All season long, Syracuse has received some of its biggest hits from two of its most inexperienced players. Playing beyond their freshman standing, Julie Wambold and Carey-Leigh Thomas have come through time and time again.

Wambold showed it this past weekend against Notre Dame with a game-winning home run. And Thomas rose to the occasion with a walk-off shot against Seton Hall two weeks ago.

‘I’m pleased that mentally they’re just relaxed in who they are and what they do, and I think that’s pretty big for freshmen with the position they bat in,’ SU head coach Leigh Ross said. ‘… They’re taking it one pitch at a time and relying on their natural ability.’

Batting back-to-back in the middle of the lineup, Wambold and Thomas have been steady contributors at the plate, helping power the Orange offense in their first season. Wambold is tied for first in the Big East with 10 home runs, and she leads SU in homers and RBI with 30 through 40 games. Thomas has nine round-trippers and is third on the team in runs scored with 26. She’s also one of three players to start in every game this season.

The freshmen will look to continue that production when the Orange faces Pittsburgh in a doubleheader at Skytop Softball Stadium on Wednesday. The first game is set for 3 p.m. Ross said while the emergence of the talented freshmen hasn’t been shocking, she is pleased with the boost Thomas and Wambold have provided a senior-laden team.

The two have developed a bond batting back-to-back. If Thomas is retired, she immediately relays the scouting report to Wambold.

When one is doing well, the other usually follows suit.

‘If I get a hit, then she usually gets a hit, and if I strikeout, she’ll strikeout next, too,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

The pair has been supportive of each other all year. Before Wambold crushed the solo shot in the eighth inning against the Fighting Irish, she was just 1-for-9 in the series. But Thomas made sure she didn’t get discouraged.

‘Before we go up to bat we usually talk to each other, saying, ‘Let’s get a hit, we got this, me and you together, we can start this up,” Wambold said. ‘Usually, we just feed off each other.’

When Thomas started the year, she was timid around her teammates. She didn’t think she could wear a baseball cap because senior pitcher Jenna Caira did.

Thomas now dons a hat at third base and has rarely shown her youth on the field.

The same can be said for Wambold, who has provided a source of power in the lineup that needed to be filled after losing Hallie Gibbs, last year’s home-run leader, to graduation.

With the way the two carry themselves on the field, Ross doesn’t even notice they are first-year players, she said.

In the end, Ross doesn’t care what year her players are, as long as they produce on the field.

‘I really don’t look at kids as freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. I don’t really look at them like that when they’re on the field,’ Ross said. ‘They’re just there to play ball.’

But what Ross does like to see is the freshmen’s carefree mentality. Regardless of the teams Thomas and Wambold go up against, their play goes unaffected.

And Thomas thinks it has come as a slight surprise to Ross that two freshmen are already proving themselves as worthy hitters on a stacked Syracuse roster.

‘She didn’t know what to expect from us. She said that to us at the beginning,’ Thomas said. ‘We definitely opened her eyes to what we can and what she can expect from the future from us.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

Published on April 17, 2012 at 12:00 pm