Another great article by Marc Hardin!

Direct link at the end.

 

"Throughout the season, the Villa Madonna softball team received salient reminders about the true power of team play. Along the way, the emerging small-school force set school records, won postseason accolades and put a smile on the face of everyone associated with the program.

 

"It was a great year. It was a fun year," coach Dave Meier said. "We did things we'd never done before."

 

The Blue Lightning won a program-record 16 games and put together their longest winning streak in eight years with nine straight. They tied for first in the Division III standings of the Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference with an 11-2 record. In pitcher Brooke Meier, they boasted the Division III player of the year. She was backed by a .399 team batting average.

 

"I think there was great improvement from last year," Brooke Meier said. "It was good to meet some of our goals."

 

Villa Madonna set three goals. But it was what the team accomplished in total that impressed the coach, who was in jeopardy of missing the entire season near this time last year following July 3 quadruple-bypass heart surgery.

 

"Our first goal was set the win record. The second was win conference. The third was win district," coach Meier said. "But what I needed from the beginning was some help, and I got a lot of good help from my assistants. I had some dads pitch in. I was showing up after work at games, and I only had to fill out the line-up card and coach, because I'm surrounded by great people."

 

He used to show up well before start time and line the field, and do all the extras required to make it game-ready. After doctors found 90-percent blockage in his coronary arteries and performed surgery, he was advised to re-think the idea of coaching.

 

He wanted to stay in the dugout. Meier has three daughters on the team, including junior first baseman Alexa Meier and fifth-grade utility player Camdyn Meier. He is a former Covington Catholic baseball all-star and Thomas More record-holder who found a niche coaching softball.

 

This is the third high school sports program he has successfully grown from scratch or reinvigorated, the second at Villa Madonna, where he launched the varsity baseball team in 1995. He returned to Villa as softball coach in 2013 after a stint at Notre Dame Academy. But he couldn't stay as active this year as he was before the operation.

 

The first to step up were assistant coaches Sydney Maxwell, Michelle Woods and Colleen Desmond. The coach's wife, Jennifer, a cancer survivor, became the team's unofficial public relations person. Her father lent a hand. They added a team photographer, just in time to catch all the history-making action.

 

"It was amazing," coach Meier said. "This season was a true team effort on the part of everybody involved. We got the help we needed. We set the win record. We were co-champs in the conference. We didn't win the district. But, year in and year out, we keep getting closer."

 

They finished 16-7, averaged 9.3 runs per game while giving up 4.8, and took down some teams they had not beaten in years. They won 11 games the previous season and gave up 6.3 runs.

 

Brooke Meier, an eighth-grader, was a big part of the turnaround with a 2.90 ERA, seven shutouts, one no-hitter, a .576 batting average, eight home runs and 47 RBI. But she had plenty of help from the ensemble cast at Villa.

 

Meier's battery mate, Anna Wagner, hit .471 with four homers and 38 RBI, and struck out once in 68 at-bats. Alexa Meier hit .469. She was followed by Kylee Newman (.455), Abby Bittinger (.417) and Charrisa Junker (.407). Brooke Meier, Alexa Meier, Wagner, Junker and Newman were named Northern Kentucky Softball Coaches Association Division III all-stars."

 

Meier]Meier family part of Villa's remarkable turnaround family part of Villa's remarkable turnaround

Edited June 23, 201511 yr by WhatsBestForTheGirls

Great story! Thanks for sharing.

Another nice write-up by Marc.

 

Congrats to Dave and his staff.

Great story. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks.