Thetford
It’s one of the things, three games into her first season with Thetford’s youth softball team after 14 years guiding the Thetford Academy varsity, that Fifield is still getting used to.
Fifield is an executive assistant at Lebanon’s Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital and, for the past several months, has worked on all the paperwork required to complete the hospital’s affiliation with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. The red tape has increased Fifield’s workload to the point of making it more difficult to make the six-days-a-week commitment required for a two-month high school softball season. Before the season, Fifield realized the work had become too much.
Then an alternative presented itself.
“I wasn’t going to do anything (this spring),” she said. “I came up to help out with (elementary school) basketball practice and one of the girls’ moms … we said, ‘We ought to get a program started down here so that we have something to feed to.’ We said OK. I said I’d help. Well, then the helping turned into me doing it.”
Fifield, by her own admission, couldn’t stay away from Thetford softball very long. Even if it wasn’t at the varsity level, the draw to stay involved was too great to pass up.
It’s an effort that is already appreciated by parents of Thetford’s young athletes, including Thelma Dunham, whose daughter Jasmine, 9, is trying softball for the first time.
“The first few games, (Fifield) was a lot more vocal about the little things,” said Dunham, who admits she wasn’t aware of Fifield’s past experience at Thetford. “But she’s so positive. At this level, it’s all about learning. She’s really done a great job so far.”
Two of Fifield’s former athletes waved her over after Friday night’s game, stopping by to visit their former coach. In many ways, Fifield still sees former players as her own; she’s more proxy mother than coach now. Had circumstances been different, Fifield would likely still be their coach, making their visits that much harder to deal with.
“I miss the older kids,” she said, holding back tears. “You build a bond with a lot of these kids. It’s hard when you leave them. … Like tonight: They come down, they had a game, they tell you their frustrations. It’s hard. It’s really hard.”
Which made attending Thetford’s first high school game of the season so awkward for Fifield, who worked the scorebook from the Thetford dugout as the Panthers took on neighboring South Royalton on April 16. A year ago, yelling instructions from the Panthers’ dugout would have been a no-brainer. But Fifield knew she couldn’t.
“I just couldn’t say anything,” she said. “I didn’t feel like it was my place anymore.”
Her place, for the 2016 season, is coaching softball at a much more basic level, just a short throw away from Fifield’s old grounds. It’s a different environment with different expectations, requiring a completely different coaching style than the one Fifield is used to – competitiveness and preparation are secondary to a slow introduction to the game’s fundamentals.
But Fifield is learning on the fly. In a sense, it’s her way of giving back to the Thetford softball program she didn’t want to leave behind.
“They haven’t had a softball program for two years down here,” Fifield said. “It’s really hard. Coaching varsity and whatnot, when you have to work with kids on throwing and all of that stuff … If you can get them to do that prior to working on the fun things with the honed in skills, it makes it a lot easier.
“I said what the heck? I love softball.”
Mike Pomeroy took over as the the Panthers’ head coach this season. Thetford is 5-2 through seven games and most recently broke a two game losing streak with a 12-6 win over Lamoille.
Still, Fifield misses varsity softball. It’s why visits from her former players can make her emotional. She cherishes the camaraderie with her athletes, the thrills of winning and losing. Thetford Elementary School softball, on the other hand, presents a whole different challenge: introducing the game of softball to a team of young athletes that hasn’t played it before. But in some ways, teaching the game at such a basic level is even more important than her work at varsity.
“It’s been a while since we’ve gone deep into the (high school) playoffs. Last year was one of the first times we’ve gone deep into the semis,” Fifield said. “I think it shows how things have gone. … But you can build stuff and it’s nice; you can see the fruits of your labor.”
Fifield is hoping to bring some of that commitment to youth softball, though the change in priorities – fun and learning versus high stakes competition – has forced the veteran coach to change her coaching style.
“This, there’s no pressure. There’s no pressure whatsoever. So it’s nice because you come and you teach, it’s about learning the basics,” Fifield said. “Up there, at a varsity level you’re there to win and to make it to the championship.”
Fifield hopes her efforts can help the high school varsity team do just that, even if it’s not under her watch. Thetford’s middle school program, despite coaching changes, has remained stable over the past few years. By introducing athletes early, Fifield hopes the Panthers can build a program that can help the town grow experienced, talented athletes for the high school varsity team.
“The hard part is Thetford has always struggled with pitching,” she said. “We’ve always had a hard time with the pitching part of it. These guys, we’ve got a few kids (who could make an impact).”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or at 603-727-3306.