MANCHESTER—Chloe Fontaine had heard all the stories and cliches from softball players past who waxed poetic about how upon arriving on campus things felt like “home.”
She took it all with a grain of salt.
Until she visited St. Lawrence University.
“I don’t know,” the Manchester High School first baseman said. “It just felt the most comfortable and homey. It’s weird because a lot of people will tell you that and you don’t believe it, but it feels like home, and it genuinely did.”
And because it felt like home, Fontaine has committed to becoming a St. Lawrence University softball player beginning in the fall of 2024.
After four years at Manchester, Fontaine knew she wanted a smaller school for whatever came next—both in the classroom and on the softball field.
“I ended up going up to an overnight and a prospects camp and I just loved the campus,” Fontaine said. “It’s beautiful, by the mountains. The coach is so wonderful and sweet, and the girls were amazing.”
The lefty first baseman, who hopes to major in either environmental science or conservation biology, played multiple sports while growing up.
“But I never had fun playing them,” she said.
Softball, however, was different.
“I started playing and I don’t know why but it just stuck,” Fontaine said.
Fontaine admitted she appreciated that the sport was hard.
“I never had a bad moment playing while growing up,” she said. “It was hard along the way; I wasn’t good at all when I was younger, and it took a lot of work and lessons and training to be able to improve.”
She played Little League in Coventry and by the time she was in eighth grade she had began her travel journey with the CT Tigers.
Her freshman year in high school, Fontaine decided she might want to play in college and ratcheted up her commitment to the sport even more.
“I took it even more seriously and decided I wanted to play in college,” she said. “My dad and I would go out and practice daily, just getting reps as much as I could.”
She also switched to Massachusetts-based NWS Elite travel program.
“My parents and I wanted to find a team that was more competitive and doing more competitive tournaments,” Fontaine said. “I did want to take it more seriously.”
Now that she has committed to St. Lawrence, once her final Manchester High season wraps up, she will play for the Shoreline Sting 18U Gold this summer.
Manchester head coach Kelsey Galevich is going to miss her.
“I’m only in my second year as her coach, but I will say in the one season of having Chloe as one of my players, she’s made a huge impression on me,” Galevich said. “I think the world of her. She’s like a smarter version of me when I was in high school.”
Because of her height and her left-handedness, Fontaine became a first baseman at a young age.
It became her go-to position, but Fontaine also became a student of the game and a leader for the Red Hawks.
“Her game IQ is very high for a high school player,” Galevich said. “She has incredible softball intelligence. She knows where everybody is supposed to go. She’s an all-around leader. I give it to her in every aspect of the game.”
Fontaine has also worked on her hitting craft.
“She has a good bat and makes solid contact with the ball,” her coach said.
With one more season left at Manchester, Fontaine just wants to have one last special season with her friends and teammates.
“I’m really upset it’s my senior year,” she said. “Everything is coming to an end and it’s really sad. But this season we just want to have fun with my teammates and make the most of it.”
Once her career wraps up, though, a new softball field awaits in Canton, N.Y.
And, whether Chloe Fontaine believed it or not going in, it felt like home and will be just that for the next four years.
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