How basketball gave UCLA slugger Megan Grant the joy to make softball history
LOS ANGELES — A month earlier, Megan Grant was opening her days inside UCLA’s basketball cathedral, absorbing elbows, fighting through screens and testing herself against Lauren Betts, a soon-to-be WNBA lottery pick. On this night, the hardwood bruises had given way to dirt and pine tar. Grant dug her cleats into the Easton Stadium batter’s box, waiting as Northern Colorado pitcher Ellyse Hydock tried to float a changeup past Grant in the bottom of the third inning.
But fooling Grant, UCLA’s “Home-run Queen,” has become one of college softball’s impossible assignments. The ball disappeared over the left-field wall for Grant’s 50th homer of her career and another entry in her rapidly expanding mythology. Inside UCLA’s dugout, teammates clutched their helmets and staggered backward in mock astonishment as Grant rounded the bases to another milestone.
The choreographed gasps and faces of faux disbelief were only funny because the question answered itself: Was anyone really surprised? No. But something about this one did feel different.
The winter had pulled Grant into the orbit of UCLA women’s basketball, where the softball superstar became a role player, a spark plug, another body hurling itself at eventual WNBA draft picks in pursuit of a national title. When softball season resumed, head coach Kelly Inouye-Perez sensed that the sport that had once consumed so much of Grant’s emotional oxygen suddenly felt lighter in her arms. “She came right back and hit a home run,” Inouye-Perez said, “and said, ‘Wow.
I am kind of good in this sport. ’ “And we all laugh at her because she’s so hard on herself. Elite athletes have high standards, but (basketball) gave her perspective, helped her appreciate just how talented she is (in softball).
Continue to the original source for the full article.