DANVILLE – For the first time since COVID-19 robbed student athletes of a high school sports season in 2020, Danville will not field a baseball team despite their cooperative agreement with Twinfield-Cabot as Caledonia Central Supervisory Union (CCSU) Athletics.
CCSU Athletics officially kicked off this past fall in a big way with the girls’ varsity soccer team. Twinfield-Cabot student athletes joined Danville’s program, moving them up to Division III competition. After a transitional period in personnel and playing level of opponents, head coach Spencer Morse had his team playing their best soccer by the end of the season, culminating in a huge upset over Lake Region in the first round of the Division III tournament. It was the hopes of CCSU A.D. Randy Rathburn that Twinfield-Cabot players would officially join Danville’s baseball team and Danville would join the Lady Trojan softball program after a successful trial run for both programs last season. CCSU softball will field a team this spring, but that will not be the case for the baseball program.
“We will be offering track and field to student athletes, more at a club intro level this spring and we will be fielding a cooperative softball team between the three schools based out of Twinfield. Unfortunately, especially given the pitching needs of baseball, we will not be fielding a cooperative baseball team based out of Danville this spring. We believe based on our numbers in Little League, middle school, and high school, we should be able to field a team again at the varsity level in the next two years. This spring baseball players from Twinfield-Cabot will play at Montpelier and players from Danville will play at Lyndon Institute,” said Rathburn.
Danville head coach Nick DeCaro led the Bears to a Division IV state championship as recently as 2018, with state title game appearances in 2013, ’16, ’17 and ’19. Danville won back-to-back state titles in 2011-’12, but DeCaro’s program has struggled to gain wins and consistent participation numbers post COVID.
Twinfield-Cabot’s Meles Gouge was a Mountain League Second Team selection for the Bears last spring and Danville’s Cooper Calkins was a Mountain League Honorable Mention.
Co-Head Coaches Christin Martin and Summer Haverick will coach the CCSU softball program for a fourth season this spring, where they’ll be looking to build off an impressive 10-7 campaign that saw the program win their first playoff game in nearly a decade.
