Lynzie “Lou” Morgan (left) and Giana “G” Pittaro (right) have grown up with head coach Mike Hastings over the past four years and celebrated a Mercer County Tournament championship Thursday night along with teammmates Michaela Miranda (5) and Emily Gulsby (9) Photo by Mike Sabo
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Oct. 26: The three of them came in together and endured some tough times.
But they sure are making up for it now.
When Mike “Stinger” Hastings took over the Steinert High girls’ soccer program in 2014, he already had a wealth of coaching experience with the Spartans baseball and boys’ soccer teams. It was his first head coaching gig, and one of his first orders of business was to start freshmen Giana “G” Pittaro and Lynzie “Lou” Morgan on the varsity.
Steinert went 7-8-3 that first year and 10-7-3 the second. Naturally, all the experts out there knew he wasn’t the right man for the job because they assumed Steinert should win big every season.
What they failed to notice is that these were extremely young teams. Funny how a little experience has made Hastings so much smarter. With tonight’s MCT championship win over Allentown at The College of New Jersey, Steinert is now 36-4-1 over the past two years.
Hastings ignored the unfair criticism and is now showing what he’s capable of. In fact, he has shown it all along, according to the two veterans he has grown up with.
“We call him Father Hastings, he’s like a dad to us,” Morgan said. “He cares about us so much and treats us as his own and I can’t be more thankful to have him as a coach. He literally got us here, I give a lot of props to him.”
Pittaro rolled her eyes when asked if Hastings was ever as inefficient as people said.
“Absolutely not. . .absolutely not!” she said with the firmness of a mom telling her 2nd-grader he couldn’t have a cookie before dinner. “He took the program to where we are now. He just got us together. Our whole team was young during freshman and sophomore year. We have 14 seniors this year and a lot of juniors. We’re very close and he made us this way.”
But props also must be given to the two players themselves. Pittaro has made herself into a Division I performer and will headed for Yale next year. Morgan will play for Division III power Rowan, and gave a haughty huff when told her mom “liked” an article on Facebook that said TCNJ beat the Profs Wednesday night.
“Did she really?” Morgan said. “I have to talk to her!”
Morgan has been called the engine that makes Steinert go by Hastings, so that must mean Pittaro is what makes it look so good. The two of them, along with their coach, deserved this title as much as anyone.
“It’s special, it really is,” Hastings said of the bond. “We’ve grown together. I’ve learned from them, they’ve learned from me. When you go through the tough times early on, it’s difficult. You win seven games in my first season and 10 the second; last year we win 19 with nothing to show for it. Now we have a division title and a Mercer County title to show for it. It’s a testament to those girls believing in me, and me believing in them.”
And the three of them got the rest of the team to believe in each other.
“We all came into the program together and me and G kind of had a feel for it more than anyone else because we’ve been with him four years,” Morgan said. “We made the girls believe we can do it, because Hastings made us believe, since the start, we were going to get here.”
Pittaro, who laughingly agreed she has put the pressure on little brother CJ to win an MCT baseball title, felt that she and Morgan never got down during those early ears.
“Of course it’s frustration when you come out and freshman and sophomore year we didn’t have a great year,” Pittaro said. “It’s frustrating but we kept working at it. Practice, practice, practice. And we just came together and we finished. And now we’ve got something to show for it.
“I feel like our chemistry (with Hastings) is great. We know what’s asked of us, the entire team knows what’s asked of us. We are so close to each other and it’s a bond I haven’t felt with another team before, or with a coach and with another player. It’s been the three of us since the beginning. He told us freshman year we would get us there with hard work. We really took it in and practiced what he preached.”
And from a ragged start, has come riches.
