Completed Event: Softball versus UNLV on April 26, 2026 , Win , 4, to, 2
Softball
vs UNLV
W 4-2
Grand Canyon University Athletics
Photo by: David Kadlubowski
McCray lights up Lopes with lightning play
5/14/2026 10:36:00 AM | Softball, Paul Coro
GCU center fielder emulates MLB father, brother for All-MW season
LINCOLN, Neb. – Undeterred, relentless and infectiously charismatic, Sydney McCray is always coming fast.
She came into this world quickly, arriving about 10 weeks early as an instant-survivor infant. She kept coming at her future big-league big brother, challenging him at every turn of their childhood. And at Grand Canyon, she swiftly has come into her own as the Lopes' lightning charger with a speedy pace, swing and voice.
GCU softball is laden with talent to be the nation's No. 25 team entering Friday's NCAA Lincoln Regional opener against No. 24 Louisville, but the Lopes' lineup, line of defense and leadership starts with McCray.
She patrols center field with the reckless abandon and instincts of her father, Rodney, a former big-leaguer who earned the nickname "Crash" for making decades of baseball blooper reels by running full speed through a plywood outfield wall. Sydney competes with the graceful movement and gritty competitiveness of her older brother, Grant, who played parts of the past two seasons with the San Francisco Giants.
And yet ...
"I begged my mom to be a cheerleader," Sydney said.
Although she may be GCU's most enthusiastic dugout voice, Sydney pivoted quickly in her youth to the diamond. But the diamonds she constantly visited were for baseball for her brother's games and her father's work as an outfield and baserunning instructor with the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sydney ran circles around the boys in Little League baseball for four years, even playing with Cleveland Guardians pitcher Connor Whitaker, before she played on her first softball team in middle school. She was accustomed to challenging a boy because she incessantly wanted to race and wrestle him while they ruined their Sarasota, Florida, home's walls with bodies and balls.
"They're absolute animals," said Penny Snow, Sydney's and Grant's mother. "I had a drywall repairman on speed dial because I'd have holes in my walls from full-on wrestling and throwing balls in the house. There were constant races down the street. They still go at it. It's all in fun and love. They push each other and challenge each other. The other cool thing is they hold each other accountable, and they genuinely adore each other and are best friends."
Some families have study time and play card games. The McCrays raced to finish homework first and used a card deck for a workout, flipping them to do push-ups on red cards and sits-ups on black cards.
"Grant was so physical and competitive with her," Rodney said. "That's why she's so tough. She's always been a winner. I could see her talent, and I used to tease Grant, 'I don't know if you're the best athlete in the family.' That's how we keep that competitive juice. That's my golden child."
Sydney was formulating her future as an All-MW first-team honoree and national leader for stolen bases without being caught (35). She won a state championship in high school and became a junior college All-American and Gold Glove winner ("Grant doesn't have one," she needles) at Florida Southwestern State.
"I was just naturally good at it," Sydney said of evolution from pink-helmeted LIttle Leaguer to Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year. "I had a natural read for the ball. I was genetically fast. It all fell into each other. My athleticism started to come out. I was like, 'Maybe I'm actually kind of good at this.'
"I love the energy and fast pace of it. I was always around when my dad was teaching my brother and my brother's games, so I kind of learned more by just watching. I was like a student of the game just by watching him for the longest time. I already knew scenarios and how to play the game. It was something I born into, but I didn't know it yet."
GCU head coach Shanon Hays, "royalty in my mind" to Sydney's mother, received a cross-country recommendation when he was searching for his next center fielder. Now he considers her the best defensive center fielder in the nation.
With "Baby Crash" stitched into her glove, she chases down fly balls and line drives with the occasional dives and wall slams, like the time her father famously flipped a Triple-A wall up like a doggie door as went for a fly ball at full speed.
From center field, she reads the pitch, analyzes the angle of the hitter's bat barrel and ascertains the sound of the contact to take away hits or extra bases and help lower the nation's 12th-ranked team ERA.
Just as Grant mimicked watching the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Eric Davis in center field, Sydney then mimicked Grant.
"It's like there's GPS within me," McCray said.
"She got her beauty from her mother, but her genetics from her dad," Rodney said. "She has every bit of my energy. I just love her watching her. She has the positive energy, like, 'C'mon, we're going to do this.' That's the way I was in baseball. If you played against me, you didn't like me. If you were my teammate, it was real. I was causing havoc. If I got on first, I was stealing second and third. I was a game-changer, just like she is."
Sydney hit .326 as a GCU junior but was bent on improving her strikeout-to-walk ratio this season. She improved her batting to .358 and took her on-base percentage from .386 to .479, setting up how she more than doubled her stolen bases. After swiping 17 last season, she has 35 this season without being caught to turn walks and singles into doubles essentially.
Her role grew right before the season started when second baseman Savannah Kirk, the MW Preseason Player of the Year, injured her knee and underwent season-ending surgery. Sydney was asked to take over Kirk's lead-off role with her similar left-handed slap-and-speed ability to last season's No. 2 hitter in the nation.
"That was a tough one," Sydney said of Kirk's injury. "For a second, I felt an absurd amount of pressure because of the player that Savannah Kirk is. She's not easily replaceable. I was looking forward to hitting behind her and being a dynamic duo. That just crushed and hurt everybody.
"Once I understood I didn't have to provide for both of us, I got that I only have to do what I can and what is best for my team and still be me."
Grant, now playing for the Giants' Triple-A afiliate in Sacramento, is always a relatable ear for Sydney to seek advice. From that preseason moment of stepping into Kirk's offensive role, he continued to be her best motivator. In this postseason moment, he will use an ESPN2 broadcast to join their attending mom and dad as her biggest fan.
"It's been awesome to watch her," Grant said. "She told me she was a little worried about how this season was going to go when Savannah got hurt. I always felt like if Sydney's going to have to be the leader, then they're going to have a pretty solid squad."
Like always, Sydney is part of a winner. At 52-8, the Lopes are tied for the most wins in the nation. But her emotions have been running higher after graduating in April and having the notion of a sudden end to the postseason.
When GCU trailed 9-0 in the first inning before winning 11-10 in the Mountain West Championship title game last weekend, Sydney's eyes were welling up with two outs in the seventh inning as she emptied her hoarse voice with encouragement for sophomore teammate Ellie Pond, who delivered a game-tying, three-run double.
Two weeks earlier, Sydney called a team meeting between games of a critical conference doubleheader that had opened with a Lopes loss. She asked each teammate to share her mentality and contribution. GCU trounced UNLV 10-0 in the next game.
"I love the idea of my underclassmen looking up to me, trusting the words I say and being motivated by the words I say and being engaged," Sydney said. "I just love that I'm able to reel everybody back in and let everyone know, 'No, we've got this.'
"Knowing that I've impacted some of these underclassmen to grow in their further years, if I've said something that has impacted them so much to where they won't forget it in their next years of softball, that's more important to me than hitting the walk-off hit or scoring the game-winning run."
"The Sydney Show," once with Hannah Montana songs in front of a childhood bathroom curtain, is moving to Lincoln, Nebraska, this weekend with the nation's toughest regional meeting GCU's toughest star on center stage.
"To see her excel and graduate, be such a flipping leader and be so happy and to come into who she is as a person as a woman of color in this climate we have, I'm just so proud of the impact she makes on others in a positive way," Penny said. "She's so authentic and genuine that it comes from a real place. For her to have the platform and the opportunities she has to share that and make the world better and make other people feel good about themselves, I can't. Mom has no words."
Sydney has plenty of those left. They will be heard this weekend.
"I'm so ready not to be done," Sydney said.
She came into this world quickly, arriving about 10 weeks early as an instant-survivor infant. She kept coming at her future big-league big brother, challenging him at every turn of their childhood. And at Grand Canyon, she swiftly has come into her own as the Lopes' lightning charger with a speedy pace, swing and voice.
GCU softball is laden with talent to be the nation's No. 25 team entering Friday's NCAA Lincoln Regional opener against No. 24 Louisville, but the Lopes' lineup, line of defense and leadership starts with McCray.
She patrols center field with the reckless abandon and instincts of her father, Rodney, a former big-leaguer who earned the nickname "Crash" for making decades of baseball blooper reels by running full speed through a plywood outfield wall. Sydney competes with the graceful movement and gritty competitiveness of her older brother, Grant, who played parts of the past two seasons with the San Francisco Giants.
And yet ...
"I begged my mom to be a cheerleader," Sydney said.
Although she may be GCU's most enthusiastic dugout voice, Sydney pivoted quickly in her youth to the diamond. But the diamonds she constantly visited were for baseball for her brother's games and her father's work as an outfield and baserunning instructor with the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sydney ran circles around the boys in Little League baseball for four years, even playing with Cleveland Guardians pitcher Connor Whitaker, before she played on her first softball team in middle school. She was accustomed to challenging a boy because she incessantly wanted to race and wrestle him while they ruined their Sarasota, Florida, home's walls with bodies and balls.
"They're absolute animals," said Penny Snow, Sydney's and Grant's mother. "I had a drywall repairman on speed dial because I'd have holes in my walls from full-on wrestling and throwing balls in the house. There were constant races down the street. They still go at it. It's all in fun and love. They push each other and challenge each other. The other cool thing is they hold each other accountable, and they genuinely adore each other and are best friends."
Some families have study time and play card games. The McCrays raced to finish homework first and used a card deck for a workout, flipping them to do push-ups on red cards and sits-ups on black cards.
"Grant was so physical and competitive with her," Rodney said. "That's why she's so tough. She's always been a winner. I could see her talent, and I used to tease Grant, 'I don't know if you're the best athlete in the family.' That's how we keep that competitive juice. That's my golden child."
Sydney was formulating her future as an All-MW first-team honoree and national leader for stolen bases without being caught (35). She won a state championship in high school and became a junior college All-American and Gold Glove winner ("Grant doesn't have one," she needles) at Florida Southwestern State.
"I was just naturally good at it," Sydney said of evolution from pink-helmeted LIttle Leaguer to Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year. "I had a natural read for the ball. I was genetically fast. It all fell into each other. My athleticism started to come out. I was like, 'Maybe I'm actually kind of good at this.'
"I love the energy and fast pace of it. I was always around when my dad was teaching my brother and my brother's games, so I kind of learned more by just watching. I was like a student of the game just by watching him for the longest time. I already knew scenarios and how to play the game. It was something I born into, but I didn't know it yet."
GCU head coach Shanon Hays, "royalty in my mind" to Sydney's mother, received a cross-country recommendation when he was searching for his next center fielder. Now he considers her the best defensive center fielder in the nation.
With "Baby Crash" stitched into her glove, she chases down fly balls and line drives with the occasional dives and wall slams, like the time her father famously flipped a Triple-A wall up like a doggie door as went for a fly ball at full speed.
From center field, she reads the pitch, analyzes the angle of the hitter's bat barrel and ascertains the sound of the contact to take away hits or extra bases and help lower the nation's 12th-ranked team ERA.
Just as Grant mimicked watching the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Eric Davis in center field, Sydney then mimicked Grant.
"It's like there's GPS within me," McCray said.
"She got her beauty from her mother, but her genetics from her dad," Rodney said. "She has every bit of my energy. I just love her watching her. She has the positive energy, like, 'C'mon, we're going to do this.' That's the way I was in baseball. If you played against me, you didn't like me. If you were my teammate, it was real. I was causing havoc. If I got on first, I was stealing second and third. I was a game-changer, just like she is."
Sydney hit .326 as a GCU junior but was bent on improving her strikeout-to-walk ratio this season. She improved her batting to .358 and took her on-base percentage from .386 to .479, setting up how she more than doubled her stolen bases. After swiping 17 last season, she has 35 this season without being caught to turn walks and singles into doubles essentially.
Her role grew right before the season started when second baseman Savannah Kirk, the MW Preseason Player of the Year, injured her knee and underwent season-ending surgery. Sydney was asked to take over Kirk's lead-off role with her similar left-handed slap-and-speed ability to last season's No. 2 hitter in the nation.
"That was a tough one," Sydney said of Kirk's injury. "For a second, I felt an absurd amount of pressure because of the player that Savannah Kirk is. She's not easily replaceable. I was looking forward to hitting behind her and being a dynamic duo. That just crushed and hurt everybody.
"Once I understood I didn't have to provide for both of us, I got that I only have to do what I can and what is best for my team and still be me."
Grant, now playing for the Giants' Triple-A afiliate in Sacramento, is always a relatable ear for Sydney to seek advice. From that preseason moment of stepping into Kirk's offensive role, he continued to be her best motivator. In this postseason moment, he will use an ESPN2 broadcast to join their attending mom and dad as her biggest fan.
"It's been awesome to watch her," Grant said. "She told me she was a little worried about how this season was going to go when Savannah got hurt. I always felt like if Sydney's going to have to be the leader, then they're going to have a pretty solid squad."
Like always, Sydney is part of a winner. At 52-8, the Lopes are tied for the most wins in the nation. But her emotions have been running higher after graduating in April and having the notion of a sudden end to the postseason.
When GCU trailed 9-0 in the first inning before winning 11-10 in the Mountain West Championship title game last weekend, Sydney's eyes were welling up with two outs in the seventh inning as she emptied her hoarse voice with encouragement for sophomore teammate Ellie Pond, who delivered a game-tying, three-run double.
Two weeks earlier, Sydney called a team meeting between games of a critical conference doubleheader that had opened with a Lopes loss. She asked each teammate to share her mentality and contribution. GCU trounced UNLV 10-0 in the next game.
"I love the idea of my underclassmen looking up to me, trusting the words I say and being motivated by the words I say and being engaged," Sydney said. "I just love that I'm able to reel everybody back in and let everyone know, 'No, we've got this.'
"Knowing that I've impacted some of these underclassmen to grow in their further years, if I've said something that has impacted them so much to where they won't forget it in their next years of softball, that's more important to me than hitting the walk-off hit or scoring the game-winning run."
"The Sydney Show," once with Hannah Montana songs in front of a childhood bathroom curtain, is moving to Lincoln, Nebraska, this weekend with the nation's toughest regional meeting GCU's toughest star on center stage.
"To see her excel and graduate, be such a flipping leader and be so happy and to come into who she is as a person as a woman of color in this climate we have, I'm just so proud of the impact she makes on others in a positive way," Penny said. "She's so authentic and genuine that it comes from a real place. For her to have the platform and the opportunities she has to share that and make the world better and make other people feel good about themselves, I can't. Mom has no words."
Sydney has plenty of those left. They will be heard this weekend.
"I'm so ready not to be done," Sydney said.
Players Mentioned
From 9-0 1st Inning Deficit to Mountain West Champs
Monday, May 11
A New Challenge for GCU Softball
Monday, May 11
Tinley Lucas Believes in Her Staff
Monday, May 11
Conference Tourney MVP Oakley Vickers
Monday, May 11