The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” drifted across the pitch as friends, family and underclassmen gathered along the foul lines, arms full of decorations and hand-painted posters. It was senior night for the varsity girls softball team and before the first pitch was thrown, there were already tears.
For Eliza, the emotion was understandable. She’s been playing softball since she was seven years old – more than a decade of early practices, tournaments and innings that added up to something she’s still trying to put into words.
“A little sad,” she said, though her smile told a fuller story. Her parents and sister were in the stands and the highlight reel in her head runs long, including three home runs in a season alone.
Her coach, Breman, remembers her time on the team, “I have no idea what I’m going to do without Eliza leading off every game. She’s amazing.”
Z has been playing with the Blue Devils for three years and senior night hit her with a particular weight. She’s grateful for the friendships she has made, for the games she’s learned to cherish and especially Coach Breman. She’s even found inspiration to keep playing in college.
“Softball holds a very special place in my heart,” she said.
Shamer joined the team as a freshman and has watched herself grow in ways that go beyond her stats. What she values most aren’t the wins — it’s the bonds. Friends made their way uptown to cheer her on and she credited the seniors around her for setting the tone all year: putting in the time, putting in the effort, “genuinely caring about each other and the game”.
Coach Breman has coached softball for six years and this senior class holds a place “unlike any other” in his coaching tenure. None of them had ever played real softball before they walked into tryouts freshman year. He took them in anyway. What followed was something he described as “amazing.” His softball team made it to the quarterfinals two years ago, then the semifinals last year, fueled by a group that brought “positive energy every single day”.
Coach Breman said, “I have never had a group that came in and never played a sport. The growth from that — it’s been wild.”
His favorite part of coaching, he’ll tell you, isn’t the trophies. It’s about being part of a group as they learn from each other, bond and become more than teammates. And this group, he says, gave him all of that and more.
As the pregame celebration wound down and the music faded out, the moment carried the particular sweetness of something ending well. Dimples and contagious smiles all around, through the tears. For these seniors, the regular season may be over, but what they built here will last a long, long time.
