This was a banner season for eight-time national champion Oklahoma softball. It might not have ended in a national championship, but it arguably was the best coaching job for legendary head coach Patty Gasso.
The 2025 season for Oklahoma softball ended on Monday night at Devon Park in Oklahoma City in a walk-off 3-2 loss to Texas Tech in the semifinals of the Women's College World Series. It was the Sooners' first loss in a record nine straight WCWS elimination games.
The Sooners may have fallen short of what would have been a record fifth straight national championship in softball, but that in no way diminishes the fact that the Oklahoma softball program has already established itself as one of the all-time greats in the sport.
Eight national championships and 18 trips to the Women's College World Series will do that for you. And there has been one constant throughout all of the Sooner softball success: Fifteen-time Big 12 Coach of the Year and 2025 SEC Coach of the Year Patty Gasso.
Patty Gasso is already the GOAT of college softball, but this season might be her best job of coaching yet
The legendary Oklahoma head coach is the indisputable GOAT of Sooner softball. She has been at or near the top of the mountain with her Oklahoma teams for most of her 31 highly successful years at OU. The 2025 season, however, might be her best job of coaching yet.
This year's Oklahoma softball team held the burden of following one of the greatest four-year runs in the history of college softball. The Sooners set a new NCAA record a year ago winning their fourth consecutive national championship. There were a handful of graduating seniors on last year's OU team that never played on a team that wasn't crowned national champion at season's end. Just imagine that for a moment.
Only three position starters and one starting pitcher returned this season from the record-setting 2024 team, and 14 newcomers were added to OU's 22-player 2025 roster. Thirteen of the 22 were freshmen or sophomores this season. This year's group is an extremely young group by historical Sooner standards and, although tremendously talented, without the experience of playing in a conference as talented and competitive top to bottom as the SEC.
It was natural to expect a drop-off in 2025 from what Oklahoma had achieved in the four years before. Gasso knew that expectations were going to be high -- after all this is Oklahoma softball we're talking about -- but she honestly wasn't sure quite what to expect.
She would never have dreamed, for example, that this year's team would deliver the kind of home run power and scoring production that it did this season. The Sooners ranked sixth nationally in runs per game and second in home runs with a pitching staff that ranked third in the SEC, a league that has a history of All-American-quality pitchers.
Although Oklahoma was still good -- you don't win the SEC regular-season title, especially not in your first season, finish the regular season ranked No. 2 in the country and make it to a ninth consecutive Women's College World Series if you're not good enough -- in truth, this year's squad might have overachieved a little, which represents a giant achievement for Gasso and her stellar staff.
Another 50-win season in a rebuild year is certainly nothing to sniff at, but there is good reason to believe that the 2025 team is a year away from being the legitimate championship contender that most Sooner fans have grown accustomed to seeing each and every season over the past eight years.
That should be a scary shot over the bow for the rest of college softball as thoughts start to turn toward the 2026 season.
Another national championship would, of course, had been the ultimate payoff -- and a slap in the face if you're the rest of the college softball world -- but regardless, Patty Gasso deserves a trophy of her own for what should go down as one of the crown achievements of her illustrious coaching career.
Since the 2000 season, when Oklahoma won its first national championship in softball, no other Division I softball program comes close to matching what the Sooners have accomplished, and all of that has been under the direction of Gasso. The Sooners have made it into the NCAA postseason tournament every season Gasso has been in Norman.
Gasso's Oklahoma teams have won at least 50 games in 18 of her 31 seasons at the helm and gone over the 60 mark three times. The Sooners have never won fewer than 41 games during her time at OU, and Gasso's 1,566 wins and .810 winning percentage are the best of any active softball head coach.
The legendary Oklahoma head coach is only 139 wins away from eclipsing the all-time wins leader, Carol Hutchins, who won 1,707 games at Ferris State and Michigan over a 38-year career. And she has given no indication that she is ready to hang things up and call it a career.
Gasso not only is the GOAT of Oklahoma softball, but she is making a strong case as the greatest head coach in the history of college softball. And through it all, this may have been her finest season.
Read more about OU softball