FILE: Duke’s Ana Gold (4) smiles after hitting a home run during an NCAA softball game on Friday, May 19, 2023, in Durham, N.C. (AP Photo/Ben McKeown)
DURHAM, N.C. — Recently, Duke University softball’s junior third-baseman Ana Gold set the program home run record with a three-run jack to left field- No. 36 of her career, in the Blue Devils’ thirty-fourth win of the season.
A 2021 graduate of Ballston Spa, Gold remembers when she realized hitting for power was for her, even though she may not have the first-ever home run ball that came with it.
“My dad [Eric] has been my hitting coach since I started playing baseball and then softball and since I was eight, or 10 years old, I’ve been doing specific drills to have the most efficient swing, with the best swing path, that can hopefully be – if I execute it – very consistent,” Gold said in an interview with the Saratogian. “I remember I hit my first homerun when I was like 11, I think, and I’ve just been hitting home runs since then.”
“I kind of knew [the Duke home run record] was there, but that kind of had been in the back of my mind,” Gold said of this season’s accomplishment. “I think that if I just play my game, good things will happen and if that’s God’s plan, then that’s God’s plan. I’m just gonna trust in him and whatever happens, happens. I really try not to think about that stuff. I just try to step on the field and be the best player I can be for my team to help us win and if that means hitting home runs, then that means hit home runs.”
Gold has seven long balls in the 2023-24 season. Across her career, spanning four varsity seasons with the Scotties and three more with the Blue Devils, she has more than 60. Her favorite part of each one? Putting the barrel to the ball.
“Feeling that and knowing that all the work you put in has paid off,” Gold said.
Yet long before the record-setting junior was launching balls over the fence, she was a seventh-grade first base coach on the Ballston Spa junior varsity team. The team’s head coach, Toby Youngblood, was a “firm believer in biding your time,” said varsity head coach Amanda Fifield, until one day, the time had come and Gold set the standard.
“Coach Toby pulled me aside one practice and was like, ‘You’re gonna start against Saratoga.’ So I got the start and then I ended up hitting two home runs in that game, and then just started every game since then,” Gold said. “So, that was kind of, I think, just a really good learning experience for me- just not settling for less and just always striving. During that time period, I worked my butt off. I never stopped grinding and the hard work just paid off. And so did believing in myself; that definitely helped.”
“It was in that moment, she said, because of that experience, she would go home and hit until her hands bled. She wanted to make a statement for herself and I remember her parents also talking about how without that experience, she might not be as hard of a worker as she is,” Fifield said. “It was that chance where- yes, she was probably the top player on the team, at that time, but our coach at that time Toby was like, nope, ‘you still gotta prove yourself.”
That following year, Fifield received a letter before varsity tryouts from the eighth-grader’s parents, Julie and Eric Gold, discussing why their daughter had what it took to compete at the varsity level. Fifield had already seen it for herself at each of the two tryouts and whatever proof still needed was delivered when Gold homered in her first varsity at-bat…
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