Oklahoma softball: Remembering Memorial Day weekend 20 years ago
By Chip Rouse
Ordinarily at this time, the Oklahoma softball team would be in contention for if not a participant in the Women’s College World Series.
But these are far from ordinary times as our country continues to fight a battle with an invisible enemy that has taken close to 100,000 American lives and infected hundreds of thousands more.
The ASA Softball Complex in Oklahoma City, annual site of the WCWS, sits unnaturally idle this Memorial holiday because of the cancellation of all college spring sports as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the last 20 seasons under head coach Patty Gasso, the WCWS has become virtually an annual event. The Sooners have made it to the WCWS 13 times since their first appearance 20 years ago, including the last eight of the last nine years.
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Gasso was in her sixth season coaching Oklahoma in 2000. The Sooners were 40-16 the year before and Big 12 champions with an 11-3 record in the conference. But in 2000, Oklahoma exploded for a 66-8 season record and what stands today as the most wins in a single season in program history.
Included in those record-setting 66 victories were 17 wins in 18 games against Big 12 opponents and a second straight regular-season conference championship.
Oklahoma hosted one of the eight NCAA Regionals that season, sweeping four games over Harvard, Cal State Northridge and 13th-ranked Oregon State twice to earn their first trip ever to the Women’s College World Series, up the road about 20 miles up the road in Oklahoma City.
The Sooners won their opening game in the 2000 WCWS, defeating No. 10 California 2-1 and followed that up in the next round with a 3-1 victory over No. 8 Southern Mississippi. That set up a semifinal showdown with No. 2-ranked and perennial powerhouse Arizona. The Sooners held off the Wildcats, winning 1-0 to advance to the national championship game against No. 3 UCLA.
In the championship final, played this very weekend 20 years ago, OU overcame a 13-strikeout, complete-game performance by UCLA ace Amanda Freed. The Sooners scored three times on eight hits against the Bruin starter and got an equally brilliant, complete-game performance from their own Jennifer Stewart, who held UCLA to just a single run in pitching Oklahoma to a 3-1 victory.
The 2000 WCWS title not only was the Sooners’ first national championship in softball, it was the first national title by an Oklahoma women’s program.
Stewart was named the Most Outstanding Player in the 2000 WCWS and she and two of her Sooner teammates (first baseman Lisa Carey and shortstop Kelli Braitsch) were named to the All-Tournament Team.
The 2020 campaign was Gasso’s 26th season at the Sooner softball helm. Oklahoma was off to another strong start with a 20-4 record and ranked sixth in the country when the season was cancelled in mid-March out of health and safety concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.