Oklahoma head coach Patty Gasso was recently named College Softball Coach of the Year by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. She was not, however, awarded the 2025 National Coach of the Year honor presented by D1Softball, but she should have been.
Oklahoma's legendary head coach is the most accomplished active coach in college softball. She has more wins, more conference championships, more national titles, and has coached more All-Americans than any other college softball coach still active in the sport.
Despite all that Oklahoma softball has achieved in her 31 years at the helm, including eight national championships and six in the last nine seasons, Gasso has only received one National Coach of the Year honor -- the C. Vivian Stringer Award in 2017, which was awarded for just one women's sport -- prior to the USOPC recognition this season.
That is actually hard to fathom given all that the Oklahoma coach has accomplished in her brilliant coaching career.
While it is surprising, even shocking, that Gasso's coaching achievements haven't been nationally recognized on an individual level previously, especially with Oklahoma's domination of college softball over the past 10-plus years, the irony of the matter is that this season may have been the best coaching job of her stellar career.
The 2025 Sooner softball team had to replace five core players from its 2024 starting lineup and two starting pitchers. Four of those players were First-Team All-Americans, and another was a second-team selection. In all, Gasso and her staff lost 13 letterwinners off a team that had won a record four consecutive national championships.
This year's Oklahoma team started the season with 14 newcomers (9 freshmen and 5 transfers) to a 22-player roster. Coach Gasso didn't really know what to expect from the young group that made up the 2025 roster, and it was several weeks into the season before they really began to find themselves.
The Sooners' head coach was willing to accept the fact early on that her 2025 team would pack the power that her past few teams had offensively and wouldn't be quite as strong in the pitching circle.
All this OU team did, once it got its confidence and the believe it could play with anybody and was never out of any game until the final out was recorded, was go out and win 52 games, win the SEC regular-season championship in its first season and make its 30th consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Not only that, but this young Sooner team captured a 15th straight NCAA Regional championship and 9th Super Regional championship, which sent Gasso's OU team to its ninth consecutive Women's College World Series.
Oklahoma came up short of its ultimate goal of winning a fifth consecutive national title, but the Sooners still managed to make it to the national semifinal round, better than all but three other teams in 2025 NCAA Division I softball.
This Oklahoma team was the living example of the famous children's story "The Little Engine that Could." They probably shouldn't have done as well as they did or gotten as close to winning another national championship, but they did, and Gasso and her staff deserve the majority of the credit for putting this young group of Sooners into a position not only to compete with, but beat some of the best teams in college softball.
Yes, we're talking about Oklahoma softball, and the Sooners are always expected to do well in the sport regardless of the circumstances, but if you ask me, what the 2025 edition of Oklahoma softball did this season is the classic example of overachievement made possible by an outstanding coaching performance.
The Hall of Fame Oklahoma coach may not have received the high national recognition that she rightfully deserves, but Gasso's staff has received high national honors seven different times since 2000.
South Carolina head coach Ashley Chastain Woodard was D1Softball's choice for National Coach of the Year. Woodard was in her first season at South Carolina after five years as head coach at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. The Gamecocks' 44 wins were the most for a first-year head coach in program history. The team made it to the Super Regionals for the first time since 2018.
Oh, by the way, Oklahoma swept its three-game series with South Carolina this season. The defense rests its case.