House of Carda: Pitching improvement propels softball to new heights

Ally Carda’s work was almost complete. One out away from clinching a 10th-inning victory over Arizona on April 18, 2013, the then-sophomore pitcher delivered her pitch.

Moments later, the two Arizona baserunners were able to calmly jog to home plate and win the game. Carda had allowed a walk-off home run for the second time in the season, dropping the Bruins to 5-11 in Pac-12 play.

Late-inning losses like this may have been Carda’s downfall in 2013, but 2014 would be an entirely different story.

On paper, Carda’s 2014 statistics do not convey how much she improved from last year to this year.

The junior pitcher certainly improved by increasing her pitching win total and her batting average on offense. But what arguably brought her from being an All-Pac-12 player last season to an All-American, the Pac-12 Player of the Year and a finalist for USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year this season, was her and her teammates’ improvement in clutch situations.

In 2013, Carda and the Bruins tended to be on the wrong side of comeback wins. On eight separate occasions, the Bruins lost a game in which they were either tied or leading in the sixth inning or later. In four of those games, Carda was the pitcher who allowed the game-winning runs.

These late-inning losses weighed heavily on the morale of both Carda and the Bruins. There was even one stretch during the season when the team lost nine of 11 games.

“Last year, when things kind of didn’t roll our way and they would hit a home run or a grand slam … there maybe wasn’t a confidence in (Carda),” said junior catcher Stephany LaRosa.

But this year, Carda and the Bruins put in the extra work to make sure that they would be the better team at the end of games. Shortly after their season-ending walk-off loss in the NCAA Regionals last season, Carda and her teammates got right back to work.

“At the end of last season, (we decided) that we were all going to try to stay over the summer and get as much work in as possible as a team,” Carda said. “My off-season work was mainly one of the reasons why I had more success this year, as well as my team.”

From running to weightlifting to practicing, Carda and her teammates were poised for an improvement in 2014. Then, in the fall, they prepared themselves for late-game adversity by improving their mental strength.

“(This off-season), we had a huge army day,” Carda said before the first game of the season. “The army day had a lot of just mental fatigue, a lot of physical too, but it just challenged us really hard mentally.”

With the increased mental and physical conditioning, the Bruins reversed their fortunes. Suddenly, they were on the right side of the comeback wins, and they built confidence as a result.

A three-game sweep against then-No. 6 Arizona in March epitomized Carda and UCLA’s 2014 turnaround. A season before, Carda allowed a three-run walk-off home run with two outs and the lead in the 10th against the Wildcats.

This year, however, the narrative changed. With one out in the seventh, and two Arizona runners on base, Carda struck out the next two batters to end the game and finish off the Bruins’ first sweep of the Wildcats since 2006.

It was Carda’s sweep-clinching strikeout against the Wildcats that coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said was the moment she remembers most from Carda’s 2014 campaign.

But Inouye-Perez took a moment before she called that strikeout the most memorable moment of Carda’s 2014 season, for she had many memorable plays to choose from.

Many of the nominees for Carda’s most memorable moments occurred in the final month of the season alone, when the Bruins were making their postseason push.

In a game against Long Beach State in late April, Carda represented the Bruins’ last chance at the plate. With two outs and two strikes, Carda hit a two-run single, turning a UCLA deficit into a lead.

“I think it helps a lot with the team to know that no matter what the situation is that we can pull out a win whatever way we can,” Carda said after that win.

Less than two weeks later, Carda saved the Bruins by hitting a go-ahead home run in the sixth inning against Stanford.

Then, in a series against then-No. 3 Arizona State just a few days later, Carda solidified her position as one of the nation’s top players by performing in the clutch against another one of the top pitchers in the nation.

In game two of the three-game series, Carda once again represented the Bruins’ last chance, as she batted with two outs in the seventh inning.

Facing pitcher Dallas Escobedo, a national Player of the Year candidate from Arizona State, Carda hit a game-tying home run to send the game into extra innings. In the extra innings, Carda showed some of the extra strength that she had built during the offseason.

After shutting down the Sun Devils’ bats with her pitching, Carda used her own bat to end the game. She blasted a two-run home run in the top of the ninth, and then closed out the Arizona State batters in the bottom of the ninth to seal a UCLA victory.

After all of Carda’s late-inning hits, home runs and pitching strikeouts in 2014, Inouye-Perez still wished she could have seen a few more.

“I’m disappointed that as a group we couldn’t put ourselves in a position to be able to move forward, because I can’t wait to see what (Carda is) gonna do on that stage,” Inouye-Perez said after a UCLA loss to Kentucky in the NCAA Super Regionals ended the team’s season.

Although Carda and the Bruins finished one win short of the Women’s College World Series, if Carda keeps improving like she has over her first three seasons at UCLA, the Bruins may be able to get there next year.

“She just has a phenomenal mentality,” LaRosa said. “Her work ethic … her love for the game, I mean that’s how it sets her apart from absolutely everybody else on that field.”