Oklahoma softball: Sooners will be beneficiary of NCAA eligibility waiver
By Chip Rouse
No one was probably happier to hear that the NCAA has granted an extra year of eligibility to spring sports student-athletes than Oklahoma softball coach Patty Gasso.
The four-time national champion Sooners had posted a record of 20-4 through the first month of the college softball season and were ranked No. 6 in the ESPN/USA Softball Collegiate Softball Top 25. And that’s the way the 2020 season will end for OU as a result of the NCAA decision to cancel the remainder of the season as part of the nationwide initiative to curb the potentially deadly spread of the coronavirus.
Oklahoma was just a week away from the start of the Big 12 schedule. The eight-time defending Big 12 champs have not lost a conference game in two seasons and are 84-4 against Big 12 opponents in the last five years.
The Sooners were off to a relatively sluggish season start by OU softball standards, in part due to injuries to senior pitching ace Giselle “G” Juarez and senior utility player Nicole Mendes. The left-handed Juarez, who was 28-4 a year ago in 32 starts in the circle for Oklahoma, had pitched only sparingly this season while recovering from a bicep injury. Mendes had just recently worked her way back into the lineup after recovering from an off-season ACL injury.
We’ll never know how the 2020 season would have progressed for Oklahoma softball or whether they would have been able to successfully maintain their conference supremacy. What we do know, however, is that Gasso was able to get strong contributions from a number of newcomers to the starting lineup, notably freshman first baseman Kinzie Hansen, who was batting .420, tied for seventh best in the Big 12 with teammate Jocelyn Alo.
In the pitching department, a pair of Sooner freshman had stepped up in the absence of Juarez and were getting solid results. Olivia Rains and Brooke Vestal had combined for five wins and no losses in nine starts, with an ERA of 2.45.
Gasso is fairly sure that her three seniors, Juarez, Mendes and pitcher Shannon Saile, who was 7-2 through 24 games this season with team-best ERA of 1.87 and had logged the most innings of all the OU pitchers (60.0), will all come back for another year.
And that’s really good news for Gasso and the Sooners, who will now direct their attention and preparation to the 2021 season.
The devil is in the details, as the popular saying goes, and there are still questions to be answered on the extended eligibility waiver regarding its impact and implementation. For example: Will there be a roster limit and will it be necessary to cut people.
“Whatever is thrown our way, we are ready to handle it,” said Gasso in an interview with The (Oklahoma City) Oklahoman. And that’s always been the way we’ve been.”