COMPETITIVE STREAKS
Loiacono reflects on Saratoga’s lost season and the commitment his team brought into 2020
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY » Geoffrey Loiacono, the head coach for the Blue Streak’s softball team finally felt as if his program had a good balance of senior leaders and young talent coming up, along with increased participation at all levels.
Prior to the season being cancelled, Loiacono was looking forward to watching his four seniors take on leadership roles on the field.
“I have four returning seniors from last year’s team. They have been a big part of the Saratoga softball program. They did summer workouts, worked with the younger kids at summer camps, they are a good group to have as senior leaders and are very hard workers. It’s been tough for all spring sports this season,” Loi
acono said.
That group of seniors includes Madison Clark, Maya Yefimenko, McKenna Mulholland and Ella Ouimet.
“I was really excited to see how they would embrace their leadership roles and how they’ve helped to bring up the younger players in our program. I really wanted to see how much our hard work would have paid off in the 20 games we had in the regular season.”
This past offseason, Loiacono was pleased with the numbers of girls participating in team workouts, as well as registration numbers for the varsity, junior varsity and modified programs.
“They were coming and they wanted to lift and wanted to get better. We were working on the mental game and the strengthening game. A lot of the girls were participating in weight lifting, all year, as soon as the season ended. We were getting stronger as a team and as a program.”
The Blue Streaks coach continued, discussing the start of practices.
“Tryouts were very competitive. We had a large amount of kids trying out for both the varsity and junior varsity teams. A lot were signed up for modified as well. It was the most we’ve had in years. As a coach, that’s really exciting to see the numbers start to grow again.”
Friday, March 13 was supposed to be the day the final roster was going to be decided. In reality, that was the day schools shut down due to the coronavirus. As a result, Loiacono decided not to release an official roster for this season.
“I didn’t feel it was fair to do that over text or email. I’m a face-to-face coach and I like to talk to them about what they could have done better,” he said.
Loiacono continued, speaking about his expectations had the season started normally.
“We have some youth pitching coming up and one veteran pitcher that’s a senior this year, McKenna Mulholland. She would have seen a lot of the innings,” he said.
“I would have been cool to see how some of our ninth and tenth grade pitchers would have competed at the varsity level. You’re talking about a 1415 year old kid going up against a 16-17 year old kid. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a big difference. If the athletic ability is there, they can do it.”
After making it through a 2019 season that included several tough losses in close games, the Blue Streaks were ready for a fresh start. They never imagined that they wound’t actually get that chance.
“The four seniors have really stressed to the underclassmen that you never know when your last game is going to be,” Loiacono said. “I really hate to lose them, but I know they’ll be stronger individuals for getting through this, once the pandemic passes. I really just want them to know that if they ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away.”
While he hasn’t fielded too many questions from underclassmen on how the college recruitment process is going to play out going forward, he has gotten questions on if there will be a summer season and what a return to school in the fall might look like.
“Some of the underclassmen are definitely looking to play college softball. That will all fall into place once the state and the country open back up. I have a hunch that a lot of the colleges are going to start doing their own showcases on their campuses. A lot of them are doing it already, but I think that’s going to happen more and more now.”
Unfortunately, he sees New York student-athletes being at a disadvantage when it comes to returning to play.
“As other states open up, New York athletes could be at a disadvantage. We will likely be the last state to fully open up. Just like normal though, the northeast states are always the last to get recruited because in states like Florida, you can play all year long,” he said.
As far as Loiacono’s ultimate goal for this season, that is still on hold.
“I wanted to see us get a playoff berth and be competitive with a really young team,” he said.