s hoping to be cleared to play in a few weeks when she gets a brace. None of that mattered Saturday. She was there, with her friends and teammates, and they were playing softball on the first day of practice for spring sports in Connecticut.
“I’m just so grateful we even have the opportunity to be out here,” said Greco, who is an outfielder. “I truly cannot imagine not getting my last season in. This game has become such a big part of my life and my teammates’ lives.
“We’ve been doing this since we could walk, really. I
started playing when I was 4. I know you don’t start walking when you’re 4 but as soon as I could steadily walk, I signed up for softball. It’s been my life for 14 years.”
Last year, that was taken away. The kids thought — heck, we all did — maybe we’d be home for two weeks and then things would go back to normal. Except they didn’t, not during the school year.
Once summer rolled around, restrictions were lifted and they got to play, as well as in the fall and even in a winter league once the winter sports restrictions were lifted. Most of the Southington kids played in the offseason.
“That’s going to be a big factor this year for a lot of teams, who plays in the offseason?” Hernandez said. “Because if you don’t, you haven’t played softball in two years.”
A lot was the same Saturday, a welcome return to normal. Everybody wore masks but the foul balls still flew into the road next to the field, some barely missing cars driving by. At the end of practice, the Knights did a baserunning drill with the players lining up and going from first to second, then second to third. Hernandez encouraged them to slide earlier and for the others to yell “Going!” when the runner took off.
“The girls look like they didn’t miss a beat,” Hernandez said. “You can tell they’ve been putting in work.
“My dad said he drove by the field the other day to
“That’s going to be a big factor this year for a lot of teams, who plays in the offseason? Because if you don’t, you haven’t played softball in two years.”
— Davina Hernandez, Southington coach
look at the conditions and he said there were kids out here hitting. It’s so nice to see that.”
One big difference, at least for Hernandez, is that she became a mom. She and her fiancé Andre Dixon, the former UConn running back, had a baby boy named Kyng David in December. Hernandez has lupus, a chronic auto-immune disease, and said she didn’t have any issues with it during her pregnancy, but she’s been having flareups recently.
“I’ve been having issues with swelling and fluid,” she said. “Lots of flaring, issues with my kidney and liver.”
Her parents Dave and Lisa, help — they go to all the games and practices and now that they’re retired, they help watch Kyng.
The spring season is expected to be the most normal of the high school sports seasons — neither the fall nor winter had a state tournament, nor full seasons — but the CIAC is expecting that the spring will be closer to how it used to be.
And that means Southington will once again be a contender.
Hernandez, who grew up in Bristol and played at UMass and for the Puerto
Rican national team before her lupus diagnosis forced her to retire from playing, took over the successful program in 2013 when John Bores retired. Her team won the Class LL titles in her first two years of coaching and went undefeated.
Her coaching record, over six years, is 134-10.
The Blue Knights beat
NFA in the last game they played, 7-6, in the Class LL state championship game on June 8, 2019 for the program’s 18th title.
Julia Panarella, then a sophomore, was the winning pitcher.
“I feel very hopeful,” Panarella said Saturday. “I feel like we want to defend our title. It’s weird because when I talk about [the last game], it seems like years ago, but in my mind, I can remember everything about it.”