From mascot to ace

Sydney Littlejohn isn’t a mascot anymore.

In fact, the 6-foot junior pitcher might be emerging as the ace for the sixth-ranked University of Alabama softball team as the Crimson Tide travels to top-ranked Florida for a three-game weekend series.

The numbers indicate that she is ready – a 12-2 record and 1.65 earned run average with 75 strikeouts and just 14 walks in 84 2/3 innings – but Littlejohn would rather brag about the defense that plays behind her and the other two pitchers on the UA roster than stake a claim to being the team’s premier pitcher.

Ask her what it meant to shut down a ranked Missouri team twice in a row in her last two outings after Alabama dropped the series opener and she’ll tell you this with complete sincerity: "Being out there with my team, seeing them all succeed, it made my heart happy."

Patrick Murphy, her coach, will tell you she cheers the loudest for her pitching cohorts, Alexis Osorio and Madi Moore, and is the first out of the dugout to greet them when they’ve had a good game.

"She’s everybody’s biggest cheerleader, and if I was a fellow pitcher I’d want her on my team," he said.

That’s probably the mascot in her. When she wasn’t pitching at Rusk High School in Texas, Littlejohn was the costumed eagle who danced on the sidelines and rooted on the other athletic teams. She won the role in an audition.

"I was full-out, I went to mascot camp, I did it all," she said. "I can’t even describe, there were out-of-body experiences, you’re just in the moment."

When she got to Alabama, she leaned on that experience to find her place. Littlejohn pitched mostly midweek games and saw action as a reliever as a freshman, but she also contributed by cheering from the dugout.

Said Murphy, "When you come in as a freshman and you’re not the regular starter, you’ve got to do something to help the team."

Littlejohn believes there’s more to softball than pitching, fielding and hitting.

"Offense and defense, they say, are the two biggest parts of the game," she said. "Energy should be the third. I feel like that’s another one of my roles, my duty to my team."

Now she’s adjusting to a more prominent role. She showed flashes earlier in her career – beating Missouri on the road as a freshman to clinch a league championship in her first-ever SEC start and throwing two perfect games last season – but pitched in the shadow of All-Americans. Jaclyn Traina was UA’s senior ace when Littlejohn was a freshman, and Osorio took Alabama to the Women’s College World Series as a rookie last year.

Osorio was expected to take the lead role in the circle again this season, but missed the first weekend after sustaining a high ankle sprain. Littlejohn’s opening-day outing at a tournament in Florida raised doubts as she yielded six earned runs on 11 hits in a loss to Central Florida.

She refused to be discouraged.

"If anybody watches that game they will see that I was 100 percent not throwing a good game," Littlejohn said. "My ball was not moving, I wasn’t doing what I needed to do.

"Yes, it was a wake-up call, but also I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to me. After that, well, it can’t get any worse, it can only go up from here."

It has. And if you listen carefully, between the praise for her teammates and deflections of personal glory you’ll discover a Littlejohn with the mentality of an ace.

"In high school and travel ball," she says, "I did learn to carry a team."

At Alabama, Littlejohn has learned that there are better ways than trying to strike out every batter. She now uses her wicked curveball to coax groundouts and pop-ups and seeks to keep her pitch count low. If she needs to throw six or eight pitches to strike out a batter, she figures, that batter has more chances to figure her out, whereas a quick pop-up gives the opponent little chance to adjust.

"Coming here I’ve had to develop into different roles and I feel like I have finally grasped my role: I am not trying to perform outside my comfort zone," she said. "I know what I can do, and once you know your limits you’re limitless. I feel like I finally know my limits."

That showed against Missouri, where Littlejohn stepped up after Osorio, who is still struggling to regain last year’s form, had a bad outing in UA’s loss in the series opener. Coming off the back-to-back wins over the Tigers, she may, indeed, be ready to be Alabama’s the ace.

What Murphy looks for first in an ace is competitiveness.

"A kid that keeps you in the game," he said. "What we’ve told them is try to let us score first and keep it close if they score first. Give us a chance to win every single game."

He also wants an attitude.

"Do they want to be out there when the heat’s on? Anybody can pitch when it’s 9-0, but if it’s 0-0 in the seventh or the eighth, that’s the kid that I really want out there," he said.

Littlejohn wants the ball.

"Of course," she said. "You put me in any situation and I want to be there: Bases loaded, bottom of the seventh, no outs, tie ballgame, I want to be in that situation because that’s where you see what you’re made of."

Littlejohn is ready to embrace the role of ace if that’s what she needs to do. But she hasn’t given up on the idea of being a mascot once more.

"I did want to go try out for Big Al," she said. "That’s another dream one day."