The CT Softball Blog

SOUTHINGTON — One of the state’s premier high school softball programs is looking for a new coach once again.

Southington High, which played for the Class LL state championship last spring, has a vacant position after Michelle Boisvert resigned following two seasons as head coach.

For Boisvert, though, the decision was about far more than her two years in charge.

It was the end of a 12-year run with the Blue Knights, including 10 seasons as an assistant under former coach Davina Hernandez, and the conclusion of a coaching career that has spanned roughly three decades.

“You know what? Part of it is it just felt like time to me,” Boisvert said. “I think people forget I was there for 10 years. And when I took the job, part of it was I felt I wanted to have an easy transition from Davina to me to keep the program in the same place it had always been.”

That continuity has been one of the defining characteristics of a Southington program whose success has been built not only on championships, but on generations of coaches passing the program from one familiar set of hands to another.

Joe Piazza established the standard, leading the Blue Knights to 13 state championships before John Bores, who had a long tenure as an assistant under Piazza, eventually took over the program.

Bores continued the tradition, going 256-27 over 12 seasons and winning state championships in 2004 and 2013. His final championship season also provided another link in the coaching chain, as Hernandez served as an assistant on his staff before taking over as head coach in 2014.

Hernandez then authored one of the most dominant stretches in Connecticut softball history.

Over 10 seasons, Hernandez compiled a 233-17 record, reached seven Class LL championship games and won five state titles, in 2014, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2022. Her first two teams both finished undefeated at 24-0.

Boisvert was alongside Hernandez for that entire run, serving as an assistant for all 10 seasons before succeeding her as head coach in 2025.

The partnership wasn’t necessarily one anyone could have predicted.

Boisvert had spent much of her career coaching basketball in Massachusetts before eventually helping with softball at the middle school level. When she was approached about joining Hernandez’s staff, her initial reaction was simple.

“I was like, ‘What? I’m a basketball coach,’” Boisvert said. “But Davina and I met and we could just tell that we were going to be good for each other. And that worked out really well. I mean, we learned from each other.”

The results speak for themselves.

“Five titles in 10 years, I don’t think anybody’s going to top that,” Boisvert said. “I really don’t.”

When Hernandez stepped away following the 2024 season, Boisvert viewed taking over as another part of that transition.

“I never intended to stay the head coach for a long term,” she said. “Make sure the program transitioned, that it was in a good place and that I would leave it in a good place. And that’s really what I felt I had done.”

In her two seasons as head coach, Boisvert kept Southington among the state’s elite programs, culminating with last spring’s run to the Class LL championship game, where the Blue Knights fell to Cheshire.

Southington athletic director Robert McKee did not return a message left with his administrative assistant to talk about the vacant position.

However, the expectations that accompany the Southington job, Boisvert acknowledged, are different from most places.

“To be honest with you, yes. I feel there’s always pressure,” she said. “When you go into a good program, the expectations are always there that you’ll be in the tournament. And this program, they should always be in the tournament. There’s certainly enough talent there to be in the tournament every year, but they expect state titles.”

Boisvert laughed about the weight of those expectations, but she also embraced them.

“I always say pressure is a privilege, but you feel it,” she said. “You’re out there saying, ‘Man, I got to win this game. I got to win this game.’”

Now Southington begins another transition.

The program owns a state-record 20 championships. Piazza won 13, Bores won two and Hernandez won five, with Boisvert serving on Hernandez’s staff for all five.

Whoever takes over will also inherit a program that Boisvert believes remains positioned to succeed.

“The program’s in a good place,” she said. “So whoever takes that program over, it’s where it should be. It’s solid. It’s where it’s always been. And I just wanted to make sure that taking it over and leaving it there, it would be where it should be for the next person.”

There is no guarantee, however, that Southington’s long tradition of promoting from within will continue.

“I don’t know if anybody wants to,” Boisvert said. “I’ll be honest with you, it is a lot of work.”

That work, she said, extends far beyond practices and games, including postseason honors, meetings and the numerous administrative responsibilities that accompany running a varsity program.

And at Southington, all of that comes with those championship expectations.

Boisvert, meanwhile, sounds ready to discover what a spring without softball feels like.

She said she has coached for approximately 30 years, including 18 years of high school and college basketball in Massachusetts before her time in Southington.

“I’ve coached half my life,” she said.

For the past 12 years, softball has consumed much of every spring.

“For four months of the year, I’m involved in softball,” Boisvert said. “I really don’t do anything else. And I was like, wow, I kind of want my spring back.”

There is golf she’d like to play again. There are friends and family she’d like to spend more time with.

And there’s now a granddaughter.

“My oldest son just had his first daughter, so now I’m a grandma,” Boisvert said. “I want to spend time with her because I missed out on a lot of stuff with my boys. They were both in middle school and high school and they both were athletes and I missed a lot.

“So there’s a little regret there, but they both understood. They said, ‘It’s what you want to do, Mom. We get it.’ But just to spend more time with family, friends, and get back to things I used to do that I haven’t done in 12 years.”

Even walking away, however, proved difficult for a coach who had spent more than a decade helping maintain the Southington standard.

Before meeting with McKee to tell him she was stepping down, Boisvert found herself at the field, straightening things up and making sure everything was where it belonged.

“I was down the field straightening things, putting things in the shed and putting things away,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘What am I doing this for?’ But I couldn’t help myself. It’s like I got to make sure everything is where it should be.”

In some ways, it was a fitting final act.

For decades, the Blue Knights have largely passed the program from one generation of their coaching family to the next.

Boisvert believes she received it in good hands.

She believes she’s leaving it the same way.

“I carried on the tradition,” she said. “I feel I’ve left it. Whoever steps in, it’s there.”

Now Southington just has to figure out who gets the ball next.

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