The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Big-time sports, small-town energy
Shepaug Valley High School having remarkable success
WASHINGTON DEPOT — Next time you want to treat yourself to a picturesque adventure, go to Washington’s Shepaug Valley High School.
Or maybe, as a starter trip, “settle” for the Ted Alex baseball/Dick Ayer softball complex in Washington Depot.
If you’re sports-minded, stay and watch a Spartan ballgame while talking with Shepaug Valley Athletic Director Matt Perachi.
He’ll tell you about the advantages of small-town high school sports with, in this case last week, the example of a torrid softball game between the Spartans and Thomaston raging in the background.
Thomaston’s GoldenBears are famous for a string of state championships in girls basketball, softball, baseball and field hockey in the last decade or so, making the fourth-smallest school in the state (No. 182 out of 185 with a total enrollment of 200 kids) known in some circles as Title Town.
Shepaug Valley is a bit higher on the list (No. 167, with 317 students) and most famous for a storied baseball history, with a string of state championships in the 1980s and ’90s and two Major League Baseball pitchers from the same family — Evan and Troy Scribner — in recent memory.
Onthis day, first year head coach Heidi Johnson, an assistant coach for 10 years and a lifelong resident of Washington, wants to remind us that softball, too, owns a couple of state championships, albeit a while ago. As does field hockey with back-to-back state champions at the beginning of this century.
This year, Shepaug Valley High School is having remarkable success across the gamut of seasons and sports — 15-2 in fall golf; 12-4, boys soccer; Class S boys basketball state runner-up; and now, as of last Friday, 9-1 in baseball and 8-0 in softball, amid competition in and out of the Berkshire League.
“It irritates mewhen people talk about the Berkshire League as a weak league,” Coach Johnson says.
State championships don’t lie, but Matt Perachi is here to talk about why, up or down, a small-school league like the Berkshire and one of its smallest schools, Shepaug, offer their own rewards.
The truth is, part of it is just the scenery in the Northwest Corner. You could spend a weekend touring all nine school locations in the Berkshire League and feel you’ve seen quintessential New England.
Shepaug Valley might rank at the top of your tour with its component towns of Bridgewater, Roxbury and Washington (ever hear of the Gilmore Girls?)
“No one’s just passing through,” Perachi says. “You live here because you want to. Our towns are full of people who could say, ‘ Do you know who I am?’ but nobody does. They’re here because they’re trying to get away from people who ask ‘ Do you know who I am.’
“I grew up in Lee, Massachusetts and thought I’d stay here for three or four years. I found this gem and I’m in my 30th year as athletic director now.”
Like Thomaston, with its core of generations of athletes from the same families, the sense of real community is palpable in Shepaug’s Region 12. Part of it is the choice people make in staying there; part of it is its very smallness.
“You get clusters of talented athletes — bubbles — like this year’s,” Perachi says. “A lot of times, you see it coming in seventh or eighth grade. Because of the size of our school (151 boys, 166 girls this year), we want them to stay involved in sports — plural. We depend on them to play for us.
“Most kids have a main sport, but they benefit from competing in other sports,” he says. “I have three kids (two boys and a girl) and I insisted they play three sports. Now that they’re grown up, they’re happy they did.
“Baseball is different from basketball; you learn from the competition and from other sports and you benefit as an athlete and as a person.
“Our community does a great job of helping kids continue with that. You hear war stories about parents in other places. It’s not as pervasive in our community.
“We have a world of travel sports with different approaches. Some programs require specialization year-round, but we insist, ‘Let’s be cognizant that these kids are three-sport athletes, so there’s no penalty for missing a spring (travel team) basketball game.
“Our goal here is not to win a tournament no matter what. Our goal is to prepare these kids for Shepaug by trying to do things the right way.”
Meanwhile, on and off the softball field on this chilly day in the foothills, examples of the great small-school ethos abound.
Thomaston’s veteran coach, Kelly Finlay, responds to the Bears’ overall 5-4 record with, “Yeah, but we’re 5-1 in the Berkshire League” (second place in the BL to Shepaug’s first).
The Spartan battery, sophomore pitcher Amelia Jacob and senior catcher Sophia Granata play on serious travel teams. They’ve lived in the area since grade school, growing up in the system.
“We have a support group here,” says Granata, looking around at the crowd lining each sideline fence. “Even people who aren’t our parents — like our bus driver and (a local shop owner) come to watch our games.”
“Everywhere I go in town, people ask about the team,” echoes Coach Johnson.
“It psyches us up more,” says Jacob. “The crowd is behind us; and the competition is just as good as anywhere else.”
“Our coaches are people you can rely on; they’re here to guide and teach,” says Granata.
“And they trust in you,” adds Jacob. Jacob is a wunderkind pitcher, with more than 400 strikeouts in her career. Midway through this season, she’s pitched a perfect game in one contest and recorded 21 strikeouts (in a seven-inning game) in another.
But, Thomaston’s sophomore lefty, Sloan Walmsley, sticks right with her in this one.
Thomaston takes a 1-0 lead in the first inning … It’s tied 2-2 after seven innings … The Bears pull ahead 3-2 in the top of the eighth … Shortstop Lexi Thomas’s younger brother circles the field’s perimeter fence with a ‘Let’s go, Spartans’ sign held over his head … Sophia Granata blasts a three-run, walk-off homer in the bottom of the inning
It’s worth the drive.