Miranda Hearn overcame early season struggles and improved her pitching arsenal

When Miranda Hearn entered the pitching circle for the first time against Notre Dame on March 30, she carried a 7.29 ERA and had thrown only one scoreless outing — with a full inning pitched — in more than a month.

Facing Notre Dame junior Katie Marino in the fourth inning, the first pitch was a ball far from the strike zone. The next pitch was a slow fastball outside. Three pitches later, Marino walked to first base. The next batter, UND senior Cait Brooks, walked on four outside pitches to put two runners on with no outs.

Assistant coach Miranda Kramer walked to the mound and put her hand on Hearn’s shoulder. Hearn was relieved after only nine pitches: eight balls and one strike.

“They catch onto her stuff because it’s very slow,” Kramer said. “She wasn’t great with her stuff early on, but she’s getting to where we want her to be.”

After that series, head coach Shannon Doepking, Kramer and assistant coach Vanessa Shippy tried to bring Hearn “back to the basics” through various drills and a shift toward trusting her curveball, Hearn said. Doepking also asked Hearn to show more emotion.

Hearn, a sophomore, is a valuable pitcher behind junior ace Alexa Romero for Syracuse (21-31, 8-16 Atlantic Coast) as it enters the ACC tournament. Her ERA is now at 4.77 before the Orange face North Carolina State (29-26, 9-15) on Wednesday at 1 p.m. in Tallahassee, Florida. Doepking needed Hearn because Sophie Dandola missed a month due to a concussion suffered in a car crash, Dandola said. Unlike a month ago, Doepking can now trust Hearn to pitch a few solid innings.

“I was just trying to make things too complicated and I was over-correcting my movements,” Hearn said. “I got tired of letting myself down.”

When Hearn was young, she learned to pitch with the flip and the flamingo drills. Both are rudimentary but add power and drive to pitches. To find her form, Hearn went back to what she first knew.

The flip drill entails Hearn holding her arm next to her hip. She’d then flick it forward across her body, mimicking a normal pitch. This ensures that all four seams rotate during the pitch, building wrist strength while increasing accuracy and velocity.

Following that, she implemented leg and hip workouts with the flamingo drill. Standing on one foot, she’d rock the other back then drive it toward the plate. Releasing the ball as the other foot hits the ground, this focuses on a strong push-off to boost movement and rotation.

“I wasn’t doing as many drills to work on things before,” Hearn said. “Finally, I just started to keep things simple because that’s what’s best.”

Given her lack of velocity, she needed to add different pitches to her repertoire and keep batters off-balance to become an effective starter in the ACC, Doepking said.

Kramer and Doepking set up a dummy to impersonate a batter. With the better spin and movement that she had already worked on, Hearn started to employ a “backdoor curve,” she said. Unlike a traditional curveball the backdoor curve breaks from the middle to the left side of the plate. Against right handed hitters, this surprises them by moving inside, freshman AJ Kaiser said.

“I think it’s the fact that you see it outside, and timing-wise, you’re thinking ‘let it get deep’ because it’s outside, but then it comes in and you jam yourself,” Kaiser said.

Hearn’s most important improvement came from that meeting with Doepking: She needed to show more passion in the circle.

Hearn is not naturally emotional; she’s not like Romero, who often screams after strikeouts. Kramer called her “stale-faced” and Doepking said she is “introverted.” It’s not normal for her to fist pump like Dandola or Romero after ending innings.

She’s forced herself to show emotion by dancing to music on the mound. When she’s in the dugout, she sometimes wears a cowboy hat and shoots her teammates with a toy water gun.

“If you watch her now, you’ll see some fist pumps and you’ll see some emotion that you didn’t see at the beginning of the year,” Doepking said. “I think … the team wants to play behind Miranda.”

Hearn had her most complete outing of the season against Cornell on May 1. Using her fastball, changeup and backdoor curve, Hearn “fooled” the Big Red, Kaiser said. She threw the first complete-game shutout of her career.

It was a drastic change from that effort against Notre Dame and even senior Alicia Hansen’s fiance Antwan Cordy knew it.

“Hey, Miranda,” he yelled from the bleachers, “you were awesome today.”