Sports Cancer Survivor Loren Luddy Named Coach Of The Year By Sports Media The Woodland Regional High School softball coach will receive the Doc McInerney Coach of the Year Award at the 81st Gold Key Dinner. Reply
Softball coach Loren Luddy. (Woodland Regional High School)
By Ken Morse
BEACON FALLS, CT — Being victorious on the field of athletic competition is the ultimate goal for any player or coach that ever wore the uniform. For Woodland softball coach Loren Luddy, it has been a journey marked with pride, achievements and a little bit of adversity in between. Actually it was a whole lot of adversity in between. After winning the 300th game of her career at Woodland and guiding her team to its first ever state championship, adversity showed up in the form of a cancer diagnosis. Facing the hardest battle she has ever fought, Luddy relied on her family, her fellow teachers and her players to get through the toughest journey she’s ever been on.
“At first I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Luddy said. “It wasn’t denial; I was just the tough coach and even tougher athlete and I just needed to tough it out. But I really couldn’t have done it without the support of my family, my friends and fellow teachers at Woodland, and certainly most of all my team. They all had my back.” Luddy may be small in stature, but she’s huge in heart. Tough as nails and without a doubt the most fearless athlete you ever want to meet. Athlete? Yes, athlete. She still competes in the Prospect Women’s Softball League and plays soccer in the Nutmeg Women’s Soccer League.
“I want to be the one up at bat with the bases loaded,” Luddy said. “I want to be the one at the free throw line down by one with no time left. I want to be the one taking that PK to decide the game. I’m a competitor and that’s what competitors do.” After a successful coaching stint at Naugatuck under the tutelage of coaching legends Art Nunes (soccer) and Keith Raczkowski (girls basketball), Luddy faced her toughest and most exciting test as one of the first coaches at the new Woodland high school in 2001.
The former Taft All-New England three-sport athlete went on to star at Colgate University in softball as a scholar All-American and senior team captain before taking the reins at Woodland. She compiled a 64-32-9 ledger in six seasons of soccer from 2001 to 2006, wining the Naugatuck Valley League championship in 2004. It was in softball that Luddy helped put Woodland, and namely the town of Beacon Falls, on the map. In 2004, the upstart Hawks arrived at the Class S state championship game and everyone was wondering where Beacon Falls was.
Fast forward almost 20 years, and Woodland is the Class M back-to-back state champions. Luddy has compiled an impressive 335-141 record, three NVL championships and two state titles. “This award is such an honor,” she said. “But 99 percent of this award is for the whole community. Every assistant coach throughout this program, every player that ever wore the uniform for the past 21 years.” The Connecticut Sports Media Alliance, formerly known as the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance, will recognize Luddy and others at the 81st annual Gold Key Dinner on Oct. 22 at 2 p.m. at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. Luddy’s counterpart selected as boys high school coach of the year is Haddam-Killingworth baseball coach Mark Brookes. Gold Key recipients are Laurie LaRusso, boys and girls volleyball coach at Darien High School; Babby Nuhn, field hockey coach at North Branford High School; longtime MLB umpire Terry Tata, a Waterbury native who now lives in Cheshire; Jan Merrill-Morin, 1976 Olympian and former world record holder in three running events; and Gary Makowicki, former coach/athletic director at Norwich Free Academy. Tickets are $75 each; checks made out to CSMA should be mailed to P.O. Box 3234, Enfield, CT 06083. Purchasers should also write on the check who they are attending for. Deadline for ticket orders is Oct. 14.
Cancer Survivor Loren Luddy Named Coach Of The Year By Sports Media
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