DannacontinuesSutter’schampionshiplegacy
Hailey Peterson, Fr., Sutter
The last time a Sutter High softball coach was named the Appeal-Democrat’s Coach of the Year, Stefanie Danna was a member of the Huskies’ roster.
The year was 2006 and Danna, a senior, was a singles-hitting shortstop with stats including a Sutter-record .604 batting average and 20 stolen bases. Defensively, she had good enough range at her position to make you forget she stands only a couple of inches over 5 feet.
She also had a different last name – Singh. Her head coach her senior year at Sutter was her father Raoul Singh, who led the Huskies to the Northern Section Division IV championship. That gave Danna three section titles in her four varsity seasons, and Sutter 10 championships in program history.
Fast forward to this year. In May, Danna completed her second season as head varsity coach of her alma mater, and she did it by adding to the Huskies’ champi- onship legacy. Their 6-4 win over Lassen this past May for the NSCIF Div. IV crown was the program’s 15th section title. Sutter’s 24-5-1 overall record included wins over Sac-Joaquin Section powers Marysville and Casa Roble, and losses to a handful of NSCIF teams (Foothill of Palo Cedro, Chico, Red Bluff) which either won or played for section titles.
Now, at age 29, Danna joins her father on the list of A-D coaches of the year for the 2017 season. He, for one, is not surprised. “She does a tremendous job, she gives a lot of effort.” Singh said. “She’s dedicated and cares about her team. And her team really, really cares for her.
“But she’s hard on them, she’s a hard coach. If they’re not in line, she jumps on them.”
That’s an aspect of Danna’s coaching style she picked up in her years playing for both Singh and Pat Dempsey on the California Chaos competitive team and in her one season at Sutter playing for her father. “Oh, definitely, he obviously rubbed off on me,” she said. “We still have conversations to this day about each practice and each game.”
This season in particular was one in which Danna and her players focused hard and prepared to produce the outcome they wanted. Section championships may not be a birth right for those who go through the Sutter program, but they are an expectation. The Huskies won their first in the old Div. 3A, then went nine years before capturing another. But since Sutter stepped back in the winner’s circle in 1995, it hasn’t gone more than two seasons
without claiming a title.
After coaching the Huskies’ junior varsity for four years, Danna was poised to claim an NSCIF title in her first season as a varsity coach in 2016. But Sutter lost the Div. IV championship game on the road at Lassen, 4-3.
In the end, that just made the result of this year’s title game, played at Sutter, more sweet.
“After last year’s loss, we went back to work and we knew that we needed to be better prepared coming into this game,” Danna said immediately after this year’s championship victory. “So we went to work over the whole entire season – worked on our defense, worked on our offense – and it feels amazing, it feels amazing. All of their hard work paid off and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Danna relied upon a freshman pitcher (Hailey Peterson), a freshman infielder (Darcy Gillen), a junior infielder (Akaisha Lewis) and a junior catcher (Sam Anderson) among others, to provide much of the spark. In fact, of the Huskies’ 15 roster players, only two graduated this year.
“Everyone else is returning,” Danna said. “So we are a really young team, which is nice.”
But if the winning and losing were all coaching Sutter softball were about, Danna might not be involved. She began competitive softball at age 10 and figures she became a truly confident player at 15, when she was a freshman on the Huskies’ varsity team.
Then came the section titles, the team MVP awards and the college playing success, first at Humboldt State and eventually at Simpson Universi- ty in Redding, where she made the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) All-Academic team as a senior. But the path to such success wasn’t easy.
“No, I had to work hard. I think that’s what makes it meaningful,” she said.
And that’s what Danna tries to impress upon the players she coaches today. “I more or less use my experiences,” she said. “Somewhere, someone is working harder than you. You have to give your best every single day.”
These days, Danna is right where she wants to be. She said she and her assistant Stephanie Soto, another former Huskies player, always wanted to return to their school and coach. Said Danna, “It means a lot to be able to come back and give to the program that gave so much to us.”
Initially upon her return to Sutter, Danna guided the JV while her father concluded his eight-year run as varsity softball coach in 2011. Then his assistant Keith Gravel took over and led the Huskies to three straight championships from 2013-15.
When Danna’s turn came, Singh knew she would be ready.
“I knew she would because of her drive. She has tons of drive,” he said. “She was a gifted athlete, she learns quick. And the thing is, she’s very dedicated.”
That dedication will likely lead to more championships in the future. But if Danna continues to be successful by her standards, she won’t just produce the next wave of Sutter softball greats. She’ll help turn out some good people as well.
“I set high expectations for my girls,” she said. “I feel that softball ... teaches the girls respect, it teaches them to pick themselves back up when they fail. At school, they should be role models, they should be leaders.
“It’s nice, especially when softball season rolls around, to realize this is my dream and I’m getting to live my dream. ... Softball is so much more than batting averages and strikeouts and wins and losses. The sport did so much for me that I knew even in high school I wanted to come back and coach.”
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