Marlee Ready and Cydney Ventura
Reporters
Seven years ago, in the summer of 2006, a softball team formed that would defy all odds against them. This team was known as the New Canaan Storm. The players all came from the same town and this was unusual for a travel team that had so much talent. The team had gone where no New Canaan Softball team had ever went before, sweeping consecutive tournament titles and league championships almost every summer up until 2011. With many of the original Storm players playing on the New Canaan High School team, they again brought NCHS softball to a new level. Since they had a renowned history of triumph and success at two National tournaments, they had high expectations to live up to during their high school career.
Entering the high school as freshman, we knew that our coaches, families and fans were more than excited to see us transform the softball program.
“Coming in to the high school, we knew that we had a lot to live up to. We were expected to turn the program around,” Senior captain Courtney Rogers said.
“I think we had so much hype around us because were well-known in town as the softball team that was wining tournament titles left and right,” senior captian Jordan Ventura added.
Even though we were younger and smaller than most of our competition, we managed to qualify for the team’s first State tournament in years. Unfortunately, we lost our first game but we still made progress. It was a huge turning point in the program because that was the first time in a while that the softball team had actually qualified for a state tournament.
The following year, we got a new coach and had even higher expectations to live up to considering the fact that our new coach, Danielle Simoneau, was a former FCIAC championship pitcher for Westhill High School. Again we qualified for states but what made this season even better was qualifying for the FCIAC tournament as well. The team was mostly made up of sophomores seeing as this was only our second year playing for the high school. But when this season came to a close, we lost two very valuable senior captains, Tory Rusch and Lindsay Schmid.
As we entered our third year of softball, the team just wasn’t the same without the guidance of Tory and Lindsay. We struggled without their leadership or the guidance of any captains since we didn’t have any that season. Still however, we qualified for States and FCIACs. We made it the farthest we had ever gone in states which brought us another step closer to our ultimate goal of winning a tournament. At the end of the season, we lost two more seniors. Now our senior year was up to us and we would determine the fate of our team.
Finally it was our big year. This past season was our last chance to make history. It was also the last time that six of the girls would play on the softball diamond. As the season progressed, we noticed that we were a pretty unpredictable team. We would win some great games and then lose to some teams that we were expected to beat. So going into the FCIAC playoffs we didn’t really know what to expect, but we knew what we wanted. Defeating Stamford in the first round was a huge deal for us since they had beaten us in the regular season. Then winning against Fairfield Ludlowe with a 1-0 game was insane. Coming up against St. Joes was nerve-wracking but our excitement to play overcame any fears we once had. The moment we won was one of the most surreal experiences of our lives. The reality that we actually just stole the championship title for the first time ever was unreal.
