A reward awaits Syracuse hitters each time they reach first base. Get a hit, a walk or get hit by a pitch and assistant coach Kristyn Sandberg offers up Swedish Fish, the brightly colored, gummy confectionaries. One good deed at the plate, one chewy fish on first base. That's the deal.
After Sydney O'Hara's third home run in the same game against NC State this past Friday, Sandberg handed her however many remained in her pocket. By the time O'Hara approached at a trot for the fourth time, Sandberg gave up. She just threw O'Hara the entire bag.
Not that there was much left. In becoming just the fifth player in NCAA Division I history to hit four home runs in a game, O'Hara had already done her best to exhaust the stock.
It is not easy to process the accomplishment, even for the person who swung the bat.
"After the game I sat there on the bus and was like 'What did I just do?' " O'Hara said. "It was shocking to me."
The 290 teams in Division I in 2016 played more than 7,500 games. Each game featured 18 batters in the starting lineups. That means there were considerably more than 100,000 opportunities for some batter in some lineup to hit four home runs in a game last year alone.
The NCAA first sanctioned softball in 1982. That's a lot of opportunities, as in millions, for someone to do what only O'Hara and four others before her did.
It's no bag of Swedish Fish, but that feat, along with the home run she hit the next day and her nine RBIs in the series against the Wolfpack, makes her espnW's national softball player of the week.
The opening game of the series in Raleigh, North Carolina, was the only one in which O'Hara didn't hit any home runs. She settled instead for a first-inning single in three at-bats. Frustrated that she hadn't done more to aid the Orange cause in a shutout defeat, all the more because she felt like she was in a groove, she spent the minutes between the doubleheader hitting off a tee. It was a departure from her normal routine of trying to decompress and relax during the break.
"I knew I was seeing the ball well," O'Hara said. "But I just wasn't making that great contact to get on base."
She hit the first pitch she saw in the second game over the fence, matching her total through the season's first 19 games. Three more home runs followed, NC State curiously unwilling to pitch around her. Where softball's unwritten rules, as in baseball, prohibit teammates mentioning a no-hitter or perfect game in progress, O'Hara's teammates grew giddier with each passing blast.
"I was just trying to stay aggressive," O'Hara said. "I was very surprised to see them not walk me, so when I saw them throwing strikes, I was like, 'Wow, I've got an opportunity to get on base again.' It wasn't about hitting home runs. That wasn't my goal. My goal was just hitting the ball hard and solid and getting on base."
Even if she didn't linger on any of them for very long.
Almost as soon as she circled the bases after the final home run, four fingers raised as she approached her waiting teammates at the plate, word of the feat spread beyond Raleigh. While she was too exhausted to wait up and watch, the highlight made it on SportsCenter and has been viewed more than a million times online. Her social media following previously extended mostly to those she knew, but since then she's added follower requests by the dozens in a pleasantly empowering twist on an old marketing slogan as to who digs the long ball.
"A lot of younger girls wanted to follow me," O'Hara said of her social media accounts. "That's amazing to see, that I can be a role model and show girls that we can get this done and we can be a part of sports."
Up to and including some cautionary advice about the Swedish Fish with which she is now so familiar.
"It takes a long time to chew them," O'Hara admitted. "They're really chewy -- sometimes I choke when I'm going to second base."
Best to take the trip at a trot, in that case.
Previous winners: Arkansas' Nicole Schroeder (March 8) | Texas A&M's Samantha Show (March 1) | LSU's Bailey Landry (Feb. 22) | Washington's Taran Alvelo (Feb. 15)