Ultimate Warrior: Austintown Fitch's Sydnie Watts strikes out 20 to help lead the Falcons to a district title
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Austintown Fitch pitcher Sydnie Watts had just struck out the last batter of the game – her 20th of the night – to help the Falcons beat Mentor 2-0 in an OHSAA Division I district final and head coach Steven Ward summed up the performance with two words.
“Holy moly,” Ward said.
The sophomore hurler said she didn’t know as the game was playing out just how many batters she had fanned.
“I just was kind of throwing like I know how to, and it was just happening,” Watts said. “The number of strikeouts really doesn't matter as long as we're coming out on top.”
That’s exactly the kind of answer Ward would expect from his starting pitcher, who moved to 17-0 on the season with a 0.34 ERA and 227 strikeouts in 105 innings pitched.
“She is so humble and really does everything for her teammates,” Ward said. “That's where it all starts. We talked about as a team, we play for the love of each other and then we play for the love of the game. And once we love each other up, and we're playing for the right reasons, man, it's a lot of fun.”
That love and trust for one another definitely exists among the Falcons, including with Watts and senior catcher McKenna Hogan. The two have become like one on the field and have figured out how to work hitters together.
“It is just trusting each other and her knowing she can pitch anywhere, and I am going to try to do my best for her,” Hogan said.
Along with the 20 strikeouts on Wednesday, Watts allowed just two hits and issued five walks in the game. It meant she worked with runners on base in each inning, including the leadoff hitter in each of the first four innings. But the pitcher and catcher just kept their heads in the game and kept pushing through.
“I just stayed focused the whole entire time and let my pitches do what they do,” Watts said.
After seeing Watts and Fitch earlier in the season, Mentor had a game plan that seemed to include trying to lay off Watts’ favorite pitch early - her rise ball that can hit 68 miles per hour. It made the pitcher and catcher change their approach at times.
“Credit Mentor, they didn't really go up out of their zone too often,” Ward said. “We had to do mid-game adjustments and there's no stress, there's nothing that rattles (Watts). She just knows what she has to do.”
What she had to do was trust in whatever pitch was working, and that wasn’t always consistent throughout the seven innings.
“It was inning by inning,” Hogan said. “One inning, one thing would work and another inning, something else worked, so we just worked through it.”
The duo moved from pitch-to-pitch and eventually came back to more rise balls after changing the eye level of the Mentor hitters.
“At first, they weren't swinging at it,” Watts said. “So I brought it down through some other pitches, and it just worked.”
The offense got on the board in the fourth inning as other underclassmen stepped up.
Freshman Kylie Folkwein got a one-out hit to left center and advanced to third when it was misplayed. The next hitter, sophomore Samantha Severn, lifted a fly ball to right field that allowed Folkwein to score the game’s first run.
Freshman Abby Toth then got a double and fellow freshman Morgan Roby followed with a single and advanced to second to give the Falcons runners on second and third. Ward called upon Lily Stevens, yet another freshman, to pinch hit and she answered with an RBI single.
That was all Watts needed.
She allowed a walk in the fifth with two outs and then struck out the next hitter. Then in the sixth, she worked around a one-out, three-base error with two more strikeouts to strand the runner at third. She started the seventh with two more strikeouts before walking the next hitter and then finished off the game with yet another strikeout.
The only out recorded by Fitch was when Hogan threw out a runner trying to steal second base to end the third inning.
When asked if Watts had given her any grief yet that she was the only player keeping the pitcher from striking out 21 hitters, the catcher laughed.
“Not yet, but it will probably hit later,” Hogan said.
After the game, Ward joked about the nickname they have given to Watts, who wears face paint under each eye when she takes to the circle.
“When she puts that mask on, we call her the ultimate warrior,” Ward said. “And he just goes out there and does what she should do.”
On Wednesday night, Watts lived up the moniker.
