Coach Debra Cohen is bringing back the practices and chants to the Hoover softball field, like the good ol’ days. This year, she’s accompanied by Emanuel Ortiz, a former Hoover grad.

Last year was a very difficult year for the softball team. Just like every sport, a team needs to have a coach or team captain, capable of bringing the team together and bond to succeed and lead to wins, and Cohen stepped up to the plate this year.

Cohen has a lot of coaching experience and taking this spot of coaching the softball team is really enthusiastic for the team and school. She has coached CV United, the largest league in Glendale dedicated solely to girls. 

Not only was it softball that she coached, but it was also volleyball many years ago. Cohen’s coaching has gained a lot of attention throughout the years, not for the people but mainly for the team. 

The amount of trophies in her class is insanely impressive.

Ortiz is an assistant for Cohen and is helping bring the softball team to a higher leadership as well as on the field. When attending Hoover, Ortiz was part of the baseball team and knew some tactics on how to teach it as well as coach it. But he explained how this year will be his first time coaching softball. 

He explained the best way to improve the team this year as well as with skill.

“Skill comes over time but mainly bringing the team together and encouraging them as a team together, I think that itself improves the team,” he said, which is a practical and most effective skill to perform especially for people practicing three days a week after school. 

“I feel like there wasn’t any structure in the softball program before with the previous coach and I feel like me and Cohen here, would like to bring that structure back to the softball program. And you know we start from there, we start bringing the team together,” he said. 

The record last year was 3-9 and Hoover is hoping that this year will be way different. 

Ortiz also said, “if you look at the record from last year they started off very poorly, and towards the end, they did come together cause the more experience and the more time they had together, that’s when it came into the formation of winning games.”