Jonathan Law is bringing a championship-tested coach to Milford at a time when its softball program is already knocking on the door of a title.
Leigh Barone, who led Masuk to seven Class L state championships during a dominant decade in Monroe, has been named Law's new head softball coach, the school announced Wednesday, Oct. 7. The hire pairs one of Connecticut's most decorated recent coaches with a team that finished 21–5 last season and reached the Class L semifinals.
Barone returns to coaching after stepping down at Masuk following the 2025 season. In 10 seasons with the Panthers, she compiled a 233–27 record, won seven Southwest Conference championships and built a state tournament streak that reshaped expectations for the program.
Masuk won every Class L title awarded from 2018 through 2025, a run that included seven consecutive championships and a 179–7 record over those seasons. The Panthers set the state record for consecutive CIAC softball titles when they secured their fifth straight crown in 2023.
The record only tells part of the story. Barone was named Connecticut High School Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 2018 and 2024 and earned GameTimeCT Coach of the Year recognition in 2018. She also received the Connecticut Sports Media Alliance's Doc McInerney Female Coach of the Year award in 2024 and was the first recipient of GameTimeCT's Coach of the Year for Girls Sports honor.
Her Masuk teams also developed players for the next level. Eighteen student-athletes from the program continued their softball careers in college during her tenure, according to GameTimeCT. Among them were Kat Gallant, GameTimeCT's Softball Player of the Year in 2021 and 2022, and Julia Bacoulis, who received that honor in 2024.
Barone's decision to return came sooner than she initially expected. She told GameTimeCT that watching the next softball season begin after her departure reminded her how much she missed coaching. The Law position also offers a more manageable commute and schedule for the Orange resident, who cited time with her two young children as a factor in leaving Masuk.
At Law, she will not be starting from scratch.
The Lawmen reached the Southern Connecticut Conference championship game last season, where they lost to Cheshire in extra innings. They followed that run with a trip to the Class L semifinals, falling to Brookfield in a 15-inning game. Those narrow postseason defeats underline both how competitive the team already is and the challenge of taking its next step.
Barone succeeds Melanie Blude, who coached Law for 19 seasons and was away from the team for much of last season while on administrative leave, according to GameTimeCT.
The incoming coach has pointed to the strength of Law's existing program and the surrounding youth softball community as reasons for optimism. Milford's Little League and travel programs offer a foundation for future rosters, while the returning high school players bring recent experience in pressure-filled postseason games.
The combination makes this more than a routine coaching change. Law is adding a coach whose teams repeatedly finished championship runs, while Barone is stepping into a program that has already demonstrated it can compete with the state's best. The question heading into the next softball season is how quickly that experience can translate into the final wins that eluded Law last spring.
Source: GameTimeCT / CT Insider, reporting by Scott Ericson (Oct. 7, 2026).