Future Looks Bright for Fairfax Rebel Softball

Sports fans live for the underdog story. A high school team flounders for years, despite potential and raw talent, until the right coach comes into the program and earns trust from his players, making believers out of all of them. That happened at Fairfax High School for the 2012 varsity softball team. First-year Head Coach Matt Hoffert led his Rebels to seven wins this season after struggling for several years.

“I enjoyed being able to come in and rebuild a program that had a couple down years,” said coach Matt Hoffert regarding his first year with the program. “But I knew there was young talent coming in and some returners that were coming back, that could be a winning team.”

Two of those returners, seniors Farren Tashjian and Tiffany Balbuena (four-year starter), stepped up to lead the Rebels and took the young players under their wings. In fact all of the seniors helped create the chemistry they lacked before 2012.

“They kind of adopted those freshman as like little sisters,” Hoffert said. “They took them in right away and were good mentors and role models for them, treating them like family from the beginning. [Farren and Tiffany] made things somewhat easy on me being able to rely on them to be leaders of the team.”

While Fairfax finished the season below .500 at 7-11 after losing to Madison in the first round of the Liberty District Tournament, the Rebels began their season at 4-1, dominating several out-of-district opponents and helping the team gain confidence. However, Hoffert’s girls ran into trouble during the second act of the season due to injury and a bit of bad luck.

“In the middle of the season it was almost like this stretch where all of these things started happening and we lost a couple games,” the coach said. “We did a good job coming back and managed to win two out of our last three regular season games.”

Hoffert added that some of his youngest athletes improved greatly during the short three-month season at their respective positions and at the plate.

“A couple of freshmen stepped up,” he said. “Erin Ginch played third base and Kiana Sherlund is my leadoff hitter and made second-team all-district as a second baseman. She’s one of those kids who is my lead off and a left-handed slapper. I think her on base percentage is like .600.”

Meanwhile, a few Rebels earned respect from peers and coaches after garnering All-District spots, including Rebecca Hall and Kiana Sherlund who won first team and second team respectively. Hoffert said he believes a winning attitude is “contagious.” He hopes it spreads in 2013 but said it will take sacrifice and hard work to reach the potential his girls have.

“A lot of the girls are playing on travel teams, so a lot of these girls are going to have a lot more experience,” he said. “If you want to improve your skills, you have to play in the summer for a summer team or SYA.”

Hoffert has many goals for the Rebel softball program. One of those is helping to build and improve a feeder league that flows specifically to Fairfax. He understands that getting kids passionate about a sport at an earlier age creates energy, competition, winning and most importantly good old plain fun. The Rebels are on their way to a promising future and today’s junior varsity players are tomorrow’s varsity stars.

“The thing that’s the bright spot for me is our JV team went 8-6 this season,” Hoffert said. “That was the first winning season for the JV team in probably he last decade. Our mantra is ‘to restore the roar’ in Fairfax softball. I want kids having the attitude coming in, that they expect to win every game.”