Senior Sydney O’Hara having best season of her career
UPDATED: March 31, 2017 at 12:50 p.m.
Before a recent game against North Carolina State, Sydney O’Hara had hit only one home run on the season. In her first at bat, she smashed an outside pitch over the left field wall — a rarity for the pull-hitting O’Hara.
“An oppo home run means (your) hands are working well that day,” O’Hara said.
She batted three more times in the game. She went yard in all three.
The four home-run game tied a NCAA record and landed the senior Louisville Slugger NFCA Division 1 Player of the Week honors. She was also named the espnW player of the week, the first time a member of the Orange has won that award. In her final season with Syracuse (17-10, 3-4 Atlantic Coast), O’Hara leads the ACC in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Her .493 batting average is good for fifth in the nation. O’Hara, sometimes a designated hitter, other times first baseman and frequent relief pitcher, is going out with a bang in her final season with Syracuse.
“It’s just different,” O’Hara said. “I’m not as tense up there. I am more relaxed than ever.”
The comfort stems from steady improvement in practice sessions. O’Hara spent much of the summer focusing on hitting with her father. The pair traveled to a local middle school and set up a batting tee or hit soft toss three or four times a week.
The focus of the sessions remained on outside pitches. In the past, O’Hara faced many outside pitches but failed to capitalize on them. To fix the issue, the lefty put the tee on the outside of the plate and soft toss pitches scraped the edges of the plate, forcing O’Hara to stay on the ball.
“It’s hard enough to be a great hitter when you’re swinging at good pitches,” said Syracuse assistant coach Alisa Goler. “If you’re going to expand your zone, you’re really not making it any easier. But I think for Syd, I don’t think I’ve seen her swing at more than one bad pitch in her last few weeks of at-bats. That just shows she is dialed in.”
In offseason training sessions, O’Hara drew a line in the batter’s box. The mark in the dirt signals where O’Hara’s front foot should remain throughout her swing. If her foot passes the line on her follow through, she sees the dirt mark in the box. Syracuse’s top batter completes the routine each time she reaches the box.
“I think she has just a pretty good idea of what she’s doing right now and what pitch selection she wants to have,” Syracuse head coach Mike Bosch said. “It’s just a confidence that when she steps up there, good things are going to happen.”
Since the four-home run game and the subsequent appearance on SportsCenter’s Top 10 the next morning, O’Hara’s tacked on three more bombs, placing her one shy of her previous season best of nine. She’s on pace to break all of her season-high batting statistics through half of the season. And if her current batting average holds, she’ll finish her career with the best batting average in program history.
After four years, O’Hara’s approach hasn’t changed. The results have.
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the first national award Sydney O’Hara won for Syracuse was misstated. O’Hara became the first player in program history to win the espnW player of the week. The Daily Orange regrets this error.