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At eight years old, Angel Jasso’s softball coach recommended she do 100 pushups a day. Her father, Carlos Jasso, said she wasn’t too fond of that.

Like most young kids, she was hesitant to listen to her coach. But Carlos encouraged her to get stronger, which was needed as she transitioned from 8U to 10U softball. Carlos sacrificed a lot to put Jasso in a position to succeed, and he didn’t want to see it go to waste.

A junior outfielder for Syracuse, Carlos described Jasso as scrawny and bony from a young age. Jasso didn’t always have the motivation to workout. It wasn’t until high school when she got serious about her strength and conditioning. Jasso developed a relationship with her hitting coach, Nicole Sardelich, who worked on strength training with her. Jasso’s time in the gym grew her frame, leading her to become one of Syracuse’s most prolific hitters.

“She lived at the gym,” Carlos said.

The two were similar. Sardelich wasn’t a naturally gifted athlete, either, and the relatively small age gap — nine years — made it easy to communicate. Jasso absorbed everything Sardelich said to her, saying she sometimes listened to her more than her parents.

“Oftentimes, Nicole would tell her things that we were telling her, but it was the fact that it wasn’t her mom and dad telling her that made her listen,” said Elizabeth Jasso, Sardelich’s stepmom. “It was coming from somebody…who already went through the recruiting process, who played college softball and already did the things that Angel’s trying to achieve.”

Elizabeth added that the money they spent on training was worth “every penny,” and that Sardelich pushed Jasso harder than other trainers had.

Jasso and Sardelich first met through mutual connections. When Jasso transitioned from coach to kid pitch, one of Jasso’s coaches mentioned Sardelich — their oldest daughter played with Sardelich at Angleton High School. She was an experienced catcher that could help the players transition to higher levels.

When Jasso was 10, Sardelich started giving her hitting lessons, having her hit off the tee to perfect her mechanics. Elizabeth said that before meeting Sardelich, Jasso worked with several trainers, but she connected best with Sardelich.

Sardelich played four seasons at a Division-II school, St. Mary’s College in Texas. But whenever Sardelich returned on break, she went right back to work with Jasso. After graduating in 2017, Sardelich opened up her own gym, “The Backyard,” where Jasso got involved immediately.

Jasso’s main goal was to become a more powerful hitter, Sardelich said. Carlos always talked about how Jasso was a great contact hitter when she was younger, but Sardelich wanted to work on her power.

Workouts typically lasted two hours, starting with a 15 to 20 minute warmup. Certain days, Jasso worked on legs with squats and box jumps. Other days, Sardelich focused on her upper body with power lifts. The one day that Jasso never looked forward to was conditioning workouts, Sardelich said.

Jasso did suicides — sprinting from one end of the gym to the other. She jumped rope, used the erg machine, did squats, pushups and used the rowing machine. They were simple things, but longtime domains, Sardelich said.

“I’m not going to make her do anything that’s ridiculous,” Sardelich said. “When it comes to overheads or anything she doesn’t need to do, I would tweak it to something that would make sense for her.”

The workouts were meant to be specific to singular sports, featuring quick and powerful movements. Sometimes in the summer, Sardelich took Jasso swimming, too.

Jasso didn’t miss a day at the gym. After school, Elizabeth took Jasso’s three younger sisters to their extra-curricular activities and dropped Jasso off at the gym. Elizabeth would pick her up two or three hours later on her way back. Sometimes, Jasso also even did her homework in the gym, Elizabeth said.

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Jasso’s motivation wasn’t always high. Elizabeth remembered Jasso being lazy when she was younger when the two worked out together. When she saw Jasso not working hard enough, she threatened to take her phone away.

Sardelich said the parental discipline only benefited Jasso. Elizabeth said Jasso was the one they were the hardest on. Talking about Jasso’s Syracuse scholarship, Elizabeth joked that Jasso’s three younger siblings will probably be “living with us for the rest of our lives,” explaining that Jasso set herself apart.

Sardelich and Jasso’s parents started seeing a difference in the way she carried herself when she was a junior in high school. Jasso still didn’t know whether she would play D-I softball with new transfer rules that made it harder to fit on a roster. Everything rode on a scholarship, so Jasso kicked it into high gear.

Every Memorial Day, Jasso started doing “The Murph” workout with Elizabeth. It’s a one mile run at the start, 100 pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats along and ending with another one-mile run. Jasso didn’t love it at first, but eventually got really into it, Elizabeth said.

“She was going to let her laziness take over,” Elizabeth said. “All the fears and things that we had that we were trying to prevent from happening changed because of her work ethic. Not only did she listen to what we were trying to teach and instill in her, but she’s also applying it.”

Jasso didn’t need anyone to tell her to workout. She did it on her own.

“She sees the big picture now that she’s kind of gone through it …. I told her you’re either going to go all out and use it, or you’re just going to let it go to waste,” Sardelich said.

Carlos started seeing the difference in her power after a while. Before, Jasso was more of a contact hitter, someone who “put the ball in play,” Carlos said. Jasso still has the ability to get on base, leading Syracuse in batting average last season with .365, but she’s added the power to her arsenal.

Before coming to Syracuse, Jasso had only hit one or two home runs in her life, Carlos said. In her freshman season, she hit four. Jasso increased that total to five in her sophomore season, which was third on the team. She recorded 18 extra-base hits, more than double her total from the year before.

“You can tell from freshman year to sophomore year, she’s just getting better and better,” Carlos said. “That’s just from her determination, which makes me proud as a father to see that.”

Published on March 8, 2023 at 11:17 pm

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