RANKINGS
EVENTS
I COMMITTED
COLLEGE
ABOUT
The two young pre-teens first met as they played together on the Southington CT Lighting, a local travel softball team in Connecticut just a stone’s throw away from ESPN’s World Wide Headquarters in neighboring Bristol.
They were both 11 and batterymates— pitcher Sophie Garner MacKinnon and catcher Amanda Hasler —and for three years they competed together and grew as friends until the pair, and two other Lightning teammates, were invited to join Dave Lotti’s newly-organized 14U Rhode Island Thunder National team.
Flash forward to this earlier this month when the 2022 grads each committed to Power 5 schools within days of each. They even celebrated as families together with cake and blue and white balloons signifying their future college colors.
But they won’t be going together or even be playing in the same conference as Sophie committed to Duke and Amanda to Kentucky… but they couldn’t be happier for the other.
“Seeing our goals become a reality was really special for the both of us,” Sophie explained and Amanda added: “At least I have two more seasons with Soph, but then we’ll have to go out different paths for the first time after playing together for eight years!”
Sophie is currently a freshman at Hall (West Hartford, Connecticut) High and Amanda is at Avon (Connecticut) High.
We’ve long known about the pair: we recently profiled Dave Lotti’s younger teams, including the 14U National Team the friends started on, in a Club Spotlight; featured Amanda in an Extra Star Power from last year at this time and had both in the 2022 Extra Elite 100 rankings—Sophie as the #10 overall player and #4 ranked pitcher and Amanda as the #65 rated prospect and #25 ranked catcher.
Coach Lotti says he knew of Amanda first, when she was in the 8th grade.
“I let her come down and practice with our team,” he recalls, “and we were doing live drills. Amanda barreled up juniors and senior pitchers who were committed and we were really impressed. Sophie I didn’t know as much about; we had four pitchers and when we took her, she was fourth of the four. You could see she had raw talent and power, but the question was how much she would work and put her work in, but she did it. Ultimately, she ended up being the #1 pitcher.”
He’s had a front-row seat to the players’ development not just on the field, but off.
“You can tell they’re extremely tight,” the coach continues, “but they also two of the most popular players on my team. They are both well-liked and have a great chemistry together because they’re fantastic kids. I’ve done this (coaching) 21 years and today you have to recruit the families as much as the kids and you can quickly see both Amanda and Sophie have extremely strong family upbringings and structure.”
And on the field?
“They went from the 14U National team and moved up to 18U’s last year, playing with older kids, and they do have that chemistry going on between pitcher and catcher. Amanda knows what’s working and what’s effective and we have given Amanda a greater role in calling pitches. They must have tens of thousands of pitches between the two of them so they’ve got that chemistry.”
“They have electric personalities,” he says, “and are great, great kids although they’re not really outgoing and not the two who are going to lead the cheers. Sophie, like many great pitchers, gets locked in and focused and we are working on getting more out of Amanda to be more vocal and more of a leader and a captain-type personality.”
Her remembers when he really saw the pair become two of the best players in the country.
“It was going on their third year with us and with the 14U team we put together you could see in the summer of 2019 at events like TC Nationals, Boulder IDT and PGF Premier Nationals where it was building. On that Friday before finals, we played five games and didn’t finish until midnight. Amanda went yard seven times that day and caught every game and Sophie pitched every game, which led to us finishing 9th and really put us on the map.
Check out our interviews with the two friends and teammates below, including what they think of each other!