Katelyn Carroll, foreground, celebrates Coventry's Division I softball championship with teammate Elise Fortier and head coach Chris Daigneault.

Journal photo / Ruben W. Perez

Deb Konuch was sitting in the same spot she had been in for all the other playoff games, in the row of seats along the right-field line at Rhode Island College.

She looked out on the diamond on that picture-perfect Saturday afternoon in June, and there was her oldest child, Katelyn Carroll, playing shortstop and batting leadoff for Coventry in the Division I championship against Cumberland. There was her daughter, in her junior year of high school, playing before a packed crowd at a first-class softball facility.

“I just couldn’t be prouder,” said Konuch, who enjoyed her share of success in multiple sports at the high school and collegiate levels. “I was very nervous to say the least, but just the raw emotion and the flashbacks of playing so many tournaments and days gone past and knowing that feeling and just having been there. You see so many parents who stand on the sidelines and they haven’t had a chance to be there, so sometimes they live through their kids. But I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to get down and dirty. I know what it’s like to feel the joy and also what it’s like to feel the sadness.”

That day, as it turned out, was a joyous one for Carroll and her Coventry teammates, as they came from behind and defeated Cumberland, 4-3, in nine innings to claim their program’s first Division I crown.

Carroll had figured prominently in the win, tying the score with an over-the-fence home run in the sixth and scoring again on a double by Elise Fortier in the top of the ninth, when Coventry rallied for three runs.

“That home run, I tell you, that was quite a moment,” Konuch said. “Just to bring that game to a tie and give us the hope to keep going. She has such a fluid stroke, and just from the swing, you heard it and you knew that it was going.

“The pride is so intense,” she continued. “When you first have your kids, you watch them hit certain milestones and you wonder what they’re going to be able to achieve. Then when they do something like this at this level, you just say, `Wow, that was my kid.’ ”

Carroll, who also plays basketball for Coventry, is carrying on a rather impressive athletic legacy in her family.

Her mother and aunt –– Deb’s twin sister, Donna, –– were both multisport stars at Coventry in the late 1970s. Deb earned All-State honors in volleyball and basketball; Donna in volleyball, basketball and track. They also played softball for Coventry in their junior and senior years, although it was just a club team then.

The Konuch sisters went on to compete at the Community College of Rhode Island, where they continued to play volleyball, basketball and softball. Both were inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Deb went on to have a hall-of-fame career in volleyball and basketball at what was then known as Roger Williams College, while Donna went on to star in volleyball, basketball and softball at Rhode Island College.

“My mom and my aunt are my biggest inspirations. They really are,” Carroll said as she was celebrating with her teammates on Saturday. “Growing up and watching them going in the Hall of Fame after playing in college, it’s just awesome following in their footsteps. It’s awesome, too, to have that support from my mom and my dad [John Carroll], who has been coaching me in softball since I was little. It’s a great feeling.”

Part of the first generation to benefit from the athletic opportunities created as a result of Title IX, Deb and Donna Konuch say it’s just as rewarding to watch Katelyn and her teammates enjoying the even greater athletic opportunities now available to girls.

“It’s exciting. It’s surreal,” Donna Konuch said. “Not because you want to be living vicariously through the kids, but because you want them to be able to experience everything you did.”

cthorn@projo.com