STARKVILLE — It was a celebratory night for Mississippi State as Jessie Blaine kicked off the final weekend of the regular season with a walk-off two-run home run, giving the Bulldogs a critical win against bitter rival Ole Miss.
But mere minutes after Blaine stepped on home plate, Sierra Sacco was back in the lab. Or more accurately, the batting cage.
MSU’s standout senior center fielder has not had many off nights this year. After two excellent seasons at Louisiana Tech and a very good junior year as a prototypical slapper with the Bulldogs in 2024, Sacco transformed herself into one of the most complete offensive players in the country.
On this Thursday night, though, she was hitless in four at-bats without hitting the ball out of the infield, striking out twice and grounding out twice. So there she was, getting some extra swings in.
“I’ve just been feeling off a little bit. The outside noise is kind of getting to me a little bit,” Sacco said after the next day’s game. “I just need to work through it, get out of my own head and get out of my own way.”
After her rough series opener, the rest of Sacco’s Super Bulldog Weekend was about as good as it can get. She reached base safely three times in another win in the middle game of the series, then homered on the first pitch she saw in her Senior Day game. That night, she was selected in the second round of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League draft by the Talons, who chose MSU pitcher Raelin Chaffin one round later.
And to top it off, she got engaged, with Bulldogs kicker Kyle Ferrie proposing to her on the field at Davis Wade Stadium.
“She is fiery. She is competitive in everything we do, whether it’s practice, games, she goes all out to make sure we win, and she wants everyone around her to do the same,” MSU head coach Samantha Ricketts said. “She elevates the team that she’s on to be more competitive, and she’s done exactly that for our group.”
Humble beginnings
Sacco grew up in Marrero, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, and she played six years of varsity softball at John Curtis Christian High School — also the alma mater of MSU women’s basketball standout Jerkaila Jordan. Despite winning two state titles and batting .589 as a senior, most Division I programs never bothered to give her a look.
She was all set to start her college career at Pearl River Community College before Louisiana Tech swooped in. And all she did there was become a top-10 finalist for the NFCA National Freshman of the Year award in 2022, put up the eighth-best batting average in the country and throw out eight runners at home plate.
Sacco was not quite at that level as a sophomore, but she was still extremely productive, and she knew she was ready for a bigger challenge. Louisiana Tech did not play in the NCAA Tournament in either of her years there and was 0-8 against Southeastern Conference teams, including an 8-4 loss to MSU in February 2023.
So as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. Sacco entered the transfer portal following her sophomore year, landing in Starkville less than two weeks later.
“Her leadership really has grown a lot,” Ricketts said. “She’s just very determined in everything she does, and she wants to get into coaching when she’s done. That’s really helped elevate her perspective of it all. She’s a good one to have conversations with after (games), like, ‘Where’s the team at? What do you think we maybe could do here?’ She’s probably the one on the field that pushes the other players the most, but she’s not afraid to ask for more.”
Many players would have been satisfied with the way Sacco made the adjustment to the strongest conference in college softball. She hit .347 in her first year as an MSU Bulldog with a .492 on-base percentage, walked more than she struck out, was a perfect 19-for-19 on stolen base attempts and played error-free defense in center. But Sacco, long underappreciated and undervalued but never lacking in confidence, knew she had another gear in her.
One of the first signs that Sacco could expand her game came in last year’s NCAA regionals at Stanford. NiJaree Canady, the best pitcher in the country that season, had set down nine straight batters to start the game with seven strikeouts, with Sacco as her first victim. Leading off the fourth, Sacco swung away at Canady’s first pitch, driving it over the center-field wall.
“It starts off with a player who wants to be determined to make (herself) as good as she possibly can be,” associate head coach Tyler Bratton said. “That’s one of the things that she wanted when she came here. She wanted to be pushed, she wanted to be challenged, and she was right away.”
The offseason that changed everything
Sacco’s home run off Canady was the second of both her season and career, with the first coming in a key win at Arkansas in April. It was enough to make her wonder whether she could drive the ball more consistently if she committed to it.
So she stayed in Starkville over the summer, putting in work in the batting cages, the weight room and the nutrition center. Her time in the cages with hitting coach Zac Shaw was especially critical in her development into a finished product that pitchers all over the country would soon fear.
It did not take long for the new version of Sacco to introduce herself. In the Bulldogs’ fourth game of the season, she set a school record with three doubles in a win over Penn State. Two weeks later, she homered twice in a win against her old team, Louisiana Tech. And once the competition stepped up with the start of SEC play, Sacco did not slow down.
“It’s definitely a lot of fun, especially going from last year, when I had two (homers) on the year,” Sacco said. “It’s about getting a good pitch and actually being aggressive about it, and trusting my swing that it’s good enough to do that amount of damage.”
Sacco has blown past her previous career highs in doubles (16) and home runs (11) heading into the NCAA Tournament. And she isn’t hitting wall-scrapers, either. She’s crushing some prodigious blasts. On the first pitch of a game at Oklahoma on Apr. 20, Sacco launched a ball to the back of the bleachers at Love’s Field, and she admired her shot for several seconds before jogging around the bases. She hit another no-doubter in the second game that day.
What’s most impressive is that Sacco is doing all this without sacrificing any of the tools that made her a special player in years past. In fact, she’s gotten better at those things, batting .461 and getting on base more than 55 percent of the time.
One might expect a power-centric approach to lead to more strikeouts, but Sacco has cut down on those, from 32 last year to 22 this year in 15 more at-bats. The speed and defense have not gone anywhere — she has maintained a perfect fielding percentage and has 16 steals in 19 attempts.
“The mentality has always been there,” Bratton said. “It starts between the years, and she’s had a big-time head on her shoulders since she got here. She’s the player that makes everybody in practice better. We’re seeing some of the physicality really take off this year with the home run numbers.”
Now, finally, the recognition is starting to pour in. Sacco was named to the All-SEC first team on Friday, and will likely soon be an All-American as well. She was already set on staying involved with softball as a coach, but that stage of her career will at least briefly be put on hold as she takes her talents to the AUSL this summer.
“She has been huge for us down the stretch,” Bratton said. “It’s a cheat code to have somebody like that, with her kind of skill set and the intensity she brings day in and day out.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
