Long-time softball coach Jeffrey Franquet loves challenges. He has spent most of his career turning around multiple college programs up and down the East Coast.
Now, Franquet is hoping to perform the same feat with Haddonfield Memorial High School’s softball program.
After coaching for 16 seasons in college, Franquet is returning to high school for the first time since the late 1990s as the new head coach for Haddonfield softball.
A Pennsylvania native, Franquet has been all over the softball map. After a few seasons coaching in high school, Franquet’s college coaching career began at Central Florida Community College in 2000, where he led CFCC to a 39–23 record after the team won just 13 games the year prior.
After a couple seasons at CFCC, Franquet moved on to Jacksonville University where he was the first head coach of the school’s new fast pitch program. Franquet also coached at Georgian Court University, where he led the team to multiple NCAA Division II Regional appearances, and Central Connecticut State University, where he took the team to its first-ever NCAA Division I Tournament in 2013 and nearly saw his team upset nationally ranked LSU in the tournament’s opening round.
Franquet left CCSU in 2014 and moved to South Jersey about a year and a half ago. Not long after, he began looking for opportunities to coach again.
“The main reason why I got back is I have so much to offer the sport,” he said. “This is what I was put on the planet to do. I feel like I need to give back to the game.”
Franquet saw the opening at Haddonfield and felt it was a very attractive opportunity. He spoke highly of the school district’s reputation and said he was impressed when he interviewed with athletic director Lefteris Banos.
“Anybody and everybody you ask about the best schools in the area, Haddonfield comes up,” Franquet said.
Franquet will try to turn around Haddonfield softball just as he did with the college programs he coached. The Bulldawgs have had a rough decade so far, with last year’s 8–15 record being their best finish since 2010.
However, Franquet is confident he can turn things around.
“The other programs (I coached) were not very good at all,” he said. “They were turned around and went on to win championships and go to NCAA regionals.”
Franquet has set his goals high for the program, saying he believes this team can eventually be a state champion, even though the transformation likely won’t happen overnight.
“There’s that old saying, it’s not how you start, but how you finish,” Franquet said. “We may be 10–10 this year, that’s an improvement from last year. Next year we may go 15–5. We try to have minimal increments where they can build some pride.”
Changing the culture is Franquet’s focus for this season. After meeting with the players and parents prior to the preseason, he said there was a lot of excitement and buzz about the team.
He is looking for the Bulldawgs to work hard and practice and focus on mastering the fundamentals.
“I challenge them every day in practice,” Franquet said. “Through that challenge and the repetitions, their confidence gets better. Before you know it, they’re catching and throwing better.”
“You have to change the culture,” he added. “Clearly, the culture is a different scale than college from high school. But if you get them to spend an extra hour a week on hitting, the culture starts changing and we start adding wins.”
Franquet is Haddonfield’s third coach in as many years. He hopes having a consistent coaching staff will allow the program to become a contender like many of the school’s other sports teams.
“Hopefully I can make a difference,” he said.
