A Whole New Ballgame
When the Endicott College softball team shows up on gameday, the Gulls can’t help but feel the vibe quickly change.
It's the 13 Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) championship titles and the 13 NCAA Tournament appearances that have made the team one of the most formidable in the CCC and, for that reason, one of the most feared and revered.
“Every year, games get harder because teams know that we’re dominant,” said Maria Hanchuk ’23, the team’s left-handed pitcher. “People play their best game against us, which only makes us better as a team. But then these teams come out and they’re like, ‘No, we want to be Endicott.’”
For the seniors on the softball team, this year feels like a redemption tour, even though there’s nothing to be redeemed. Throughout its history, the team has captured 13 CCC conference titles, including the past three years. Over spring break, when the team typically heads south to Florida to kick off its season, the Gulls won seven out of 10 games in the Sunshine State, an auspicious start to a season where the team is focused on not only nabbing another CCC championship but making an impact in the NCAA tournament.
“We’re a very veteran bunch—we didn’t lose a lot from last year,” said head coach Katie Bettencourt, who has led the team since 2017, including in last year’s heartbreaking loss to Salisbury in the NCAA Tournament Regional Championship. “This group is extremely hungry to obviously win our conference, but go even further.”
If the Gulls win at regionals this year, they’ll head to Super Regionals, the softball equivalent of the Sweet 16, according to Bettencourt. “Then you go to the World Series,” she said, “and they want to get to that World Series. They know what it takes.”
Team chemistry
What does it take to excel on the field as a Gull?
For these student-athletes, it’s cultivating an unbreakable synergy, something that comes from a little luck and quality time to develop meaningful relationships both on and off the field.
“We typically do a lot of team bonding,” said left-handed catcher Raven Comtois ’23. “It opens us up more and breaks our shells open, especially for the younger class teammates. For us seniors, we’ve been through it all these past four years, and it’s brought us together much stronger. So we create this path for the younger teammates and I do believe it’s what makes our chemistry strong.”
“We’re one another’s biggest fans,” echoed infielder/outfielder Chrissy Marotto ’23. “Even if we’re competing with someone else for a spot, we’re still hyping them up. We’re telling them how to get better.”
It helps that there’s an element of unplanned synchronism and familiarity underscoring the team—Bettencourt, for instance, is the cousin of basketball head coach Kevin Bettencourt. Her father, David, is a volunteer assistant coach who brings over 20 years of coaching experience from Assumption College, UMass-Amherst, Boston College, University of New Hampshire, and others.
Meanwhile, Marotto grew up in Southington, Conn., just down the road from South Windsor, where Hanchuk learned to play softball by watching her older sister, Julia, a 2017 nursing graduate.
Marotto and Hanchuk knew of each other in high school when their teams battled each other—literally. “There was one game where this girl threw a pitch and she hit me,” laughed Marotto.
The vibe between the teams was tense then, but when the two both landed at Endicott as first-year students, it was water under the bridge.
For Comtois, having a lefty counterpart in Hanchuk makes them “probably the biggest dominating team when it comes to pitcher-catcher bonds,” she said. “As talented as we are, the chemistry really helps us. Having that target on your back means people are constantly watching you, but it gives us a challenge because now everybody has that high expectation of us.”
As a criminal justice major, Comtois is particularly no-nonsense. Working in conjunction with Internet Crimes Against Children and the Nashua Police Department, her internships involved catching predators—that means early dawn briefings with armed officers in preparation for 5 a.m. raids.
“I do it all. I wear bulletproof vests. I go in and look for evidence. I witness the interviews with the perpetrators. I’ve worked with a canine,” she said. “It’s a whole experience. It’s crazy.”
Being keenly attuned to people’s behavior is something that has helped Comtois—both in her career and on the field.
“I find myself to be a big people reader. I can sense a room. Body language really counts,” she said. So, if a teammate is having a bad day, “or they’re just kind of giving that aura that they’re not feeling right,” she said, Comtois knows it. As a team leader, it means reaching out to that person, seeing if they’re okay, and asking how she can help.
“It’s all in the name of the game,” she said.
The game of life
As much as winning is a theme for the team, for Bettencourt, coaching a group of fun, charming, and talented young women means becoming the matriarch of the family—and, come May, saying a heartbreaking goodbye to graduating seniors.
The 2022 season was particularly bittersweet for Bettencourt because it was her first recruiting class that graduated. “The silver lining in everything is all of them were either continuing their education or had jobs,” she said. “Not to sound corny, but I just really enjoy the group as human beings. I look forward to spending almost every day with them and helping them get better.”
Hanchuk said the rapport with Bettencourt helps fuel the team’s warm and welcoming culture.
“Sometimes I see her as more of a friend in conversations rather than a serious coach all the time,” she said. “I think that’s so healthy. I think her opening up and being herself makes us put more trust in her and we want to win for her even more. It’s really helped our team dynamic.”
Not that it’s all fun and games: “She’s very hard on us, for good reason though. She’s not here to coddle you or baby you,” Hanchuk added.
With Bettencourt’s stewardship, softball has also helped these student-athletes grow up. “It’s given me work ethic, time management—this sport takes a lot out of you,” said Marotto, an exercise science major. “I’m in classes, I’m in clinical, I go to practice, and sometimes go back to clinical. Coach B is always instilling into us that it’s the game of life.”
And in this game of life, Bettencourt likes to remind her team that they already have a leg up on the competition because softball is a game of failure.
“Think about if you’re successful three out of 10 times at bat—you have a 300 batting average. And that’s pretty darn good. So, one thing I say is, when you’re on job interviews, you’ve played softball your whole life, you’ve played a game of failure. So you’re not afraid to fail, you make adjustments. And you’re able to do that quickly. That’s the cool part about it. It’s a hard game, but it’s very exciting and rewarding.”
Hanchuk, a marketing communication advertising major who plans to stay at Endicott to pursue a master’s in sport leadership, hopes to work at a marketing agency that focuses on sports and athletic brands. It’s no surprise that she also can’t envision a life without softball.
“I have so much knowledge about pitching. That doesn’t come easy—that comes because I grew up receiving pitching lessons,” she said. “Now I know what it takes to be a better, successful pitcher. So that’s definitely something that I want to keep doing when I graduate.”
But no matter what happens this season, or where life takes each team member, they’ll have memories of softball and they’ll always have each other.
“I’m going to take everything I learned from coach and all my teammates into the game of life,” said Marotto. “We’re going to stick together. These friendships will last the rest of my life.”