Oklahoma softball 2022: The cream keeps rising to the top

By Chip Rouse | Jun 22, 2021

Jun 9, 2021; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma celebrates after defeating Florida State to force game three in the NCAA WomenÕs College World Series Championship Series at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports /

This month the Oklahoma softball team celebrated its fifth national championship and fourth in the past decade.

Every college team enters the season with dreams of being the last team standing when all the dust settles a season’s end. But only one team gets to actually experience that lofty achievement.

Even as the No. 1 ranked team virtually the entire season, there were critics suggesting that the Sooners were not deserving of the No. 1 spot, largely because of the perception that the OU schedule was not as challenging as some other top-ranked teams.

At the time the NCAA softball selection committee was setting up the brackets and assigning the seedings for the 2021 NCAA Softball Championship tournament, there were experts projecting that OU might not receive one of the top-two national seeds, despite their No. 1 ranking in the polls and, again, premised on the strength of schedule issue.

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Oklahoma did, in fact, receive the No. 1 national seed and swept through the regional and super regional rounds to advance to its fifth consecutive Women’s College World Series and ninth in the last 10. In the very first game of the 2021 WCWS, however, the top-seeded Sooners’ were upset by unheralded James Madison, sending OU to the loser’s side of the bracket and facing elimination.

Six elimination games later, Oklahoma emerged as the 2021 national champions with a 5-1 winner-take-all win over Florida State in the WCWS championship final.

It was a hard-fought, hard-earned championship win that proved the selection committee right in awarding Oklahoma with the No. 1 seed.

As collectively and personally gratifying as Oklahoma’s championship journey was, however, it also came with some bittersweet, recognizing that this was the final season for several star Sooner performers.

The 5-1 championship victory over Florida State was the final game in an Oklahoma uniform for starting pitchers Giselle Juarez and Shannon Saile as well as position starters Nicole Mendes and Lynnsie Elam. Mendes was a member of the OU 2017 WCWS championship team.

The Sooners also will likely loose seniors Jana Johns and Taylon Snow, both of whom transferred to Oklahoma, unless either take advantage of the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of the 2020 cancelled pandemic season.

One senior who is sticking around for a fifth season, however, is Jocelyn Alo, who led the nation this season with 34 home runs. Alo announced prior to the end of the season that she was returning for the 2022 season, which is great news for the Sooners but not-so-welcome news for the teams on the OU schedule next season.

Oklahoma softball is like a well-oiled machine under head coach Patty Gasso. Like every team in every college sport, rosters change over every year. Players come and go and you have to replace the good players you lose by bringing in other good players.

Gasso and her staff regularly do as good a job at this as any school in the country, and that’s why the Sooners have been perennial national contenders over the past decade.

And they’ve done another outstanding job in putting together the incoming class for 2022.

And that just adds more ammunition to a Sooner softball arsenal that remains a potent as ever. Six of the nine starters in an OU lineup that led all of Division I softball in every major offensive category this season are back in 2022, and only two will be seniors.

New faces for Sooner softball next season include seven signees who are all ranked in the top 22 nationally, according to Extra Inning Softball. Get to know these names in OU’s 2021 class:

"Jordyn Bahl, a pitcher from Nebraska who is rated as the No. 1 overall prospect. OU is also bringing in the No. 3 prospect, Sophia Nugent, an infielder/catcher from California, the No. 5 prospect Quincee Lilio, a utility player from California, and the No. 22 player in the 2021 class, Emily Guthrie, a pitcher from the Oklahoma city of Lone Grove."

Bahl is the Gatorade National Player of the Year and Guthrie is the Gatorade Player of the Year from the state of Oklahoma.

And earlier this week, Gasso announced the addition of pitcher Hope Trautwein, a graduate transfer from North Texas. She is the North Texas career leader in earned-run average (2.05), wins (61) opponent batting average (.197) and strikeouts per seven innings (8.11).

During the 2021 season, Trautwein set an NCAA Division I record, striking out all 21 Arkansas-Pine Bluff hitters in recording a perfect game.

Oklahoma has had tremendous success recently bringing in pitchers through the transfer portal. Previous Sooner pitchers who came to OU from other college teams include Paige Lowary (from Missouri) and both Shannon Saile (Florida International) and “G” Jaurez (Arizona State).

In summary, don’t fret about the prospects for Oklahoma softball beyond the 2021 season. The Sooners remain absolutely loaded and it appears they plan on hanging around at the top of the college softball world until further notice.

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