On July 6, Southington American Legion head coach Mark Verderame looked ahead at a daunting task: 13 games in 11 days. Thanks to rainouts and the season getting a late start because the high school year went to the very last game, the P72s were going to have to fight adversity and muster up the physical strength to get the wins needed to get into the playoffs. Verderame voiced some of the issues the schedule presented.
“The difficulty is getting the kids to come to play everyday. There are going to be bad days, there are going to be good days. The key is you can’t get too up when things are going well, you can’t get too down when things are going bad,” he explained.
Going into that game against Avon last Wednesday, the squad was 9-5, still needing six wins to get into the playoffs. With a little touch of serendipity, they came into Monday at 13-8 and in a prime spot to qualify for the playoffs out of Zone 1.
After losing back-to-back games to Avon and Simsbury to fall to 9-7, the team got a forfeit win from Burlington last Friday, a team already eliminated from playoff contention, then split a double-header with Torrington Saturday before getting a pair of forfeits from Wolcott on Sunday, another team eliminated from playoff contention.
To get four wins and put the team on the brink of qualification was certainly positive, but getting a few wins without having to take the field made things a little better because Verderame got to rest his pitchers for the final week.
“Playing every day, you’ve got to have guys that go deep into the game,” he said of his staff. “We’ve got that setup, we’ll be fine and I like our chances.”
He said during this stretch he tried to instill in his guys to just go little by little and not look at the big picture.
“You’ve got to look at this game today,” Verderame said. “Especially playing every day, we’ve got to look at a game at a time and that’s what I keep telling these guys.”
As for getting those two playoff-qualifying wins, concern was not even a distant thought.
“We’ve got six games, got to win two of them. I think we should be able to win two of them,” Verderame said of the playoff chances coming into the week. “I like where we’re at right now.”