OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso grasped the fence in the visiting dugout of USA Hall of Fame Stadium as she stood and bowed her head in disbelief of what her team had just accomplished.
She then embraced her son and hitting coach JT, and pitching coach Jennifer Rocha, before joining her team on the field to commemorate her sixth national championship win. As the 60-year-old paced the chaotic scene of celebration following No. 1 OU’s (59-3) 10-5 victory over Texas Thursday, tears flowed from her eyes.
The Sooners had done it.
Despite all the pressure of repeating as champions since game one of the regular season, Gasso and co. worked hard to focus on their locker room and shut out the outside world. While social media is nearly impossible to avoid, especially for young people, the 28-year coach said her team never wavered.
She got emotional during her postgame press conference when talking about where this team ranks on the all-time list. She said they don’t focus on the accolades like everyone else. They just go out everyday, play ball and have fun.
“I just sit back like a fan,” Gasso said, struggling to find words. “I just sit and watch and it’s just prideful to see these guys get emotional like I am right now. They don’t realize how good they are and maybe I don’t realize how good they are. Everybody asks us, and we just play. We love to have fun, we love to play. So you ask me to compare, you ask me what it feels like, it feels like something we do everyday at practice.”
As Gasso strolled out of the media room and back to the locker room to her team, she seemed as proud as ever, not of the softball players in the room a few doors down, but of the women.
“I should be the only coach in the country that’s not crying,” Gasso said.
‘I think that I definitely left my mark’
Jocelyn Alo didn’t just wear her national championship hat like the rest of her teammates and coaches, she went with her signature sideways and backward-cap swagger.
The OU utility and NCAA’s all-time career leader in home runs has come a long way since first arriving on campus in Norman by way of Hawaii. After having her scholarship offer pulled by then-Oregon coach and current Texas coach, Mike White, not being the hardest worker early in her career, feeling like she didn’t want to play softball at times and being forced to take a two week hiatus from the game by Gasso in April 2019, she’s on top of the world in the sport she loves most reflecting on her five-year career, and enjoying the moment.
Throughout the rigors of a 62-game softball season, Alo doesn’t get to sit back and take things in. She, along with the rest of the team, is irresistibly focused on one thing: winning a championship. However, the thing that remains a constant in her life is her confidence in herself that she’s the best and can’t be beaten.
Even when Texas sophomore Estelle Czech struck Alo out looking in her first at-bat Thursday in the first inning and didn’t offer her a pitch to hit during her second time at the plate in the third inning, she remained unfazed and made adjustments. She crushed one to left field that was inches away from leaving the yard in the fifth inning and smacked a single through the infield in the sixth inning.
Alo ended one of the greatest seasons in college softball history 1-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout. However, all that matters to her is that her team finished with the win. As Alo exited the field one last time, smiling and sobbing simultaneously, she was content with the mark she left on the game.
Senior utility Jocelyn Alo during the Game 2 of the WCWS Finals on June 9, 2022.
Having won almost every award there is, including being named the 2022 Women's College World Series Most Outstanding Player, and breaking nearly every record there is, it’s safe to say Alo left the game of softball better than she found it.
“It’s insane, just knowing it’s my last world series,” Alo told ESPN’s Holly Rowe after the Sooners’ 15-0 victory over UCLA Monday. “(I’m) just trying to leave it all out on the field and just try to leave my heart out on the field too. I won't get this opportunity again, so (I’m) just trying to leave my mark.”
Alo finished her career a two-time national champion, USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year and Big 12 Player of the Year, and someone who some on social media think should be honored with a statue at OU. She contemplated all she had accomplished during her postgame press conference and couldn’t help getting emotional.
“I've enjoyed my five years through the ups and through the downs. I feel like something good always came out of it,” Alo said, holding back tears. “I came into this game very stubborn and thought that it was all about me. I came in as a girl and now I’m leaving as a woman.
“And I’m just happy to be having that mentality going out into the real world. … I’m happy that this coaching staff continued to trust in me and have molded me into the person and player that I am. I think that I definitely left my mark (on the game). … I’m just excited to see what little girl’s going to work hard out there and come break my record," said Alo.
‘We wouldn’t be here without Jordy’
A year ago, Jordy Bahl watched the Sooners win the 2021 WCWS National Championship Series over Florida State two games to one as a recently graduated high school prospect taking notes.
She admired the passion, emotion and togetherness the group played with, which was one of the main reasons she chose to sign. Fast forward to Thursday as the National Freshman of the Year made her first career start in the WCWS for OU in front of a new championship series record 12,257 fans, earning the win and allowing four hits, two runs, three walks, and finishing with two strikeouts.
Right when sophomore infielder Tiare Jennings flipped the ball to redshirt senior utility Taylon Snow to record the final out of the ballgame, Bahl exploded onto the field from the bench uniting with her gang near the pitching circle after clinching a national title in her first start since missing time with an arm injury.
Todd Peterson, Bahl’s coach at Papillion-La Vista High School in Nebraska, watched on his television with joy.
“It was really cool to watch,” he said. “I knew that she was starting, her older brother Hayden is now my (junior varsity) coach and we had camps this week and we had like 125 Campers in our two different sessions all the way from third grade through high school. So, we told them all about it and they were all excited. It was really cool today at camp to talk about it. We took a picture of the campers with horns down because they were all rooting for Jordy, of course. She's a big deal around here.”
Bahl is just the latest high-profile high school recruit to win a championship at Oklahoma, following sophomore utility Jayda Coleman, senior infielder Grace Lyons and others. Next season, she’s expected to play both ways, as she did in high school, as the Sooners are bringing in yet another powerful arm in Kierston Deal, a left-hander from Winston Salem, North Carolina, who is rated the No. 1 player in the class of 2022 by Extra Inning Softball.
Until then, Bahl is going to celebrate the win for at least a week before it’s time to get back to work.
“With this being (my first title), I’m really going to sit with it for a little bit,” Bahl said. “But then, as far as our team’s future, we’re all competitors. And when you’re a competitor, when there’s something else out there you can go get, you’re going to want to go get it. So, I don’t worry about us ever losing our hunger to win more national championships.”
For Gasso, it was important to start Bahl even though she wasn’t 100 percent healthy and her velocity was notably down. However, the veteran coach did it as a “thank you” for helping the team be in the position it was in.
“We were trying to use what she had with movement and spin, and Jordy was ready to go as long as we needed her to,” Gasso said. “Knowing that Jordy was probably six miles an hour slower, which is significant, I'm giving her that opportunity. Jordy helped get us here. And you haven't seen her in five weeks. So, people start to forget about her and the other pitchers did a great job, but we wouldn't be here without Jordy. So, to give her that moment was big for all of us and big for her and her future as well.”
As the confetti resolved near home plate and the team buses had left the stadium, the debate was just getting started. Are the 2022 Oklahoma Sooners the greatest collegiate softball team of all time?
ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt seemed to think so during an interview with Alo on SportsCenter. He even compared it to the 100-year flood, inferring this team will be an outlier for years to come. Alo, backward hat and all, just smiled.
“As far as the team,” Alo said. “We stayed on top through adversity and just never let anything come in between us, and we stuck together all year long.”
The Sooners celebrating winning the Women's College World Series national championship on June 9, 2022.
