During the Softball Music City Invitational, infielder Emily O’Connor made history in the fifth inning by driving one of her teammates for her 194th career RBI (runs batted in). She surpassed the record of her former teammate Gianni Iannantone for the all-time RBI record, according to an article by UIndy Athletics.
O’Connor did not originally know she broke the record and said that usually her dad informs her of when she breaks records. O’Connor said this record was definitely a team effort.
“I felt like that record, the RBI one specifically, you can’t do that without runners on and so it definitely was a team record that was broken,” O’Connor said.
According to Head Coach Melissa Frost, O’Connor has always been enthusiastic about her teammates. She said O’Connor appreciates her teammates dearly giving them a lot of credit for her success and has always put them first.
“She’s is a powerful hitter, supplies a lot of juice [energy], stirs the offense up,” Frost said. “When she broke the record … the first thing she said was ‘My teammates have to be on base for me to get the RBI record.’ So, I think that that just kind of shows you that she likes to give credit where credit is due with her teammates.”
O’Connor has been playing softball for the past 14 years and has enjoyed every moment. Before her high school season was over, O’Connor was originally planning on attending Eastern Michigan but later decommitted to go to UIndy instead.
“I was going to go to Eastern Michigan to play softball,” O’Connor said. “In the junior year span of my high school career, I really saw myself develop more as a player and wanted more competition. After a tough conversation with that coach of Eastern Michigan I decided to decommit. And in that process it was getting late to commit to schools so, and I think like the next weekend of travel ball, I went like over 20 [on base percentage?] probably and during one of those tournaments, Coach Frost saw me play and just saw something in me that she wanted for her program.”
O’Connor said she is very happy to be at UIndy and is glad she made the right choice. With the new record of RBI’s being 194, she plans on training her mindset to get better each day to break another record.
“Just the mindset of getting like better each day, just the mindset of getting like one person better and the aspect that once you have that like mindset every day, you see like avenues of ways you can get 1% better in weight training and hitting the ball and mentality training and just being a teammate type of thing like being 1% better of a teammate every day.”
With this being O’Connor’s final year on the team, she wants to be mindful of her teammates and the future of the UIndy Softball Program. After graduation, she plans on being a part of the Athletes in Action Organization in Albania.
“My goal for this year was to just be more mindful of my teammates,” O’Connor said. “This is my last year, so like leaving a legacy of personal avenues and not a physical one. Being aware of my victories and other things, and really just celebrating that or being a rock for them during those times. It’s very real and bittersweet, the feeling of having the last year of doing things but having something that they can remember me for, like being more of a teammate record-breaker than a statistical record-breaker.”The UIndy Softball Team is currently standing at 13 wins and two losses, and are ranked 10th according to the National Fastpitch Coaches Associations (NFCA) Poll. They are scheduled to play next at Wayne State on March 10.
image sources
- Copy of women_s softball Large: Photo contributed by UIndy Athletics
