Members of the 2008 Babe Ruth World Series champion Hurricanes team gather at HGSA August 11, 2015. Pictured are Brooke Alagona, Val Suto, Jamie Terry, Taylor Bachik, Kaitlin Brugnoli, Gerri Laird, Mackenzie Ewell, Courtney Whittaker and Jess Giordano.
Back in 2008, the 12U Hamilton Hurricanes softball team knew it was good. Its coaches knew, its fans knew, its players knew.
When the Hamilton Girls Softball Association squad advanced to and won the Babe Ruth World Series in Audubon, Pennsylvania, that year, it expected good things—at the very least, the girls would make it out of pool play. All manager Jerry Laird and coaches John Giordano, Fred Ewell and John Terry had to do was sit back and watch.
“They worked so hard,” Laird said. “It was a culmination. We were very good, but we also had to be lucky. Things went our way, and it was awesome. I had a great staff. Everybody did their job. We let [the girls] play, and we didn’t screw it up.”
The girls—Brooke Alagona, Taylor Bachik, Caitlin Brugnoli, Lexie Chianese, Amber Dietrich, Hailey Donovan, Mackenzie Ewell, Jess Giordano, Alyssa James, Gerri Laird, Maeve McCann, Alexa Nyktas, Val Suto, Jamie Terry and Courtney Whittaker—powered through the loser’s bracket all the way up to the World Series final, where they defeated Plaquemine, Louisiana, twice to capture the title. The team was unbeaten in the tournament prior to its matchups against Hamilton. Many of the girls also returned to the Series as 16-year-olds, though they were eliminated early on in that tournament.
And when they all gathered at HGSA one hot day last month, just as a summer shower was clearing out, it was like a homecoming. The meeting was the first time the players and coaches had been together since 2008, and a chorus of “I miss you” and “How are you?” rang out instantaneously between hugs.
Now, they are all working, in college or both. But Laird said that while they are all older, they’ve stayed the same in all but age.
“Some of them I see occasionally. Some of them I don’t,” he said. “It’s really neat seeing how they’ve grown. It’s funny because when you hear them, their personalities really are still pretty much the same. They’re older and grown up, but they’re still the same.”
Suto, James and Jamie Terry all went on to attend Nottingham High School, where the trio played on a Northstars’ softball team that made it to the Mercer County Tournament and Central Jersey Group III finals in 2013, its best finish in two decades. Suto, a standout for Nottingham, continued her career into college at Seton Hall, where she recorded a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage her freshman year and started nearly every game the following season. Suto, a graphic design major, also plays for the Stratford Brakettes, an Amateur Softball Association team based in Stratford, Connecticut.
Jamie Terry currently attends Virginia Wesleyan College, where she is majoring in recreation and leisure management. James was a cheerleader at Nottingham and is currently pursuing a degree in biochemistry at Penn State Berks.
Alagona, Whittaker, Brugnoli, Bachik, Dietrich, Nyktas, Jess Giordano, Mackenzie Ewell and Gerri Laird all went to Steinert High School. Nyktas, Whittaker, Brugnoli, Bachik, Dietrich, Mackenzie Ewell and Jess Giordano played for the consistent Colonial Valley Conference powerhouse, and both Jess Giordano and Dietrich are still teammates at Cabrini College. The pair also played field hockey for the Spartans. Jess Giordano started off as a social work major, but will switch to sports management this year. Dietrich, a social work major with a minor in leadership studies, received first team all-Easter College Athletic Conference honors. She was also named to the National Fastpitch Association’s east region third team.
Alagona attends Mercer County Community College as an education major. Whittaker also goes to Mercer, where she played softball for one year but decided to focus on academics instead. She also works as a dental assistant. Brugnoli attends Towson University, where she is a mass communications major.
“I think it’s cool seeing what everyone’s up to,” Whittaker said. “That’s all different, but we’re still the same. Nobody’s really changed in eight years.”
Mackenzie Ewell attends York College of Pennsylvania, where she plays softball and majors in radiology. She also played basketball at Steinert. Gerri Laird is a psychology and criminology double major at the College of New Jersey, and Bachik attends Mercer, where she was a radiology major but is currently undecided. Nyktas goes to Rider University, where she is a psychology major. She plans on going to graduate school to get her doctorate in the same subject. Like some of the other girls, she also wanted to focus on school, so she chose not to play sports for the Broncs, though she did recently play in the HGSA alumni game.
Chianese graduated from Notre Dame High School and currently attends High Point University in North Carolina. She studies strategic communication with a minor in marketing, and has made Dean’s List twice. She played field hockey for the Irish, but opted not to continue in order to focus on her education.
“I can’t believe it’s been so long since the memorable 2008 season, but it’s so awesome to see how far each of us has come,” she said.
Giordano agreed, adding that “not too many people get to say they’re world champions.”
“There’s nothing that could ever take away from what these kids did,” Ewell said. “No one else has done it since. You’re a member of a club for life: world champions.”
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