Bourgeois Sisters Hoping To Put Vermont On The Softball Map

Vermont is one of just three states without a Division I college softball team, and the weather there is not exactly conducive to year-round outdoor play.

But the town of Bradford—population 2,790 as of the 2020 U.S. census—is home to the Green Mountain State's most dominant high school team as well as two of its best players. Anastase Bourgeois Anastase Bourgeois RHP/OF Oxbow | 2025 VT has led Oxbow High School to four consecutive state championships, the first coming when she was an eighth grader, and her younger sister, Mazie Bourgeois, was with her for the last two.

The sisters play travel softball for the Raiders, driving two and a half hours each way for practice in Concord, Massachusetts, while most of their teammates are commuting from within the Boston area.

"You're not living the normal life that a teenager does," said Anastase, a class of 2025 pitcher and outfielder. "You have to commit your time to practice at home, work out, then go down to Massachusetts for two hours and practice down there."

Both sisters grew up around the game, with their older sister, Mary Jane Bourgeois, playing at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. Anastase is following in Mary Jane's footsteps as a pitcher, but Mazie, initially a pitcher as well, switched to catching and is now Anastase's battery mate for both their high school and club teams.

"Our high school coach, Chuck Simmons, he calls the pitches mainly," Mazie said. "It's definitely funny because sometimes I can tell when (Anastase) really doesn't want to throw a pitch, and I just sit there and laugh because she's going to throw it anyway. In travel ball, mainly our coach calls pitches too, but it's still pretty funny because when I do get to call for her, she'll give me a look, like 'Don't call that.'"

As a freshman in 2022, Anastase hit a triple and an inside-the-park home run while pitching a complete game for Oxbow to win the Vermont Division III state championship. The sisters had three hits apiece in the 2023 quarterfinals, and Anastase threw a complete-game, one-hit shutout in the title game that year. Last season, Oxbow missed the deadline to petition up a division, and its opponents were completely overmatched—the Olympians won their three playoff games by scores of 15-0, 24-0 and 37-2, respectively.

At the club level, they face much stiffer competition, playing in tournaments as far away as Colorado. Caroline Sablone coached both sisters at a tournament there in 2022, then became their primary head coach with the Raiders this season. Sablone is herself a former Raider who played at Bowdoin College in Maine.

"These kids are Raiders kids through and through. Not only are they incredibly talented in terms of skill and raw ability, but they are the kind of players and the kind of teammates everybody should really aspire to be," Sablone said. "They have very positive attitudes, and they're excited to be there. They're gritty, they're competitive and they have a certain edge that you don't see in everyone, this love of the game that really comes through when you watch them play."

Both Anastase and Mazie are hoping to leave the cold New England climate behind when they head off to college. Anastase has an invitation to visit campus from Winston-Salem State, a Division II program in North Carolina, and she is reaching out to several schools in the Carolinas and Tennessee.

Mazie, a junior, isn't as far along in the recruiting process but is also hoping to go south, although she and Anastase have decided that they do not want to attend the same school for college.

"We'll always have each other, and we always know that," Mazie said. "When we're both free, we'll go out and do something together. We really don't get to hang out with friends that much, so it's just nice to have someone who mainly has the same schedule as you."

When they compete against teams from the south and west, the Raiders aren't typically given much of a chance in national tournaments, but in that 2022 tournament in Colorado, they surprised even themselves and advanced further than most had expected. The national growth softball is experiencing is being reflected in New England with programs like Boston University, and the Raiders do still train year-round, using indoor facilities during the long, cold winters.

"Yeah, we don't get as much sunlight or as much time on the dirt, but we're working just as hard and for just as many hours even though we have a ceiling over us in the winter," Sablone said. "They'd stand on two feet next to any kid who plays year-round in the south and give them a run for their money."