Hanover Park’s Sergio Rodriguez Named Softball Coach of the Year

Hanover Park High School head softball coach, Sergio Rodriguez, continues his successful career journey.

More specifically, his teams continue that journey along with him.

This season, the Hornets won the North Jersey Group II Sectional state title, just one season after finishing thirteen games under .500. For their collective efforts, Rodriguez was named the 2022 NJ.com Coach of the Year.

This year’s 21 – 8 team was a young club; there were only three seniors, two who played regularly. “I've been around the gamut and I've been doing this 27-years,” Rodriguez explains. “A couple of things hit me right away when I got here. I'm not a big preacher of wins and losses, because I always tell my kids when the state tournament starts, everybody's 0 and 0. But I am a big proponent of doing well within your conference, and I believe that that's the first measurement between the kids and myself as a coach, because that's when we begin, that's our first dress rehearsal for the state tournament. That's when we're able to work on putting game plans together and trying to go into scouting reports and stuff like that.” The Hornets won only one conference game in 2021, which concerned their new coach more than their subpar record. “The fact that they were one and 10, that to me was again a little bit more of a challenge because that's where I felt the initial growth needed to occur, within the league, with our game planning and with our scouting reports. But the kids were receptive from day one.”

Although the Hornets fielded many underclassmen, Rodriguez had the benefit of having team members that did have playing experience. “The kids were extremely helpful the first time through the conference, because in a lot of situations they knew the league better than I did,” Rodriguez says. “So, it was an interesting March and April for us as we began to acquire a rhythm and a routine that ultimately will become hopefully the staple of our program as we move forward.”

The Hornets defeated Leonia, Caldwell, and Rutherford prior to knocking off Bernards in the North Group II final with a dramatic 6 – 5 victory after trailing 4 – 0. “It was an incredible moment for our kids,” Rodriguez says of the Bernards game. After an overall Group II semifinal victory over Pequannock, the Hornets lost 4 – 0 to eventual state champ, Haddon Heights. “It was a culmination of just a phenomenal, phenomenal season for them,” Rodriguez states about the Hornets. “Not necessarily in terms of wins and losses, but more so in growth. I think our kids became not only better softball players, but better people going through the process of dealing with adversity every day, and adding a goal to realistically just get better. We never spoke about winning anything. We spoke about getting better and letting the wins and losses take care of ourselves.”

For Rodriguez, its two-fold when it comes to his coaching. “I think part of me, because I've done this so long, I realize that there's an ebb and flow,” he says. “I innately do not panic or get caught up in the moment, either too high or too low too often, because I just understand that comes back around. Number two, when there are those moments where I do feel a little bit of anxiety, where I just don't know - because there are days where you just can take a look and feel your team is just not firing and maybe it's not going to happen - you just can't let them know that.”

Rodriguez, who also coached girl’s softball at Newark Academy (he was named Coach of the Year in 2007, his first season there as well), Mount Saint Dominic, and West Essex High School, says there was one thing that his team felt, and he was taught the lesson himself a long time ago. “It's a lesson I learned as a 14-year-old in Newark from my legendary baseball coach, Jerry Battaglini, one of the best coaches that ever coached in the state of New Jersey, and he's got the wins and losses to prove it. Coach Battaglini taught me at an early age to care about your players. The one thing that they allowed me to do was to care for them, and show them that there was more to this than just softball. We needed an understanding encompassing everything, from listening, to having empathy, to having a cohesion that ultimately would develop into success on the field. The one thing that they did was they allowed me to care. They all accepted what I was trying to do in terms of caring for them, not just teaching them softball.”