By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Both Marissa Soprano and Jeff Schattin are excited to take the next step forward as coaches., For the past two seasons, Soprano has been the junior varsity softball coach at Princeton High School. This season she moves up to the top spot with the varsity, replacing Dave Boehm as the Little Tigers’ head coach., Schattin has spent the last four years as an assistant with the West Windsor-Plainsboro South program and this season will take over as the head varsity coach, replacing Kristin Delarosa., Princeton went 9-14 a year ago. With a solid returning nucleus of players Soprano is familiar with, the Little Tigers are hoping for a winning season this time around., “The girls have been great,” said Soprano, who played her high school softball at Jackson Memorial. “We have a strong senior class. I have been leaning on them with their leadership to make sure practice are effective. We finally got outside a little this week but it has been tough with the weather., “The seniors, I had them as sophomores my first year. Most of the girls in the senior class have been with the varsity prog since I came in. It’s nice for them to be familiar with me and the junior class a lot my girls from the JV so now they know me.”, Soprano has been involved with softball all of her life and hopes to build a strong program at Princeton., “I played pretty competitively growing up,” she said. “I played travel and high school. I returned after college and got into coach the local travel team with my former high school coach who ran the travel program. I coached two years for him in Jackson and this is my fourth year at Princeton and my third year coaching at Princeton.”, Soprano loved playing the sport growing up and she wants the girls in Princeton to have that same experience., “I want to make sure the girls know to play hard every game and if they play to the best of their ability they should be satisfied,” said Soprano, a social studies teacher at the high school. “The softball program is pretty small in comparison to track and lacrosse. I want to make sure we have a JV program every year so the girls stay with the program all four years and continue to improve., “We have a good group of upperclassmen. One of the benefits of practice inside as much as we have had to is they got to show a lot of the new girls and the girls on JV the right way to do things. We had more hands involved.”, As the head coach, Soprano will be a teacher and a recruiter for the program as Princeton looks to add numbers., “I had the seniors go around to the home rooms and make announcements about the sport that we were open to everyone and that we have a good program,” said Soprano, whose team is scheduled to open the season at home on Saturday against Hamilton West. “Hopefully we can keep building the interest.”, At WW-P South, Schattin is also familiar with the players in the program from his time spent as an assistant coach., “I know the girls well,” said Schattin, who spent a season as an assistant under Nicky Arias before assisting Delarosa the last two seasons. “I think that was one of reasons they chose me. We’re trying to build a program with aspirations of being a Robbinsville, Steinert or Notre Dame., “West Windsor has the Ninjas travel program and Katie Schuh, who coaches with the Ninjas, is also our JV coach.We’re tying to build up a program to get to that level of those other schools. We’ve added a couple games at night at R.J. Ward Field so parents can come out and see the team play. And we’re playing in the Rancocas Valley elite tournament in a couple weeks. The CVC is tough and we’ve added Bordentown, South Brunswick, Monroe and New Egypt. So we have a challenging schedule.”, The Pirates, who were 8-13 last year, have a strong nucleus around which to build this season as 10 of the top 12 players return to the fold., “We are fortunate that most of the girls play travel,” Schattin said. “We think we’ll be competitive. You never know, but we’ll see how we do. We are supposed to open up on Saturday at Ewing.”, Schattin, whose daughter, Samantha, was a key player for the Pirates the past four years and is now a starter at Stevens Tech, hopes to be able to bring some stability to the program and build a winner., “That would be the plan,” Schattin said. “I am semi-retired so I’d like to be able to stay with it as long they’ll have me.”
