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Eli Lederman
NORMAN, Okla. — Patty Gasso pulled Jocelyn Alo into her workplace and advised faculty softball’s eventual profession house run queen to go house.
It was early April 2019, and Gasso, then in her twenty fifth season teaching Oklahoma, had watched her budding famous person battle for months. After main the nation with 30 house runs as a freshman in 2018, Alo spent the preliminary weeks of her sophomore season mired in a hunch, toiling underneath the heightened expectations and a focus that adopted her debut marketing campaign. Throughout her first 40 video games that spring, Alo homered simply seven instances.
“I did not know the right way to take care of it,” Alo stated. “I felt all of it fall and into the spring. I did not wish to play softball. I did not get pleasure from exhibiting as much as observe. I lived with the strain each single day.”
Greater than only a younger hitter urgent within the batter’s field, Gasso noticed Alo devolving right into a pissed off presence able to dragging the Sooners’ locker room down together with her. So, Oklahoma’s coach handed Alo an enforced break earlier than a three-game sequence at Kansas, barring her from observe, workforce exercises and the highway journey.
For seven days, Alo lived as a standard scholar. Watching her teammates roll to a sequence sweep from her sofa, Alo immediately felt the attitude she had been lacking wash over her. Alo returned to hit 85 house runs over the subsequent three-and-a-half seasons, closing her profession in 2022 as a two-time nationwide champion and Division I softball’s all-time house run chief.
“As laborious as I fought Patty on it, that was a monumental second that formed me and sort of propelled me into my success,” she stated. “Coach Gasso is aware of the right way to carry greatness out of each participant — not simply on the sector however in each facet of life. There’s merely not sufficient phrases to clarify how particular she is and the way necessary she’s been to the world of girls’s sports activities.”
Maybe there aren’t sufficient phrases to sum up Gasso’s legacy, however numbers paint the image of a faculty softball pioneer and the sport’s finest teaching résumé. Since arriving to Oklahoma in 1994, Gasso has produced 1,565 wins, 84 All-People, 17 Ladies’s School World Collection appearances and eight nationwide championships, together with 4 consecutive titles from 2021-24.
Gasso, 63, is authoring her fiscal activities triumph this spring. The defending champion Sooners open their fiscal activities WCWS journey against Tennessee on Thursday (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), favored to assert an unprecedented fifth straight nationwide title.
“To remain on the prime of the sport and frequently win yr in, yr out is unimaginable,” stated Andrea Martensen [Davis], a member of the Sooners’ 2000 nationwide title workforce. “She’s simply the best to ever do it.”
How did Gasso remodel Oklahoma into the game’s preeminent fashionable dynasty, vault the Sooners into conversations with UConn ladies’s basketball and Alabama soccer and rise into standing as one of many biggest coaches of all time? ESPN spoke with over a dozen former gamers and softball figures to seize the defining eras and near-constant evolutions that turned Gasso into faculty softball’s reluctant GOAT.
“My entire life all I wished to ever be was a coach and a trainer,” Gasso advised ESPN. “I like working with younger individuals, I like watching ladies flip into ladies, however I do not love when somebody credit me as a result of the gamers have at all times been those doing it.
“I consider it like a symphony: The conductor is up there waving his wand round a bit bit, nevertheless it’s the individuals taking part in the devices which might be actually creating the music. That is how I give it some thought.”
1990-2000: A training rise and a dynasty that just about by no means was
Oklahoma upset perennial energy UCLA within the 2000 title recreation. Lower than a yr earlier, the Sooners’ nascent dynasty was on the verge of crumbling earlier than it ever took off.
Oklahoma received 71.8% of its video games from 1995-99 and reached the postseason in every of Gasso’s first 5 seasons, however the work of laying the muse got here at a value. By the 1999 offseason, Gasso’s thoughts was basically made up: She would coach the Sooners via the 2000 marketing campaign, then resign and return to California.
“It was in all probability the toughest time of my life,” Gasso stated. “I felt disconnected. I felt pissed off. I used to be operating out of gasoline …. I actually felt like I wasn’t being an excellent mother or an excellent coach.”
5 years earlier, Marita Hynes spent the early fall of 1994 on the patio of her Norman house making telephone calls. A senior administrator and Oklahoma’s softball coach from 1977-84, Hynes had been appointed to establish a substitute for Jim Beitia, who’d left that September, months after main the Sooners to this system’s first-ever NCAA event look.
Trying to find a candidate who may construct on Oklahoma’s momentum, Hynes sought explicit affect from leaders inside faculty softball’s West Coast energy base. Arizona’s Mike Candrea. Sharron Backus and Sue Enquist at UCLA. Cal State Fullerton’s Judi Garman. Every advised Hynes a few younger coach who was dominating California’s junior faculty scene.
Future USA Softball Corridor of Famer Mickey Davis, an outdated buddy and the athletic director of Lengthy Seashore Metropolis School on the time, implored Hynes to take an opportunity on Gasso, who was eight months pregnant together with her second son, DJ, when she accepted the Oklahoma job.
“She came visiting the campus together with her husband, Jim, and we had been sat in my tiny workplace within the soccer stadium,” Hynes stated. “They requested if they may go someplace to speak it over privately. I did not know if Patty was going to take the job or not. A couple of minutes later, they busted again into the room with little ‘OU’ stickers on their cheeks. The remaining is historical past.”
A California native who starred at El Camino Junior School and Lengthy Seashore State, Gasso rose via the native highschool teaching ranks within the late Nineteen Eighties. She was 27 when she took over Lengthy Seashore Metropolis School’s softball program previous to the 1990 season. Over 5 seasons with the Vikings, Gasso instilled blue-collar ideas, exacting requirements and compiled a 161-59-1 file, amassing 4 convention championships and two regional junior faculty titles.
Members of Gasso’s earliest LBCC groups grumbled via mandated six-mile jogs every week, questioning once they’d ever should cowl such distance on the sector. Solely later did gamers like infielder Christine Benyak perceive the aim behind the early-morning runs.
“It wasn’t about bodily health — Patty wished us to have psychological endurance,” Benyak stated. “We had been a workforce of nobodies, and she or he acquired each single ounce out of us that she may.”
Gasso introduced three LBCC gamers, together with Benyak, and the identical ethos together with her to Oklahoma previous to the 1995 season. The Sooners had a costume code on highway journeys, each day 5:30 a.m. exercises and a fierce coach devoted to perfecting each single element.
“She’d drop by our residences and say, ‘Let’s have a look at what’s in your fridge,'” Benyak recalled.
There have been, nonetheless, causes behind all of Gasso’s strategies. Kisha Washington, a Sooners’ infielder from 1998-2001, remembers how infectious Gasso’s ardour was. Whereas Oklahoma collected a trio of Huge 12 convention titles from 1996-99, a collective spirit fashioned within the years main as much as the 2000 title.
“The excessive requirements she held for herself and everybody in her program — Patty modified our entire mindset,” Washington stated. “She pulled stuff out of folks that they did not even know they had been able to. By 2000, there was no stopping us.”
Within the backdrop of the Sooners’ ascendence, Gasso was operating on fumes.
The transfer to Oklahoma offered Gasso with a brand new problem, but in addition a pay lower. “Within the Midwest, ladies’s athletics was nowhere close to the place it’s right now by way of funding,” stated Gasso, who made much less per yr at Oklahoma than in her last season at junior faculty LBCC.
After Jim returned to California in 1999 to guide Fullerton Junior School’s soccer program, Gasso discovered herself managing a Division I program on a slim wage and elevating two sons alone, smothered by the juggling act.
“I could not handle all of it,” Gasso stated. “I used to be worrying about my children after I ought to have been eager about my job and vice versa, and the cash wasn’t value residing life that approach.”
Hynes noticed the stress on Gasso’s face each day, however seen an unbending resilience, too. On Might 21, 2000, because the Sooners celebrated the regional win over Oregon State that clinched this system’s first-ever WCWS look, Hynes made a beeline for Gasso.
“You’ve got seen Patty smile lots within the final 4 years, however she did not do loads of that again then,” Hynes stated. “I keep in mind that day, she hugged me so laborious and we simply cried collectively.”
2001-12: Constructing a winner via evolution
Oklahoma’s triumph on the 2000 WCWS saved Gasso in Norman with a wholesome pay bump.
However because the Sooners chased that success, they usually fell quick over the following decade. From 2001-04, Oklahoma made 4 consecutive journeys again to the WCWS with out advancing previous the second spherical. Tremendous regional losses in 2005, ’07, ’08 and ’10 grew to become dents throughout this system’s leanest run of Gasso’s tenure.
Seven years after the Sooners’ final WCWS look, this system returned however exited early in 2011, then fell to Alabama within the 2012 WCWS finals.
“There was only a completely different stage of groups on the market in these years,” stated JT Gasso, who joined his mother’s workers as a graduate assistant in 2012. “We had been at all times simply lacking a few these key items.”
Mississippi State head coach Samantha Ricketts by no means attain the WCWS as a participant at Oklahoma from 2006-09. Pondering again to the spring she joined Gasso’s workers after commencement, Ricketts recalled seeing the early embers of a change.
“I keep in mind having a dialog with Patty after she made some personnel strikes,” Ricketts stated. “She knew she wanted individuals who had been going to purchase into the imaginative and prescient of this system. However Patty additionally appeared to know that she wanted to make some larger adjustments to push us ahead.”
Whereas the core ideas the Sooners used to construct their first nationwide title workforce have remained central, it has been Gasso’s willingness to evolve that unlocked a dynasty.
“She’s the identical age as a few of these different legendary coaches. However whereas so a lot of them appeared to get left behind, she simply acquired higher,” stated Northwestern pitching coach Michelle Gascoigne, who pitched for the Sooners from 2010-13 and was an assistant underneath Gasso from 2014-15.
Gasso and her workers had been fast to leap on the video instruments and different scouting applied sciences that started creeping into softball within the late 2000s. She’s lengthy been dedicated to exposing her gamers to the fiscal activities health traits, too. Within the early 2010s, Gascoigne remembers this system introducing the Sooners to a game-changing new program: CrossFit. Extra lately, Gasso has embraced the switch portal and welcomed title, picture and likeness (NIL).
Nevertheless, the one most transformative shift got here in recruiting. By the mid-2000s, Gasso not solely understood she wanted the best individuals round her however that the Sooners would not contend persistently till they broke the West Coast powerhouses’ maintain over the nation’s prime recruits.
The bluebloods of the Pac-10 owned the three a long time that adopted the inaugural WCWS in 1982. UCLA emerged as the game’s first dynasty and claimed six of the primary 9 nationwide championships. Candrea and Arizona adopted subsequent with 5 titles within the Nineties.
Between 1982-2012, all however 4 nationwide champions got here from packages in Arizona, California or Washington. And the West Coast dominance mirrored itself on the recruiting path within the talent-rich pockets of Southern California, the place the very best gamers from elite journey groups funneled to the key faculty packages throughout the area, and rarely outdoors of it.
Together with her roots in Lengthy Seashore, Gasso remained tied in with the journey ball scene. However it was solely after the Sooners lifted the 2000 trophy that Gasso was in a position to start chipping away at Southern California’s expertise pipeline in earnest and bolster Oklahoma’s credibility as a sexy touchdown spot.
Of the 16 gamers on the Sooners’ 2000 nationwide title workforce, solely three got here from the West Coast. Over time, the scales of Oklahoma’s roster slanted additional west. In 2013, Oklahoma rode a core of Californians — Gascoigne, Lauren Chamberlain, Destinee Martinez, Keilani Ricketts and Jessica Shults — to this system’s second nationwide championship. From 2021-24, almost a 3rd of the 47 gamers who suited up throughout the Sooners’ four-peat hailed from California.
“There is a level in teaching the place you must promote individuals in your program. For those who’re profitable, this system sells itself and then you definitely grow to be a vacation spot,” stated Candrea, who retired in 2021 after 36 seasons at Arizona. “Patty’s gotten children from Southern California that again within the day by no means would have left California. She turned Oklahoma right into a vacation spot.”
2013-17: Gasso, IHOP aficionado and grasp motivator
A number of years in the past, at a coaches conference in San Antonio, JT Gasso attended a dinner of former Sooners. Round a desk of former gamers from each period of his mom’s profession, he realized that every technology had skilled a definite model of her.
“The gamers from the early 2000s talked about how grateful they had been for the way laborious she was on them,” JT stated. “The subsequent technology of gamers appreciated having extra of a reference to my mother. And now, I believe she’s sort of blended the 2 methods of teaching our gamers.”
Gasso’s longevity atop the game is rooted partly to her urge for food for reinvention, frequently reshaping her teaching model whereas sustaining unwavering ideas. Members of Gasso’s earliest groups are sometimes awed once they return to Norman to see their former coach cracking a smile within the teaching field and dancing together with her gamers after wins.
One other behavior that might have appeared overseas to earlier generations: the one-on-one breakfast/lunch conferences Gasso started holding together with her gamers within the 2010s.
“The factor I in all probability modified essentially the most is I began listening as an alternative of speaking,” Gasso stated. “I noticed that I wanted to be extra linked with them … they yearn for that. They need that.”
A specific fan of IHOP, Gasso makes use of the time to verify in together with her gamers away from softball, usually centering the conversations on college, religion and household. Amongst her gamers, the meals have developed a deeper belief and reference to a coach who says she’s “surrendered her ego” lately.
After a disjointed fall camp, Gasso met with every of her 20 gamers previous to the 2023 season. In Might, they gave her an IHOP reward card to commemorate Gasso’s 61st birthday.
“We’re individuals to her, firstly,” two-time champion Shay Knighten stated. “It is why we had been in a position to play the way in which we had been in a position to play …. She would not wish to change you. She simply desires you to be higher and develop.”
Tales of Gasso’s really feel for understanding what her groups want in a given second — and her inventive toolbox of motivational ways — are legend, too.
“She’s a grasp motivator,” stated Gasso’s youngest son DJ, an assistant coach at Arkansas. As a baby, DJ watched his mom get ejected from a recreation, then helped her stage a fake locker room tantrum. “We mainly adorned the locker room to make it appear to be she’d torn it up, tossing chairs and throwing stuff all over the place simply so she may ship a message to the workforce after.”
Interviews of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan; movies together with “Gladiator” and “Secretariat;” covert ice cream underneath the noses of strict workforce nutritionists; Gasso has used them all around the years to catalyze her groups. She spent the early weeks of the 2019 season sprinkling nameless Janet Jackson lyrics into her pregame speeches. Finally, her gamers figured it out.
“For the remainder of the yr, Janet Jackson was the tip all, be all,” stated former outfielder Nicole Mendes. “For those who wished to say one thing, it needed to be a Janet Jackson quote.”
Keilani Ricketts remembers the day Gasso dealt her gamers a wanted dose of perspective weeks earlier than the Sooners’ 2013 nationwide title.
Oklahoma hosted Texas A&M for an excellent regional on Might 24, 2013. Days earlier, an EF5 twister had torn via Moore, Oklahoma, killing 26 individuals together with 9-year-old Sydney Angle, whose household and youth softball workforce had been invited to attend Recreation 1.
“The sport ended up getting rained out and pushed to the subsequent day,” Ricketts stated. “However Patty stated, ‘The youngsters are right here, let free and have some enjoyable.’ She organized a bunch of relay races and I simply keep in mind sloshing round within the rain with these little 10-year-old ladies who had been so completely satisfied to be there.”
“These had been my previous couple of weeks of school softball and it felt like there was a lot on the road at that second,” she continued. “These races had been a reminder of what issues and why we play.”
Weeks later, the 57-4 Sooners swept via the WCWS discipline earlier than downing Tennessee within the finals and clinched the second title in program historical past. Again-to-back titles in 2016 and ’17 capped a run that cemented Oklahoma’s standing as a nationwide energy.
2018-present: Managing from the mountaintop
The height years of Gasso’s reign at Oklahoma, which noticed the Sooners tally a 232-15 file on the way in which to 4 consecutive championships from 2021-24, coincided with a nationwide growth in faculty softball’s reputation.
Veterans like Hynes and Candrea recall a less complicated time when you possibly can search for from the dugout and rely the followers within the stands on the WCWS. Final June, the finals hosted a file crowd of 12,324 for Oklahoma’s title-clinching victory. One other 2.5 million viewers tuned in from house.
“The magnitude of all the things within the sport has simply exploded,” stated Alo. “It was unimaginable to be part of that. However it got here with much more strain to carry out.”
Oklahoma’s four-peat stands as essentially the most dominant stretch within the recreation’s historical past, however the expectations and heightened consideration that surrounded the Sooners in these years weighed closely. As storylines like Alo’s pursuit of the all-time house run file within the spring of 2022 and a record-setting, 71-game win streak that started a yr later stoked the flames, Gasso felt the temperature rising round her program.
Within the midst of the historic title run, she made insulating her gamers a chief precedence.
“When it got here to them taking part in, my angle was to remain out of their approach,” Gasso stated. “I understood that group, the place they had been actually, actually going to be challenged was on the psychological facet due to the quantity that was requested of them the previous few years. They had been exhausted.”
Managing a bunch contemporary off back-to-back titles, Gasso took steps to guard her workforce and pushed the Sooners to look inward forward of the 2023 season.
Weekly media obligations had been lower down; each day routines recalibrated. This system even scaled again the presence of its official social media accounts. But, no opponent, outlet or on-line troll labored tougher to check Oklahoma’s resolve on the top of the dynasty than Gasso, who dialed in on sharpening her workforce’s collective mentality.
“It was all about slowing issues down,” stated three-time All-American Jayda Coleman. “Some days, Coach Gasso had us doing visualization workout routines in chilly tubs. Different instances, we’d meditate within the outfield grass with our sneakers and socks off and see how lengthy we may simply think about one factor. She wished us to lock in on all of the smallest particulars.”
Oklahoma’s nationwide title groups in 2023 and ’24 adopted a siege mentality. “We referred to as it our bubble — 21 [players] versus everybody,” stated pitcher Alex Storako. “It grew to become concerning the course of greater than the outcomes.” The Sooners posted a .937 profitable proportion over these two seasons.
“That mentality allowed us to play free,” stated Storako, a switch from Michigan in 2023. “And if you get gamers taking part in free like that, you get the outcomes that Coach Gasso acquired from us day in, time out and hold lifting trophies in June.”
Whereas Gasso is loath to look towards the end line — on each this spring or her teaching profession — she has already cemented a legacy.
Some will measure it by her trophy case. Others, together with Gasso herself, might level to the lots of of lives her program has formed. A torchbearer who raised the bar on funding into the game, Gasso’s influence as the primary softball coach to earn $1 million yearly and a central driver behind the $48 million ballpark Oklahoma opened in 2024 ripples throughout the sport.
“Everybody within the sport has a nicer stadium due to Patty, and I believe establishing the credibility of Oklahoma softball is the toughest factor she’s achieved right here,” stated Hynes. “However her want for perfection is what she’ll be remembered for. That is by no means stopped in 31 years.”
Oklahoma run-ruled Alabama on Saturday to punch its ticket to Oklahoma Metropolis, extending the nation’s longest energetic streak of consecutive WCWS appearances to 9.
The 13-2 win was a classic Gasso-era victory. However with 14 new gamers on the roster in 2025, the highway to this fiscal activities WCWS journey was hardly so simple. Gasso’s voice cracked Saturday as she spoke concerning the “scattered” roster she started molding final September.
Of her 18 tremendous regional wins with the Sooners, few have been sweeter than this one.
“It has been an unimaginable journey,” Gasso stated. “The truth that we’re carrying these [super regional champion] hats, I nonetheless cannot grasp how large that is. I did not count on this. … I believe there’s some issues that we are able to do on the World Collection which might be going to shock some individuals.”