Hard at Work for the 2013 HHHS Softball Season

It was a surreal day, being on the Lady Hatters' softball diamond on Monday afternoon. 

On a day where the PIAA 4-A semifinals were being played, it seemed like my daughter Charlotte and I had a game we should be at, instead of working out with the 2013 season in our gun sights.

Alas, it hit us even harder than it had in the past few days that Hatboro-Horsham's magical ride to the 2011 state championship had really ended and its journey to try to become just the third team in Pennsylvania history to repeat as champions was over.

On Sunday evening, the players, coaches and families of the varsity and junior varsity Hatters were honored locally with a banquet at Silvestri's. 

Second-year coach Joe DiFilippo, recognizing where the Hatboro-Horsham program has risen to, with three state-title-game appearances since 2006 and two 4-A championships in the past five years, reminded everyone that they would do everything they could "to get us back to where we belong" in 2013.

On Sunday night, after we had returned from the banquet, my daughter and I talked before bed time. 

"Dad, can you take me out on Monday to practice?" Charlotte asked. 

She was ready to begin her off-season workouts two days before the school year had even ended.

So here I was, hitting fly ball, after fly ball to Charlotte in left and right field and throwing a mixture of underhanded curves, drops, change-ups, screwballs and even knuckleballs as Charlotte hammered out line drives and dropped down bunts. 

There were even a few, not-so-fast fastballs throw in for good measure.

In the distance, as a three-hour workout stretched into the early evening, we heard the strains of graduation taking place in the football stadium across campus. 

When Pomp and Circumstance began to be played, it reminded us with even more certainty that Nicole D'Andrea, Jackie DiPietro, Chrissy James, Val Sadowl and Maggie Shaffer were really graduating and moving on to places like the Univeristy of New Haven, Seton Hall, Westminster University, UConn and Guilford College. 

Those five seniors, who had been a part of so many fine moments on the diamond where we were practicing, won't be a part of future successes, but they did their part in helping create the mystique of Lady Hatter softball around the state.

DiPietro talked on Sunday evening of how a small group of Hatboro-Horsham players, dressed in their black and white Lady Hatter softball gear, had gone to a late-season game a few weeks back between Pennsbury and Neshaminy to scout two of the teams they had encountered on the way to the 2011 state championship. 

They were met with plenty of dirty looks and even more rude comments from the fans of two rivals schools, who wanted what the Lady Hatters already had. 

"What are the Haters doing here?" asked one young fan, purposely dropping a "T" from the Lady Hatters' nickname as a show of derision.

Pennsbury and Neshaminy have won their own state titles through the years, but as the 2012 playoffs began, the crown of District One and PIAA 4-A champions still rested on the heads of these Hatboro-Horsham players.

“Every team looked at us like it's the World Series,” DiFilippo said on Thursday, after the season-ending 4-1 loss to Bishop Shanahan. “Everyone wanted to beat us." 

If there is one thing that the Lady Hatters have learned as they have developed their program into one of the elite teams in the state, it is that other schools are quick to become jealous. 

That was very evident when Hatboro-Horsham received just the No. 4 seed in this year's district tournament — a seeding that meant the Lady Hatters had to take on Friday's state finalist Bishop Shanahan in both the district and state quarterfinals. 

Ironically, the team that will play Bishop Shanahan for the 2012 title will be Central Bucks South, a school that tied Hatboro-Horsham for the Suburban One League/Continental Conference championship this season. 

Hatboro-Horsham split a pair of games with CB South this season and has the upmost respect for its biggest rival, year-in and year-out. 

But no matter how Friday's game — minus the Lady Hatters — turns out, one thing that is obvious is that the girls in the Hatboro-Horsham program will continue to work hard to return to the top. 

That is why right fielder Heather Lutz came racing into Sunday's banquet, dressed in her club-team uniform, with dust covering almost every inch of her pants. Lutz, who will be a member of the new senior class in 2013, is all ready working with next season in mind. 

The goal of another state title is one of the motivations to why Lutz and 18 other returning players in the program play on travel teams in the off-season and is the reason that Charlotte Coulson will be packing her bags for a Nike softball camp next week at Gettysburg College. 

It was also the driving force to why Charlotte was sweating away on the Lady Hatters' diamond just four days after a loss to Bishop Shanahan had ended Hatboro-Horsham's season. 

With a work ethic like the one shown by players like Heather Lutz and Charlotte Coulson, the future of the Lady Hatters' program is in good hands.