Patty Gasso has OU softball on brink of championship four-peat 33 years after last attempt by UCLA (2024)

NORMAN — Patty Gasso was a budding junior college coach the last time an NCAA softball team reached the position where her current Sooner squad now stands.

In 1991, three-time defending national champion UCLA was nearly the first college softball team to win four straight titles. However, the Bruins came up just short of their pursuit in a Women’s College World Series finals loss to Arizona.

Gasso, at that time, was in just her second year as the head coach at Long Beach City College, 40 minutes southeast of UCLA, in the shadow of the mighty Bruins, the preeminent team in college softball.

Thirty-three years later, the Sooners, led by Gasso, are the malevolent queens of the diamond, now seeking to do what UCLA could not.

No. 2 seed OU took down No. 15 seed Florida State 4-2 in the second game of the NCAA Norman Super Regional Friday night. The Sooners punched their return ticket to the Women’s College World Series, where they will fight for an unprecedented fourth consecutive national championship starting next week in Oklahoma City.

The expectation at the beginning of the 2024 season was that Oklahoma would be in this spot. It seemed inevitable that the Sooners would be among the last eight teams standing and would head to Devon Park in OKC for a date with history.

And yet, amid all the winning that has taken place in the last four years — as the Sooners have become the golden standard in college softball, set record after record and lifted the game up their shoulders — there remains, for those involved, the surrealness of what could still be accomplished within the next two weeks.

Gasso never imagined three decades ago as a second-year small college skipper that she would be the best coach in the sport and have her program on the brink of arguably the greatest achievement in college softball history.

“No shot, no shot,” she said. “I was just going to be a happy little high school coach or maybe move… junior college was a wonderful place to be.”

Little did Gasso know that in the years to come, she’d step out of her comfort zone and pull OU with her into the national spotlight.

Approximately 1,357 miles east of where Gasso was stationed in the early 90s, Lonni Alameda believed.

The now Florida State coach was then an infielder and pitcher for the Sooners, who played her three seasons in Norman at Reaves Park, on the opposite side of Jenkins Avenue from where not one, but two since-built OU softball stadiums stand.

She knew what UCLA was doing from afar and was optimistic that Oklahoma could be a program that one day contended for four championships in a row.

“I think back in the day when we were at Reaves, the community was always a part of it,” Alameda reflected Thursday night. “I’m a Reaves Park player. I wasn’t a Marita Hynes (Field) player. But the community here was always behind us. Softball’s always been loved here in the state of Oklahoma.”

All that was missing was a little bit of secret sauce: a coach who could get the Sooners to the top while continuing to galvanize the community.

Gasso might not have known before she signed on at OU in 1995 that she was the right woman for the job, but whatever the secret sauce is, she found it.

In 30 seasons, she has produced 30 postseason appearances, 16 WCWS berths, seven national championships and an NFCA Hall of Fame nomination. She commands the highest salary of any college softball coach and soon will see herself recognized with a bronze statue.

She has coached record-setting stars like Keilani Ricketts, Lauren Chamberlain, Jocelyn Alo and Tiare Jennings. And, most relevant, her teams have won three straight championships, becoming the juggernaut that UCLA once was.

Alameda knows Gasso and OU’s strength as well as anyone. The Seminoles faced the Sooners in the Women’s College World Series finals in 2021 and 2023, to no avail, and have now succumbed to them once again in a super regional.

What Alameda thought possible while she played at Reaves Park and kept tabs on UCLA, Gasso is on the verge of achieving.

“I think Patty’s got a special mix of development and she does a good job of recruiting and keeps it in the family and is consistently tough to beat,” Alameda said. “How they play at the level they play is really awesome and I respect that a ton. They have all the tools. They’ve figured out the portal, how to get the pitching, they figured out how to get the athleticism, they’ve stayed together and they’re tough to beat, really tough to beat.”

With every on-field maneuver Gasso makes, broader off-field accomplishments follow.

She and her team rallied so much support from Sooner Nation that they outgrew Marita Hynes Field, their home the past 26 years, and spent this season breaking in 4,200-seat Love’s Field, the new pinnacle of college softball stadiums.

Other programs are taking notice of OU’s moves like they took notice of UCLA back in the day.

“The cool thing is they’ve raised the bar for a lot of other teams too,” Alameda said. “Texas is doing good things. When you keep upping the ante, other people are going to start to follow it and that means the game gets better. This stadium is showing that. (Texas) A&M had the (best) stadium, now this stadium (is here). The game gets better and they keep raising the mark for everyone.”

Gasso and OU have been at the forefront of needed accommodations and changes to the game, such as instant replay and extra days on the WCWS schedule.

The Sooners’ success has also increased fans’ attention and media coverage of the postseason, and college softball in general. Devon Park has been renovated to make room for the heightened interest. The sport looks a lot different than it did 30-plus years ago.

“I got a chance to go out to the College World Series when I was coaching at Long Beach City College, and just seeing where it is now, it’s unbelievable,” Gasso said. “Not just the fans, but the attention and the media and all you guys sitting here talking to softball players or a softball coach. It’s a lifetime that I’ve got to see this, and it’s pretty awesome.”

Gasso has indicated before that the way the game has grown is something she never could’ve imagined. Just like the opportunity that awaits her and her team this week.

Outfielder Jayda Coleman and pitcher Nicole May couldn’t have foreseen this moment either. The championship pedigree was there when they signed on with the Sooners. Gasso already had four titles under her belt.

But those two seniors, who played an integral role in getting OU back to the WCWS — Coleman scored a run and robbed a home run and May threw the final two innings Friday night — and their classmates never in their wildest dreams expected the possibility that lies right before them.

“There’s no way I would have thought that I would be winning three national championships and going for a fourth,” said Coleman, who committed to Gasso when she was still in eighth grade.

“Same, it’s quite crazy to be here,” echoed May.

It’s dreamlike, too, for their coach who has seen “a lifetime” of college softball and now has her shot at a once in a lifetime feat.

What a change 33 years has made for Gasso, once a young JUCO manager comfortable in UCLA’s shadow, presiding less than 30 miles outside of Hollywood.

Now, she’s directing the Sooners toward an ending that even Hollywood couldn’t script.

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