Los Alamitos’ Sophia Nugent flourishing after escaping a ‘mental funk’

Thoughts of the future motivate Sophia Nugent’s punches.

The thump of fist to punching bag reverberates around the inside of Nugent’s garage. Five sets, two minutes. With the rebellion of P.O.D.’s “Youth of the Nation” clanging in her ears, the Los Alamitos High catcher thinks of her dreams as she winds up.

What does she want? What is she fighting for?

Smack.

A starting spot. On Oklahoma‘s softball team.

Smack.

Los Alamitos’ Sophia Nugent gets hit by a pitch during a recent game against Chino Hills.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

People will be ahead of her in the lineup when she gets there next year. She’ll need to train hard.

Smack.

“All these things I want, I have to keep going — there’s more push now, mentally, from myself,” Nugent said. “It makes me go another round.”

Earlier in her career, Nugent was derailed by imposing this kind of pressure on herself. Yet in addition to fine-tuning the mechanics of a powerful swing, she’s learned more about the intricacies of self-motivation — and that psychological confidence has the senior poised to make an impact to her commitment of Oklahoma next spring.

Nugent came to Los Alamitos as a “typical” freshman, her coach Rob Weil said. Green. Timid. She didn’t say much; she absorbed a lot.

“Nobody really knew her,” Weil said.

People soon found out. Nugent, sporting a coiled, preying-mantis-like stance with an elongated front leg, detonated on pitches that first year. She hit .412 with five home runs in 68 at-bats. Later, she’d earn a spot on the Firecrackers Rico-Weil travel team, playing with some of the best talent in the country. She was on top of the world of Southern California softball.

And then something changed.

It’s difficult for Nugent to describe. Suddenly, when she stepped into the batter’s box her sophomore year, her breathing turned heavy. Shallow. Suddenly, she wasn’t telling herself to turn on a pitch — she was telling herself not to strike out.

“I just had this mental funk where I just wasn’t thinking properly,” Nugent said. “It was a lot of negative thoughts … people knew my name, so I was like, ‘Oh, I have to show up and do what I have to do.’”

Nugent was expected to do even better than that transcendent freshman year — and that pressure was weighing on her. She worried where she was going to go to college. Her future loomed like a thick fog on the horizon.

“It became a mental issue where she was just pressing a little bit, which was tough,” said her father, Shawn. “She hadn’t really dealt with something like that before.”

Her average dropped by more than 150 points. She struck out twice as many times as she did her freshman year. Opposing teams had started to figure out Nugent’s weaknesses — she was getting beat on pitches off the outside corner, Weil said. Mentally, Nugent said, she just wasn’t there.

Nugent first fell in love with softball at 8 years old because of the energy of the sport. More specifically, the energy that came with putting the right swing on a pitch and feeling the satisfying smack of a yellow sphere against aluminum.

Her fatherplayed college baseball, and Nugent worked on her craft through simple father-daughter time — heading out to a local field at Arbor Park and taking batting practice with Shawn pitching. Over time, he honed his underhand windup as she honed her swing.

“He throws harder than any of the girls we face in high school, so it pushes me, which is really good,” Nugent said. “He likes to challenge me, too — I’ve learned how to hit risers now, and he throws me changeups out of the blue.”

Los Alamitos catcher Sophia Nugent warms up Makenzie Ficke pitcher before a game.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Toward the end of her sophomore year, and heading into the summer, Nugent went to the park more frequently with her dad. When she sees pitches every day, Nugent said, she gets into a groove.

“She slowly started piecing it together,” her father said.

Coaches with the Firecrackers often encourage players, Nugent said, to visualize the next pitch while they’re in the batter’s box. But the fall before her junior season, Nugent tried the opposite strategy — not thinking at all. Slowing her breathing down. Decreasing her heart rate.

“I clear my mind,” Nugent said. “I don’t think of anything. I just step up and swing at what I think is a strike.”

As things started to make sense for her on the field, Nugent’s future materialized in September 2019 during her first visit to Oklahoma. She has a quintessential small-town personality: bright, personable, yet laid-back. As she looked around on a campus tour, Nugent realized it was so much different from the hustle and bustle, the traffic of Southern California she was used to. She imagined herself simply reading and playing softball.

The team, too, welcomed her with open arms. Nugent in particular spoke highly of talking with senior Oklahoma catcher Lynnsie Elam. And once she committed to the Sooners in October, Nugent felt the invisible pressure of an uncertain future lift. It was time to just play softball.

Sophia Nugent talks with pitcher Makenzie Ficke during a pause in the game.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

“Once I committed, I don’t know what happened, but my teammate told me, ‘Yeah, you just kind of clicked it on,’” Nugent said. “I went up to every at-bat wanting it a lot more.”

Her junior season, Nugent hit an eye-popping .520 with five home runs in 25 at-bats before the COVID-19 shutdown.

During the pandemic, Nugent has had more time alone to train, which has led to the garage workout routine and the punching bag. She’s not shying away from pressure; rather, she’s using it to fuel her, then stepping up to the plate and trusting her skills. Nugent has picked up right where she left off, leading the 8-0 Griffins in extra-base-hits and walks in this season, according to Weil.

On April 14, in a 17-6 dismantling of Chino Hills, Nugent drew two walks and was hit by a pitch in her first three plate appearances. She took a couple strikes. But she was waiting for a belt-high pitch, and largely kept the bat on her shoulder. Patience paid off with a two-run double in her fourth trip to the plate.

Earlier in her high school career — in that funk of a sophomore season — would she have chased a couple pitches?

“I definitely [think] so,” Nugent said after the Chino Hills game. “Now, it’s more of an, ‘I’m going to wait for my pitch, and I know I’m going to drive it.’”