Alex Hugo becomes first player to win two USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year awards

It didn't matter who the opponent was or what they offered: If a pitcher dared to throw Team USA star Alex Hugo a pitch near the strike zone, she was going to bash it. With long slashes of eye black drawn across her face, the Team USA slugger went 10-for-14 with four doubles, a home run, and nine RBIs in the WBSC Women's Baseball World Cup group stage earlier this year in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The effort first earned her Most Outstanding Player honors from the WBSC and, earlier this month, Hugo also collected the USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year Award. It's the second time that Hugo has won the award, becoming the first player to ever take home the title multiple times.

"It's a great honor," Hugo said in a phone call with MLB.com. "I am a very patriotic and passionate person and I feel like USA Baseball has been really good to me. I feel like I give a lot of myself to them, so it's nice to see my hard work behind the scenes pay off."

While Hugo is relatively new to baseball -- she was a standout softball star at the University of Georgia and for the Akron Racers in the now-defunct National Pro Fastpitch league, only switching to baseball after going out for a USA Baseball tryout in 2018 -- she's fast become a vocal leader both on and off the field for Team USA. Hugo is regularly heard chattering from her position at second base and her legs are always churning in pursuit of an extra base. On a team with young players like 19-year-old Brown University star Olivia Pichardo, 18-year-old staff ace Elise Berger and 16-year-old outfielder Naomi Ryan, having that kind of presence on the team is all the more important.

"I always think that the national team is an interesting group because of the age differences," Hugo said. "It's cool to see the vets that have stayed around, and obviously the people that have been on the team before me and all of the new talent that we're seeing. I really appreciate our coaching staff, because they lead with such passion, and also by great examples. I find myself wanting to be that go-to person that people can look to and give them a sense of comfort, but also a sense of, you know, we've got business to take care of."

Manager Veronica Alvarez echoes that sentiment. Simply being able to pencil Hugo into the lineup every day makes Team USA better.

"She's a high-level athlete with a lot of experience in collegiate softball," Alvarez said. "The expectations she has as an athlete for herself, and for the people around her, just bring us all up and make us all better as a whole."

The two often work together at USA Baseball tournaments and women's baseball development camps like the Breakthrough Series and Elite Development Invitational -- both events put on by Major League Baseball -- as they look to not just improve Team USA but also the level of women's baseball around the globe.

Alvarez even earned the "Doc" Councilman Science Award for her work bringing advanced analytical tools to last January's USA Baseball Girls Development Camp. The time together allowed Alvarez and her coaching staff to present the players with the advanced information that has become pretty standard in the men's game over the last few years.

"Usually, it's just like, get on the field and we've got to build this team and get this team unity going on-field and off-field, and then go compete pretty quickly," Alvarez said. "The January event allowed for us to sit down and present the pitchers with an analytical talk, where we described their numbers, and they went into how do we use these numbers and how can you use it to improve your game and things like that. So that was very helpful. ... Just being able to introduce them to these numbers that are widely used outside of the women's team, typically, and just give them another tool to improve their game as a whole."

The two -- the "Dynamic duo, if you will," Hugo joked -- will only see more of each other next year as Hugo was recently named a roving instructor for the Oakland A's, following the path that Alvarez forged starting in 2019.

"I'll be bouncing around hitting and fielding, wherever I'm needed," Hugo said. "That was the position that Veronica was in first, so we live kind of similar lives now. It's good because I've always been interested in baseball, and obviously after I started playing, that's a world we're seeing more women in and we're qualified people."

"For her to be able to come over to the A's side and grow a career in professional baseball as a coach, it makes me proud," Alvarez said. "It's not taken lightly of who we bring around and put into those situations. It's just something that she's going to be really good at and she's going to excel at, just like she does on the field."