Nick Restaino is certainly happy that the 2022 season — his fifth as Sacred Heart’s head coach — is off to a more normal start than his third and fourth.
“We didn’t feel like we had to hurry up to get something in before it was going to be taken away from us,” Restaino said of the team’s fall season. “The normalcy there allowed us to get back to competing in every aspect of practice, whether it was fielding percentage or hard-hit balls instead of just runs on the board.”
The Pioneers ended 2021 in a desirable position, winning three of their last four Northeast Conference series to take third in the regular-season standings before a pair of losses to eventual champion Central Connecticut State ousted them from tournament play.
The coach sees his team in a good spot in the present as well, knowing that the experiences of yesteryear and this fall can help growth going forward.
