From lip gloss to Wawa Sizzles, Penn baseball and softball do anything it takes to live hot.

Athletes are usually looking for approaches to improve their play, whether or not it’s by using taking more reps or looking again at game film. However, this includes being a piece superstitious and having fascinating recreation-day exercises for the Quakers at the diamond.

Baseball and softball are both games of streaks, so whilst you’re hot, you’re warm. Players need to do whatever it takes to trip that tremendous momentum for as long as possible. It begins with their heat-up routines for each group, and if the crew is on a prevailing streak, the recurring is constantly identical.

A appearance inside the superstitions that power Penn baseball and softball's success 1

For baseball, the group warms up in 3 specific companies, with one organization hitting, one at the bases, and one in the area. After they misplaced their first 3 video games towards UNC Greensboro, the Quakers switched up their order. Since having a brand new order, the group has long past 5-1. “We’ll probably hold that batting practice agenda in place, and we’ll try to experience it out as long as we will to keep winning,” senior catcher Matt O’Neill stated.

For the softball group, their hair is a key part of their pregame routine, and a maximum of the group continues the same coiffure all season lengthy. “The identical people do every other’s hair on every occasion and in an identical way,” senior third baseman Sarah Cwiertnia stated. “I haven’t changed my recreation day hair ever.”

This season, Cwiertnia has been devoted to 2 french braids pulled right into a ponytail. She’s entrusted her hair routine to sophomore pitcher Abigail Abramson, and he or she has no plans of switching the style whenever quickly. On the opposite hand, junior baseball pitcher Christian Scafidi became going thru a difficult stretch closing season and determined his hair was the issue that had to exchange. “I went to the barber and grew to become it right into a mohawk, trimmed the beard down, and went out and pitched the subsequent day brilliantly out,” Scafidi said.

Players also like to maintain special gadgets close to them that cause them to experience cozy and cozy simultaneously as on the field. While throwing his warmup pitches, Scafidi wears three circles of relatives-associated wristbands on his proper wrist. However, due to NCAA rules, he can’t wear them throughout the game, so he improvises using transferring the bands to his lower back proper pocket, wherein they live in the course of the game.

For sophomore softball pitcher Tabitha Dyer, she maintains a lip gloss in her lower back right pocket. Since excessive faculty, she’s always reapplied the same kind of Bath and Body Works lip gloss during the game.

Furthermore, earlier than the sector’s opposition, the softball group has a sport of its personality in the locker room.

“We typically continually play hacky sack. So if we have a terrific hacky sack recreation, then I assume that is an awesome game premonition,” Dyer stated.

Surprisingly, Wawa’s breakfast sandwiches have additionally performed a huge function in Scafidi’s college baseball profession.

“On the days I pitch, I get breakfast from Wawa, the identical Sizzles each time,” he said.

The recurring commenced Scafidi’s freshman yr when he lived close to Wawa. He decided to head there for breakfast one morning and later pitched an outstanding sport. The morning of his subsequent begin, he remembered what he ordered and determined to reserve it again. Since then, he’s made both the sausage, egg, and cheese on a waffle and sausage, egg, and cheese on a croissant his recreation day breakfast. Even when pitching on the road, he does his pleasant to recreate the sandwich with the breakfast items available in the resort.

Finally, there’s the maximum well-known baseball superstition that all players from high faculty to the MLB understand: don’t talk approximately the no-hitter.

“It’s fashionable baseball guidelines; nobody says a word about it,” O’Neill said. “Everybody is aware of, but the 2d you are saying something, you may as well be giving up a hit for the pitcher. It’s almost like clockwork.”

Unfortunately, that changed into the case for Scafidi’s closing season.
“I changed into throwing a no-hitter, and a kid within the stands stated, ‘you already know you have a no-hitter going,’ and I’m like, guy, kid, don’t say that,” Scafidi stated.

Two innings later, Scafidi gave up his first hit.

It’s hard for a player to predict which recurring is going to work; however, once they discover what makes them successful, they stick to it. In a recreation of streaks, Penn baseball and softball are extra careful to stick to the habitual that maintains them on a hot streak