How Wichita State softball’s Sydney McKinney won the AAC Player of the Year award
When Sydney McKinney was first taught how to play softball in Norborne, a tiny town in Missouri with a population of less than 1,000 people, her father gave her simple instructions at the plate.
“Just put the ball in play and see what happens,” Jason McKinney remembers telling his six-year-old daughter.
It’s advice that Sydney McKinney, now a sophomore standout at Wichita State, has used in a breakout season that earned her the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year award announced on Wednesday.
McKinney ranks second nationally in hits (76) this season, while she also led the American in batting average (.434) and runs scored (51) as part of WSU’s record-setting offense that powered the Shockers to their first AAC championship. Now they’ll look to make it a sweep, as WSU (37-11-1) will play either Tulsa or Houston at 6 p.m. Friday in the AAC Tournament semifinals in Tulsa.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like I know where the pitch is going sometimes,” Sydney McKinney said. “I’m very aggressive when I see a first or second-pitch strike. I just go for it. I know pitchers always want to get ahead in counts, so I just figure it’s better to swing early than wait and try to hit junk pitches.”
How McKinney became such a good hitter
There was plenty of experimentation with her swing when Sydney McKinney began playing competitive softball, often playing up several grades.
She tried hitting from both sides of the plate before finally settling in as a left-handed slap hitter. In her first season at Norborne High, she broke the state record for batting average (.738). She would ultimately finish third in state history in career hits.
“She would basically just try to put the ball in play and try to outrun everything,” said Jason McKinney, her father and high school coach. “But she puts a lot of work in. She’s got great hand-eye coordination.”
Right after her 15th birthday, when she was a freshman in high school, McKinney committed to Missouri, which she considered her dream school. But when she arrived for her first semester in 2018, the coach she had signed with was fired and the new staff informed her that she was not likely to play right away.
The combination led to her decision to transfer and she told her travel coach to reach out to Wichita State, a school that was four hours away and a program that was just coming off an NCAA Regional championship appearance.
“I thought Missouri was my dream school, but I think when you commit at that young of an age, you don’t really know what you want,” McKinney said. “I think (Missouri) was what I wanted at the time until I got out of my town. Once I visited Wichita, I realized it was close enough where I could still go back home and see my family, but also far enough away where it’s my own place. It just felt like home.”
Great hand-eye coordination leads to Shocker success
When McKinney arrived to WSU in 2019, she was no longer a slap hitter just looking to beat out infield ground balls.
She now sits back in the batter’s box, although her father points out that sometimes you can still see Sydney move her feet when she hits. That hasn’t seemed to matter, as McKinney hit .329 as a freshman, then followed by hitting .410 in last year’s abbreviated season and increased to an AAC-best .434, which ranks top-30 nationally, this season.
“She’s one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen,” WSU pitcher Bailey Lange said. “It’s really cool just the way she relaxes in the box and always finds a way to get on base.”
Not only does McKinney make pitchers pay for mistakes over the plate, WSU coach Kristi Bredbenner says that McKinney is one of the best bad-ball hitters she’s ever seen.
“She does have great strike-zone management, but she can also hit balls that aren’t in the strike zone that are at her eyes or on the ground,” Bredbenner said. “She just has fantastic hand-eye coordination. She’s just able to barrel up on everything and she doesn’t try to do too much with anything.”
Some of the pitches that McKinney has turned into base hits have left her teammates astonished.
“It doesn’t matter where it is, every time that kid is going to touch the ball. Every time,” WSU junior Neleigh Herring said.
“She handles pitches that you wouldn’t think anybody could get to and she barrels them up very solidly,” said WSU senior Maddison Perrigan, the program’s all-time home runs leader.
Herring’s description isn’t much of an exaggeration. McKinney’s elite hand-eye coordination is evident in her strikeout rate: in 189 plate appearances this season, she has only struck out three times — or once in every 63 plate appearances.
“I think it’s because I see the ball in pretty well,” McKinney said. “I know especially on high pitches to flatten my bat out and stay on top of it. That’s what I focus on a lot, keeping my hands up. I just have a mindset that I’m always going to stay on top of the ball.”
The former slap hitter has even developed some power this season, which she credits to WSU’s coaching staff, including hitting coach Elizabeth Economon, and to strength and conditioning coach Hannah Wilkinson.
After hitting just three home runs in 82 games her first two years with WSU, McKinney has belted seven home runs this season in 49 games.
“It cracks me up because she always tells me, ‘Those are mistakes,’” her father, Jason, said. “She’s just trying to put the ball in play hard somewhere and they just happen to get out over the fence.”
While her hitting has reached all-time levels this season, McKinney has kept an elite glove in the infield for the Shockers. She has played primarily shortstop this season and has delivered a handful of eye-popping plays and forms the AAC’s best middle infield with senior second baseman Kaylee Huecker, who was named the AAC Defensive Player of the Year.
After WSU’s 2019 season was ended with a rain-out at the conference tournament and the coronavirus pandemic wiping out the 2020 season, McKinney is excited to see the award-winning season finally play out this season with the Shockers a shoe-in for the upcoming NCAA Regionals.
“Everybody in (Norborne) has got a lot of pride in what she’s doing,” Jason McKinney said. “The whole town is so proud of her winning (AAC Player of the Year), but really it’s all of those girls that are why Sydney is the Player of the Year. They have a great team and their success is the reason why Sydney was able to win that award.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
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