Southington coach Davina Hernandez on CPTV Sports’ May 21 episode of CPTV Sports’ Game Time.
If you wanted to see and hear No. 1-ranked Southington talk more about its successful 2015 softball team, including their controversial 42-0 victory over Farmington last week, then CPTV Sports’ latest Game Time show was for you.
Southington coach Davina Hernandez was joined by senior shortstop Lauren Zazzaro. They talked about this year’s group and its drive to three-peat as state softball champions. “It’s been amazing,” Hernandez said. “They girls are awesome. I didn’t think we’d be able to fill the shoes the way that we did. Those were some great players that left last year and everyone’s just stepped it up and done a great job.”
Co-host John Holt, joined by Joe Zone, asked Hernandez about last week’s brouhaha, while also saying he fell on the side of Southington in the matter of Hernandez v. Social Media.
“That comes with being in the spotlight,” Hernandez said. “That’s something you have to learn as a coach. I’m obviously young and inexperienced. You do take things to heart because the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone’s feelings.”
She said she works with players and coaches around the state outside of the high school season, “including Farmington. And that really just… it broke my heart to know that people were so upset about that. The last thing that we ever wanted to do was embarrass anyone and we really did feel we did the best that we could to minimize that gap. It was just a really unfortunate situation.”
Zone lamented the fact that teams had to stop trying “it goes against everything you’re taught,” he said.
Zazzaro replied, “Like (Hernandez) said, it was really unfortunate that we had to try and maneuver around running up the score as much as we possibly could. …Taking out starters after the third inning and having girls batting on the opposite side isn’t normally what we’re about.
“Then again, we don’t want to disrespect the game itself, either. We’re trying to not disrespect the game, but not our opponent either.”
Game Time also visited with Wheeler’s softball team, including pitcher Jen Paride and catcher Raven Houck, E.O. Smith’s baseball team and Lyme / Old Lyme’s girls lacrosse coach Emily Maccione.
Game Time can be seen Thursdays at 7 p.m. on CPTV Sports.
