LCA's Harrison area's softball player of the year

Kylian Harrison was already pretty darn good, but she took a giant step toward becoming a more complete softball player this season.

She always had the talent to dominate in the circle and at the plate, but the Liberty Christian Academy junior reached a level of confidence and maturity in 2010 that helped her achieve greatness.

“She made big steps in her maturity this year, and now we’re at another stepping stone where she’s going, ‘Hey, it’s not all on me,’” LCA coach Brian Hensley said. “She’s always had that pressure of not wanting to let you down because she’s the one who keeps you in games. Now, she’s just got to go and rely more on her teammates and take some of the pressure off.”

It wasn’t always easy, but Harrison let go of some of the anxiety that might have gotten her in trouble earlier in her career.

“I can be such a head case sometimes,” Harrison recently joked.

As she became more sure of herself and sure of her teammates around her, she became virtually unhittable.

“I felt a lot better about how I was pitching and just how more accurate and controlled I could be,” she said.

Harrison, The News & Advance’s softball player of the year, went 19-3 with an 0.97 earned run average to help lead the Bulldogs to the VISSA Division I state championship game, where they lost to Bishop O’Connell, the 18th ranked team in the final USA Today national softball poll.

Harrison mowed through the competition. She struck out 263 of the 500 batters she faced, and threw seven no-hitters en route to her second straight selection to the VISSA Division I all state first team.

What’s more, she batted .522 with 41 runs scored and 22 stolen bases, all team highs.

Her elevated maturity put her over the top, Hensley said.

“She’s got all the skills,” the coach said. “It’s just a matter of always putting them together, the maturity with her athletic skills, and she’s blossomed real nice.”

Harrison achieved much success in 2010 despite a nagging abdominal injury that created discomfort for the second half of the season.

She doesn’t know how she hurt it, but sometimes when Harrison made a pitch, she would feel a sharp pain.

“It was pretty much a stabbing pain in the middle of your chest,” she said.

“Every time you threw a pitch or even breathed sometimes, it was a sharp pain.”

She toughed out the injury and continued to dominate from the circle. One of her best games of the season came in the Blue Ridge Conference championship, where she struck out 12 batters and no-hit Carlisle.

Apparently, the injury did little to affect her confidence.

“My confidence from the beginning of the year to the end of the year got better, and just being able to throw whatever I needed at that time helped, too,” Harrison said.