WCWS 2024: Texas, Oklahoma and the way forward for softball

OKLAHOMA CITY — In 1982, Dot Richardson powered UCLA to varsity softball’s first nationwide championship. These Bruins launched the Pac-10’s domination of the game. UCLA or Arizona gained each nationwide title from 1988 to 1997 till one other West Coast energy, Fresno State, lastly snapped the streak. Cal, Arizona State and Washington later added nationwide championships to the Pac-10’s trophy case.

“There was a dominance within the Pac-10 that ignited the expansion of softball,” Richardson, a shortstop for the Bruins named NCAA Participant of the Decade for the Nineteen Eighties, mentioned. “It was the instance for different conferences to compete towards.”

This Girls’s Faculty World Collection formally ended that period and ushered in one other — the arrival of the SEC Demise Star, primed to lord over softball and the WCWS for years to come back.

“The [Pac-]12 began softball, actually,” Oklahoma’s Patty Gasso, who has coached the Sooners to seven nationwide titles this millennium, mentioned. “It was all the time UCLA and Arizona. They’re the stepping stones that led to different groups. … The thought of them dissipating the Pac-12 is absolutely exhausting for me to fathom due to the historical past of softball. … I do not know, I am sentimental over that.”

Due to football-driven convention realignment, the Pac-12 performed its ultimate softball sport Monday, as Texas eradicated Stanford.

Texas, the No. 1 total seed, will face Oklahoma for the nationwide championship starting Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+) in a best-of-three collection. The second-seeded Sooners can be going for an unprecedented fourth consecutive nationwide championship.

Subsequent season, Oklahoma and Texas will play within the SEC, which, for the fourth time since 2017, had all 13 applications that compete in softball qualify for the NCAA postseason. SEC applications additionally had eight of the highest 16 seeds, not together with the Sooners and Longhorns.

The most recent spherical of convention realignment destroyed the Pac-12 and positioned the SEC to reign supreme over softball, probably in contrast to any convention over a single sport.

“It is gut-wrenching, to be sincere,” Arizona interim athletic director Mike Candrea, who gained eight nationwide titles and 1,674 video games with the Wildcats to turn out to be the game’s winningest coach, mentioned. “We’re residing in a world now that is fully totally different.”

Each Richardson and Candrea noticed the change coming lengthy earlier than Texas and Oklahoma bolted the Huge 12 for the SEC. Through the years, blue-chip recruits have step by step migrated from California to ascending applications like Oklahoma. The Sooners have eight gamers from California on their roster, together with All-American senior shortstop Tiare Jennings (San Pedro, California), who’s third in NCAA historical past with 97 profession residence runs.

Off its three straight nationwide titles, Oklahoma additionally unveiled Love’s Area this spring. The $48 million stadium seats 4,200 and boasts a ten,000-square-foot indoor coaching heart. Most of the different premier softball amenities now reside within the SEC.

UCLA, in the meantime, regardless of its 12 nationwide championships, performs in a stadium that hasn’t been renovated since 2005 and seats just one,300.

“A Pac-12 teaching employees informed me it isn’t as simple anymore, as a result of [recruits] take a look at amenities, and what do I get? You take a look at NIL, and what do I get?” Richardson, now the top coach at Liberty, mentioned. She added that the SEC started to significantly put money into softball after Michigan turned the primary program east of the Mississippi River to win the nationwide title in 2005. “You began to see the SEC beginning to elevate its improvement and amenities. So a whole lot of California and Arizona and West Coast athletes began to come back east. And so they got here east due to the dedication to the game of softball, by amenities in addition to employees salaries, teaching staffs and dedication that was being made.”

Recruiting for the previous Pac-12 colleges will not get any simpler. UCLA, Oregon and Washington should promote gamers on enjoying within the Huge Ten chilly, with street journeys collectively totaling 1000’s of miles. Pac-12 gamers, reminiscent of Paige Sinicki, the primary Gold Glove Award winner in Oregon historical past, have already balked at this predicament.

I picked to play in a excessive stage softball convention the place being near residence would enable my dad and mom to come back watch my video games. It is unlucky to listen to that my senior yr I will be enjoying so far as New Jersey-Rutgers in addition to different east coast colleges.

— Paige Sinicki (@paige_sinicki) August 4, 2023

“To see it come up to now now,” Candrea mentioned, “is absolutely form of unhappy.”

Cat Osterman, a former three-time nationwide participant of the yr, nonetheless sees hope for non-SEC applications. However the former Texas nice who nonetheless holds college data in profession victories (136), ERA (0.51), shutouts (85), and no-hitters (20), agreed the SEC goes to be a softball juggernaut.

“It is nonetheless potential for different applications to have the ability to construct and compete,” Osterman mentioned, singling out Oklahoma State, which has made the WCWS 5 straight years out of the Huge 12. “However clearly, the SEC goes to be even stronger with Texas and OU.”

Alabama coach Patrick Murphy, whose Crimson Tide captured the SEC’s first softball nationwide championship in 2012, mentioned he would not “even wish to take into consideration” how troublesome the SEC schedule can be going ahead. Texas coach Mike White, who’s from New Zealand and commenced his profession at Oregon, mentioned the brand new SEC goes to be “actually, actually robust,” including that he can “see having 15 losses in that convention and nonetheless doing fairly properly.”

A loaded convention will not simply be a problem for groups but additionally for the NCAA choice committee.

“We attempt to throw the convention stuff out of it once we begin seeding groups and taking a look at that full yr of labor,” Kurt McGuffin, the choice chair who’s the athletic director at Tennessee-Martin, mentioned. “However positively, the SEC supplies nice groups.”

McGuffin admitted the SEC’s impending dominance in softball can solely be rivaled by the Huge Ten’s present prowess in girls’s volleyball, although Texas has gained the previous two nationwide titles in that sport. McGuffin mentioned he envisions applications from different conferences lining as much as play SEC opponents to bolster their résumés for the committee.

“You return to a few of our standards, prime 25 wins, prime 50 wins — the SEC’s going to get a whole lot of these of their convention,” he mentioned. “However we nonetheless take a look at nonconference power of schedule. We nonetheless wish to see you play folks in the beginning of the season that stack up. If you happen to’re not within the SEC, I feel enjoying high quality groups within the nonconference schedule, enjoying SEC groups, possibly not Oklahoma, Texas or Tennessee, however possibly even within the middle-of-the-pack SEC groups, can assist your nonconference power of schedule.”

UCLA coach Kelly Inouye-Perez, who gained three nationwide championships enjoying for the Bruins and coached them to 2 extra in 2010 and 2019, recalled when the Pac-12 was considered that means not all that way back.

“When you concentrate on the best which have performed in historical past, the championships, it is the Pac-12,” she mentioned. “That is an enormous purpose why so many individuals wished to compete within the Pac.”

With the dissipation of the Pac-12 and the funding in softball within the SEC, it has turn out to be the brand new commonplace for the game.

Florida coach Tim Walton, whose Gators gained back-to-back nationwide championships in 2013 and 2014 and got here an inning away from upsetting Oklahoma and enjoying for an additional title this week, famous that the SEC was already the highest RPI (ranking proportion index) convention with out the Sooners and Longhorns.

“The SEC is totally different. … The journey, the followers, the eagerness, the variety of followers. It is simply totally different,” Walton mentioned. “I am excited that [Oklahoma and Texas] are coming to the SEC. I feel they’ll develop recruiting bases for his or her applications and our applications, the tv protection and the recognition. … Now we will be the No. 1 plus/star RPI convention. It is going to be a problem. We’re in for a problem. They’re in for a problem.”

Cease us should you’ve heard this earlier than, however softball simply means extra, too. And Richardson, who faces most of the convention’s colleges yearly from Liberty, sees it up shut.

“I feel the SEC,” she mentioned, “is attempting to dominate in all sports activities.”