Despite injury scare, Kat Rodriguez guides UNC softball to sweep over Pitt

Kat Rodriguez couldn’t hear a thing.

She laid face down in the dirt after colliding with graduate shortstop Grace Jackson in the top of the fourth inning. The graduate second baseman made noises to see if she could hear. 

The stadium fell silent. Her teammates surrounded her, checking on her as the training staff ran onto the field.

Rodriguez has traveled up and down the East Coast in her college career, spending one season at Quinnipiac before transferring to Pitt. After three seasons with the Panthers, Rodriguez graduated in 2024. Then, she came to UNC.

But on Sunday, she found herself facing off against Pitt, seeing her former teammates once more. So laying in the dirt, Rodriguez was cracking jokes, not wanting to be helped off in front of her previous team. 

“Little by little, I started hearing again, so I was like, 'OK, I'm fine, I could walk, I could get off,'” Rodriguez said. “They’re like, ‘You want us to help you off?’ No, I’m not gonna do this in front of my old team. I’m gonna walk off normally.”

In North Carolina's 8-4 win over the Pittsburgh Panthers on Sunday afternoon to complete the series sweep at Anderson Stadium, Rodriguez tallied two hits and two RBIs. Throughout the series, the second baseman who had already nabbed two ACC Player of the Week honors this year racked up six hits and seven RBIs against her former team. But that scare in the fourth almost ended a stellar weekend early. 

The scoring on Sunday opened with Rodriquez's third home run of the season, a solo shot in the bottom of the first that went well over the center field wall. She kept it going in her second at-bat, collecting an RBI single after a Pitt throwing error.

She scored her second run of the afternoon off of a hit by graduate designated player Kiannah Pierce. Two runs in two appearances at the plate, and UNC was up 3-0, well on its way to a series sweep. Then, near-disaster struck for Rodriguez.

After being down for three minutes, she walked off the injury. Back in the dugout, everyone knew she was going to go back out as soon as possible.

“She’s a competitor,” head coach Megan Smith Lyon said. “She's a tough kid. So if there was any way for her to be out there safely, she was gonna be back out there, I knew that.”

Rodriguez met with the trainers and had to sit out the bottom of the fourth and the top of the fifth. It gave her the chance to join in on the constant dugout chants that berate any opposing team that travels to Chapel Hill.

“You know we love to troll. It's fun,” sophomore outfielder Sanaa Thompson said. “If you beat the other team in the dugout, you beat them on the field, you get in their head, and that’s how you take control of the game.”

UNC wrapped up the inning with junior infielder Caroline Fox filling in for Rodriguez. She would remain on the bench until coming back for a plate appearance in the bottom of the fifth, getting to base on a walk. Thompson brought Rodriguez home with a two-run homer.

“I was able to just jump back in,” Rodriguez said. “I also knew I was having a great series, so I was like, 'I wanna keep this going.'"

Despite the injury, Rodriguez had three runs in all three of her plate appearances. UNC would withstand a late Pitt rally in the sixth, scoring two runs to cap off the sweep. 

Rodriguez is averaging a .473 through 25 games. She has 31 runs, 35 hits and 42 RBIs. She credits the best season of her career so far to her North Carolina teammates.

“I’ve never played for a team with this type of love and care for each other,” Rodriguez said, later adding,“It’s the culture, the girls, the support staff, the coaching staff, everybody really just dives in on you.”

@marvinmlee_

@dthsports | sports@dailytarheel.com