Why 2016 Is The Year Of The Romero Sisters In NCAA Softball

There were arguments about outfits borrowed without permission. There were times the older sister, like so many older siblings, framed her younger sister for some misdeed, or cajoled her into completing some overdue chore. But for the most part, Sierra Romero, older by three years, and Sydney have been inseparable since they were tots.

So when Michael Romero, their dad first and master button pusher second, asked Sydney if she would hit more home runs in her freshman season at the University of Oklahoma than the 23 Sierra hit as a freshman at the University of Michigan, the sisters presented a unified front. They told him to be quiet and leave them alone. They had seen the act before.

Yet the slightest crack then appeared in the alliance, competitiveness wearing it down like water eroding a foundation. The question was a ploy, Sydney knew, but, well, of course she was going to hit more home runs. So she said as much. Sierra then turned on the treachery.

And off went the argument.

"He'll just sit there and watch us go back and forth," Sierra ruefully said of her dad.

In the squabble is the answer to what comes next in college softball without Lauren Chamberlain, as prolific a slugger and charismatic a figure the sport has ever known.

The older Romero sister, Sierra, is more than good enough as she enters her senior season to not only potentially challenge Chamberlain's brief reign as the sport's all-time home run champion but to also fill a less tangible, and arguably more important, void the former Sooners star left as the face of softball.

All of which is why as the younger Romero, Sydney may be the most compelling figure in college softball at the moment, the face of a freshman class that arrived at Oklahoma with the echoes still fading from the years Chamberlain (not to mention Shelby Pendley) spent in Norman, Oklahoma. It is a challenge that perhaps only someone who spent many more years as Sierra's sister than she will as one of Chamberlain's successors is prepared to take on.

"I think by the fact that they had each other, I think that helped them a lot in being successful," Melissa Romero said of the two oldest of her four children. "Sierra has obviously paved the way for her younger sisters and brother, and Sydney has always looked up to Sierra. She's always watched her and wanted to be like her, never envious of her."

Sierra has always been there for Sydney to emulate. Her parents recalled Sierra sitting with them as they watched San Diego Padres games on television when she was as young as 4 or 5, mimicking the movements of the players. Within a few years, it was common practice at family gatherings to let all the other kids swing at the piñata before Sierra got her turn and inevitably set the contents loose. For all of her honed mechanics and the judiciousness of a batting eye that led to just eight strikeouts in 68 games a season ago, there is still some of that childlike ferocity in a compact, explosive swing that defies her 5-foot-5 frame.

You don't just admire the numbers she puts up; you can't take your eyes off how she accumulates them.

Sierra may not catch Chamberlain's home run record, the 33 still needed to break it not an impossible target but significantly more than she hit in any of her first three seasons. Yet her combination of power and consistency has few peers. If her final season is like her first three, she will join former UCLA catcher Stacey Nuveman and Arizona State outfielder Kaitlin Cochran as the only Division I players to rank in the top 25 in home runs, slugging percentage and batting average.

"She's going to go down as arguably the best player to not just play at Michigan but probably the NCAA," Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said.

What the coach has tried to instill, the acceptance of which she credits heavily for Michigan's run to the championship round in the Women's College World Series a season ago, is the influence Sierra has on others. To have her go not from selfishness but a single-minded focus to a more all-encompassing view.

"I'm trying to teach her, and I think she's really embraced, that there is so much more of you to be remembered than talent," Hutchins continued. "It's about what you give."

Yet the best example of Sierra's success in that category may be hundreds of miles away in Oklahoma.

"I was always that younger sister who wanted to hang out with her older sister," Sydney said.

To that end, when Sierra was still young enough that Michael coached her team, he and his wife had to get an extra uniform for Sydney. She was too young by rule to play but wanted to be part of the team nonetheless. The two played just one season together in high school but shared fields and batting cages far more often than that, whether in other leagues or just hitting and fielding under their dad's tutelage. When it came to colleges, Sydney looked at Michigan, the idea of playing with her sister for one season not a deal maker but the prospect of playing in her shadow for three seasons beyond that not a deal breaker, either.

Going her own way, as Sierra had in leaving her familial and meteorological comfort zone in Southern California for Michigan, was ultimately a far more fitting way to follow in the footsteps of the sister whose influence mattered more than her shadow. That just happened to lead Sydney to Chamberlain's old stomping grounds.

"She's used to the attention," Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso said of Sydney. "I think she knows how to handle it pretty well. Right now, I don't think anyone could or should compare or hope or believe that Syd's going to fill the shoes of Lauren Chamberlain because I don't know that those will ever be filled. I don't know that she's dealing with that. Whether or not she's related to Sierra, who is one of the best players in the game, Sydney stands on her own merit."

That merit included a place on the United States junior national team that won a world championship this past summer. While not asking her to be Chamberlain, or even immediately the best player on a team that also includes sophomore standout Paige Parker, Gasso didn't shy away from Sydney's potential in saying the freshman who may play shortstop or third base "has all the tools necessary to become a collegiate superstar" and a "legendary Sooner."

She will just do so her way, perhaps a little more patiently than Sierra at the plate and a little less boisterously than Chamberlain in a crowd.

"Lauren Chamberlain is the life of the party; that's not Syd," Gasso said. "Syd laughs a lot. She's got a wonderful, wonderful heart -- she's the one who would not forget a birthday. She sits back and laughs. She just isn't the big personality that is the big life of the party, and I think that is what I was almost expecting at first. But that's not what she is, and that's perfectly fine.

"I want Sydney for who she is."

One sister is the best player in softball. The other is comfortable being her sibling. Those may not be the most important labels they carry in life, but each speaks to a certain strength of character. It isn't easy to be either of those things. But who the Romeros are is as significant as what they do.

Sierra will be the second person in the family to graduate from college. Sydney is in line to be the third. Michael, the first to do so at San Diego State (where he played baseball), described the life of migrant farm workers his grandparents led, going back and forth between Arizona and California based on what was in season. In a sport in which Hispanic athletes are still underrepresented, most visibly at the Division I level, both sisters have an important story to tell.