BRISTOL—Sometimes the best stories don’t begin with a game-winning hit or a strikeout.
Sometimes they begin with a ZIP code.
Bristol Little League Softball’s 12-year-old All-Star team is headed to the Connecticut State Little League championship tournament after rallying past Fairfield, 10-5, on Monday night.
And when the game reached one its biggest moments, the ball found its way into the hands of a player who wasn’t even wearing Bristol colors a year ago.
Trailing 5-3 in the second inning, Bristol manager Adam Whitlock made the move to Avery Collins.
The 11-year-old walked into a pressure cooker. Four innings left. A state tournament berth hanging in the balance.
“I felt some pressure because I knew the state tournament was on the line,” Collins admitted afterward. “I just knew I had to come in and trust my stuff.”
She did exactly that.
Collins blanked Fairfield the rest of the way, allowing just four hits while Bristol’s offense erased the deficit and eventually pulled away for the win.
The win thrust Bristol into Wednesday’s Section 1 championship game. It will play the winner of Tuesday’s Fairfield-Milford elimination game, though both teams playing on Wednesday will advance to the four-team state tournament.
On Monday, once Bristol grabbed the lead, Collins’ confidence only grew.
“I just know I have to keep the lead,” she said. “I have more confidence in myself knowing that we have the lead.”
Simple words.
Confident words.
The kind that make you forget you’re talking to an 11-year-old.
But Collins’ story goes much deeper than what happened inside the pitching circle on this night.
Truth of the matter, she’s not from Bristol.
She’s from Southington.
And that’s where this story became impossible for me to ignore.
Southington has become one of Connecticut’s premier softball towns. The high school program has built one of the state’s proudest traditions, holders of a national record for most state tournaments won.
Travel softball is everywhere.
But there isn’t a Little League softball program.
So when Collins decided she wanted the Little League experience, Bristol became home thanks to a Little League rule that states if an abutting town does not have a Little League program, players from that town can play for another team.
“I knew I wanted to play All-Stars,” she said. “We don’t have a Little League in our town and I knew this team was really good, so I wanted to come play with them.”
Asked how the Bristol girls accepted someone from another town, Collins didn’t hesitate.
“They accepted me really well,” she said. “Now I feel like part of the family.”
Part of the family.
Those five words probably meant more than any statistic from Tuesday night’s game.
Last summer, Bristol marched all the way to the Little League Softball Northeast Regional championship.
Collins wasn’t part of that team.
This year she is.
And Tuesday night, when Bristol needed someone to slam the door, it was the girl from Southington doing exactly that.
Whitlock couldn’t say enough about what Collins has brought to the program.
“She’s one of our younger kids,” he said. “She’s very mature for her age. The chemistry of these kids is everything, and she was a great addition this year.”
Then he smiled.
“You can have a conversation with her and you can tell she’s dialed in,” he added.
He wasn’t kidding.
After a shy first hello, Collins answered every question with the poise of someone years older than her age.
Whitlock also pointed out something that has quietly become one of Bristol’s greatest strengths.
The confidence to hand the ball to someone else.
Starter Ava Lefurgey battled early before Collins entered in relief, and Whitlock knew his pitchers would support one another no matter whose turn it was.
“It’s a nice luxury to have four arms that can all support one another,” he said. “Everyone’s cool about being subbed out for the next one. It’s really impressive because not everybody has that kind of maturity.”
Maybe that’s why this group keeps winning.
Nobody seems concerned about who gets the spotlight.
They just want the next out.
The next hit.
The next chance to celebrate together.
And together they did celebrate. Collins shut down the Fairfield bats as Bristol’s hitters ignited for 10 hits in the 6 inning game.
Lucy Bastiaanse had two hits and scored two runs. Lafurgey drove in four with a double and a single. Lucy Kalat drove in a pair with a hit. Keeva Knowles had a hit, an RBI and two runs scored.
In fact, eight different batters had hits while three of the four hitters who did not at least drew walks to get on base.
This was the consummate team effort.
But there’s another layer to Collins’ story that made me smile.
Every summer, thousands of young softball players dream about making it to the Little League Softball World Series in Greenville, North Carolina. It’s the stage they see on ESPN.
For girls in towns without a Little League program, that dream can disappear before it even starts.
Unless another town opens its doors.
Bristol did.
Now a girl from Southington is helping keep Bristol’s championship dreams alive.
Funny how youth sports work sometimes.
A town gave a young pitcher a chance.
A young pitcher gave that town four scoreless innings when it needed them most.
Seems like a pretty fair trade to me.
(From The Dugout is a regular column written by CT Softball Blog Publisher John Nash)
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