STORRS—Sisters. It’s a common term used in softball to describe your teammates.
Many coaches on the first day of practice say, “Look around you. We are family and these are your sisters.”
However, for Brookfield High School’s softball team, it means more than just your fellow teammates and friends.
Senior twin sisters Haylie and Sydney Miller know what it’s really like to be playing with your sister.
On Saturday afternoon, they took the field together for the final time, here at UConn’s Burrill Family Field in the CIAC Class L state softball championship game.
Sydney, Brookfield’s starting pitcher, would go on to give up four hits and strikeout 12 to help Brookfield win their first championship since 2000, winning the game 3-1 versus New Milford.
To go through such an incredible moment with your sister by your side must feel so incredible.
“It feels so awesome to win a championship with my sister,” Sydney said. “I am so proud of her. This is our last game together so it’s really special to be able to come off with a win.”
Haylie, the Bobcats’ right fielder, who is more soft-spoken, according to her coach Alyssa Lionetti, added, “It feels really great to win a championship with my sister. We had a really good team effort this year, but we couldn’t have had it without her.”
It was clearly a big moment for both sisters and an even better one because it was shared together.
Coach Lionetti describes these sisters as “two completely different kids, even though they’re twins. Sydney has been an absolute weapon for us the past four years. She dominates. Haylie makes game saving plays in the outfield. She comes up clutch in big situations. That’s the kind of kid she is, where it’s a little bit more quiet, but it’s just as impactful.”
Both Haylie and Sydney really were an important piece of this Brookfield team, making it quite a special one as Sydney put it.
In fact, she added, “It’s not like any other team I have been on before … We couldn’t have done it without every person here. Our chemistry, the way we pick everyone up and our positivity is just so special.”
The Millers weren’t the only two sisters on the team, either.
Brookfield also features the Aurrichios—Samantha, a junior catcher, and Mary, a sophomore left fielder, were also both starters in the Bobcats lineup.
But for Sydney and Haylie to have contributed—a team of sisters, and not in the sense that coaches usually say, but actual sisters—it was a historic moment to share their last time on a field.
Taryn Adams, a rising junior and shortstop for the Coginchaug High School softball team, is spending the summer as an intern for the CT Softball Blog.
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