Oklahoma softball: Sooners loaded with freshmen, West Coast talent

One of the reasons Oklahoma softball has been able to sustain such a high level of success over the past decade is the ability to keep the talent pipeline full and constantly flowing.

Like their football counterparts, Patty Gasso’s Sooners have been able to attract top talent nationally from the country’s richest breeding grounds because of the historic success of the Oklahoma softball program.

The 2021 Sooner roster serves as a microcosm of how OU softball has ascended to become a national brand and with excellent balance between upperclassmen and underclassmen.

Now in her 27th year at OU and with four national championships to her credit — three in the past decade — Gasso has the luxury of attracting the best her home state of Oklahoma has to offer while also going outside to such talent-laden areas of Texas, California and Florida to pick up prime-time recruits and maintain a steady flow of roster enrichment.

Joe Buettner, staff writer for the Norman Transcript called it “the recruiting pipeline that keeps on giving.”

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Fifteen of the Sooners’ 23-member roster come from either Oklahoma (8) or California (7). In fact, eight players on the current OU roster have played for the youth, travel-ball club the Orange County (California) Batbusters, the same team that former Sooner All-American Sidney Romero (2016-19) played on before them.

Current Sooners freshmen Tiare Jennings, Nicole May and Zaida Puni, sophomores Alanna Thiede, Kinzie Hansen and Olivia Rains, and seniors Jocelyn Alo and Taylon Snow played for the Orange County club team.

To illustrate how impactful this California connection has been, Alo leads the country in home runs with 26 and Jennings ranks third nationally with 23. In addition, both Jennings and Alo — along with Texas freshman Jayda Coleman, the top recruit in the country in the 2020 class — rank in the top-10 in NCAA Division I softball with batting averages above .450.

Alo and Jennings are a huge reason No. 1-ranked Oklahoma (No. 1 again this week for the 11th consecutive week) leads the country in six major offensive statistical categories: batting average, runs, home runs, home runs per game, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

“It’s been really fun to watch,” Romero told the Norman Transcript ‘s Buettner when asked about the players on the Sooner roster from the Orange Country team she once played for. “I though our class and team were good, but I see this group and I’m like, they’re unreal.”

Romero is now a graduate assistant on Gasso’s coaching staff. Two of the teams she played on at Oklahoma won back-to-back national championships (2016 and 2017).

It’ shouldn’t be that surprising that the senior Alo and the true freshman Jennings are two of the 10 finalists for the 2021 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award.

In addition to the eight home-grown players from Oklahoma and the seven from California, three on the roster are from the Lone Star State, including Coleman, two are from Arizona (junior Grace Lyons and senior Giselle Juarez), and one each from Florida (senior Shannon Saile), Georgia (senior Jana Johns) and Hawaii (Jocelyn Alo).

Thirteen of the 23 players on the roster are underclassmen, which leaves 10 upperclassmen. The breakdown by class is five freshmen, eight sophomores, three juniors and seven seniors. This is an ideal mix of youth and experience and another strong example of why OU softball is set up for sustained success.

Last weekend’s series win over Oklahoma State clinched the Sooners’ ninth consecutive Big 12 championship and 12th overall. Since Gasso took over the head coaching duties in 1995, Oklahoma has made it into NCAA postseason competition every season and has advanced to the Women’s College World Series in eight of the last nine years the WCWS has been held.

The Sooner softball train is rolling out of the station and once again headed into the postseason and with a huge head of momentum.

So far, their 41-2 season record is the second best in program history, and with just two slight hiccups along the way (by a combined three points), it doesn’t appear that this group plans on anything short of another College World Series appearance — putting them on a track for a potential fifth national championship.