Dan Opera enters his third season as the Hawks head coach at the start of the 2025-26 academic year.
Opera has guided the Hawks to the AMCC postseason in each of his two seasons leading the program.
The 2025 Hawks entered the postseason tournament as the sixth seed after a 7-9 regular season record that included the program's first sweep of Penn State Behrend. Hilbert bowed out of the postseason after a pair of tight losses to the AMCC's third and fourth seeds. Alana Yadov (Third-Team All-AMCC), Jazlynn Soliz (All-Tournament Team) and Brooke Feliciano (All-Tournament Team) all earned postseason honors.
Opera's 2024 Hawks exploded to a 16-18 overall record after going win-less the year before. Hilbert finished the season with an 8-10 league record and qualified for the AMCC postseason tournament for the first time since 2018. For his team's success on the diamond, Opera was named the Hilbert College | Sal Buscaglia Coach of the Year.
Hilbert captured the No. 6 seed in the AMCC postseason tournament, and stormed into the double elimination weekend on fire.  They picked up victories over the third and second-seeded teams maintaining their winners-bracket advancement into the second day of the tournament before they slipped in back-to-back defeats. Samantha Heppel and Alana Yadov were both selected as Third Team AMCC All-Conference players.
Opera's Hawks set single season records in wins (16), most strikeouts/9 inning game (8.76), most saves (2), most shutouts (5), most strikeouts (209), and highest fielding % (.924), and the pitching staff led the AMCC in strikeouts and strikeouts/7 inn game (6.85).
Prior to his time at Hilbert, Opera served as Medaille University's head softball coach after joining the staff as an assistant in 2015. He guided the softball team to a 50-36 AMCC record once he became the head coach in 2017 and took the Mavs to the AMCC post-season tournament four of the five possible seasons after they failed to qualify from 2011-2016. Opera boasts a 113-99 overall record including Medaille's solo year in the Empire 8 conference in 2022-23.
Opera has been coaching on and off since he graduated from high school, coaching basketball, baseball, and softball. "I do it because I love coaching. There is no better feeling than seeing one of my players work hard, improve and understand that they did something special; the smile on their face when it clicks is very rewarding to me," said Opera.
Opera coached over ten years in the N.Y. Diamond Girls organization where he put together an impressive 347-111 record in showcase tournaments across the eastern United States. Eighteen of the girls he coached during that time went on to play collegiate softball across all three NCAA divisions.
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