New Nashua North head softball coach Jamie Trudel works with Titan Ava Durden in the hitting cage near the softball field during a recent practice. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – The first sign of trouble came the first game of the 2021 season, when the Nashua High School North softball team lost by over 20 runs to Merrimack in the program’s first game in two years. All spring sports were retuning after the 2020 season was cancelled due to COVID.

But for some programs – especially North softball – the damage was massive. The players disappeared, as well as the coaches.

And with all of them, the wins. North has not won a softball game, according to new head coach Jamie Trudel, since before COVID, 0-90 over the last five seasons. Trudel, a former Titan assistant, is the program’s fourth head coach in the last six years, and has coached extensively in the Nashua Park-Recreation program, etc for over seven years. He’s familiar with just about every player.

“Most of the girls that are in the Nashua North program now I’ve coached in (Park-Rec),” he said.

He knows the deal.The Titans basically over the last few years have been focusing on fundamentals, learning the game, not worrying about scores, etc. It’s almost like learning how to crawl before even learning how to walk.

But at some point, Trudel agrees, that has to change.

“There’s been a lot of challenges in recent years,” Trudel said. “But my expectation is to reset the standard by building a foundation for them.But this starts with competing in every single game, very hard, discipline, and hopefully start turning the corner for a JV program also.”

This year there’s 17 girls in the program, and Trudel was hoping for a bit more, around 24, 25 to have enough for a JV team. But he sees he’s getting quality over quantity.

“The group I have now is very motivated, very focused,” he said. “They want to take the next step, and that’s to win games. My goal is if we start winning game, we will have a JV team.”

In other words, more kids will come out for the program. The old addage is at this level, quality comes from quantity.

There’s one thing that holds back a lot of high school softball teams in this era of the game – pitching. The highly successful teams – such as Londonderry, for example – have the fireballing ace in the circle. Even Nashua South, which has been competitive despite not winning on a consistent basis, has lacked that, although senior pitcher Cate Marvin has developed into that.

Trudel feels there’s a clear-cut reason why.

“Nashua is lacking that,” he said, “because we don’t have accessible pitching coaches because we don’t have indoor facilities. Even the town leagues, they don’t have a lot of pitching. All the pitching coaches are in Bedford, or towns that have a batting cage facility (that’s available.).”

Certainly, there are indoor cages, etc. that teams have used.in the city. But Trudel feels they’re basically booked up for baseball, not softball.

“Baseball takes over everything,” he said. “I’m trying to find a place where I can go, bring the girls there, and do it all winter long.”

That’s something Trudel is trying to work on “but that’s going to take a little bit to establish.”

But he knows what the standards should be.

“Going from a middle school team, they should know how to throw when they get to the high school,” he said. “At least the basics, the fundamentals of it. The speed will come. But it’s just learning how to throw a pitch. Just get it over the plate,nothing special, and then in the off-season they can start working on it, the speed of it.”

Trudel has coached 10U, 12U and 14U teams, and his philosophy is first get the pitcher to throw it over the plate.

“I would say ‘This is how we go about it, but it’s up to you to keep practicing,'” Trudel said. “But we can’t just focus on pitching, we’ve got 14 girls we have to work with.”

And with pitchers not able to record strikeouts, there needs to be en emphasis on defense and softball IQ, because the ball will be put in play a lot.

“My philosophy to the pitchers was put the ball in play and let everyone else handle it,” Trudel said. “You get the reps and then you have a defense behind you. That was my goal with the rec teams and I think it worked well.”

He saw that work in the fall two years ago when the local rec teams would have to play more established travel teams because there weren’t enough rec teams to play.

“We were just a rec team in Nashua and they were killing us 30-0,” he said. “But then we ended up 9-4, we turned it around, and the kids played like a travel team.”

Trudel said that when started coaching for Park-Rec, there were 40 girls playing softball. Now, he says, that’s up to 120-plus, from 8U to 12U, as there’s no 14U team any longer.

What does he attribute that to?

“Just having more coaches that really love the game and love to teach,” he said. “We used to do an open gym for 8U up to 14U, rent out schools, the (city) would let us, we’d bring our equipment there.”

He began coaching at North under former coach Jen Hall last year, and still coaches in the rec leagues, mainly in the fall.

But he knows that with the upper levels of Division I, it’s difficult for teams like his to compete.

“You’ve got pitchers throwing 55-60 miles an hour,” Trudel said. “If you haven’t seen it before, it’s intimidating.”

So he’s in the hunt for a pitching coach and facility, and “I’m trying to work on that while trying to figure out the high school.”

This is his first high school head coaching job. But he feels good about what he has.

“I think we have a pretty good core team,” he said. “We have a couple of freshman that came up from Pennichuck with us, and I think they’re going to help our team grow.”

The struggle goes beyond five years, as the Titans according to Trudel are 13-131 over nine years.

“I’m hoping we can change this around,” said Trudel, who feels the girls he has now are above the crawling stage and approaching being more competitive.

“I think we’re above that on the girls playing,” he said. “They know the game, they know what needs to be done. We just need to execute the plan.”

Trudel has a former baseball coach who came over from South, Doug Howard, to help out.

“We’re planning on turning this completely around so we can have a competitive team, and maybe down the road we can have a JV team… Once you start winning, kids are going to come out.”

Patience though, is the key, Trudel said.

“I think it’s going to take a little bit,” he said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Trudel says Park-Rec needs more voluntee coaches. “No one wants to volunteer their time,” he said. “That’s how I ended up coaching a 12U and a 14U team in the same season.”

Once they have more coaches, Trudel said, players can work on drills that will help them at the middle school level. His opinion is loud and clear on this.

“They shouldn’t be learning how the play the game in high school,” he said, referring to the basics.

Why does Trudel have such an affinity for the game? Well, he one daughter, Marissa, with him on the North squad, and another, Kylie, plays at Pennichuck. He fell in love with the game playing adult slow pitch softball.

And he wants the word to get out that North is serious about the game.

“The girls,” he said, “need to know there’s a softball program.”

And that it’s time for the crawl to end and the walk to start.