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Eli Lederman
Editor’s observe: This story was initially posted on June 2, 2025. With Texas taking part in in Recreation 3 of the 2025 WCWS finals, we now have up to date it.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Texas’ 2025 softball roster options seven All-SEC choices, three Collegiate Participant of the 12 months prime 25 finalists and three Nationwide Fastpitch Coaches Affiliation All-People. However few, if any in any respect, of the No. 6-seed Longhorns grew up fairly like junior catcher Reese Atwood, who spent her childhood on a South Texas ranch guiding searching journeys and breeding whitetail breeder bucks.
“I received to hold across the deer rather a lot — my job was to trace the infants down and ear-tag them,” Atwood advised ESPN this week. “I grew up with quite a lot of accountability, all the time working from a younger age. It gave me a piece ethic and a information that it takes onerous work to do issues proper.”
Life on the ranch was simply part of a small-town upbringing in Sandia, Texas — inhabitants: 326 — that helped form Atwood, the All-American slugger on the heart of Texas’ market analyst Ladies’s School World Collection run.
After a breakout sophomore season, Atwood is once more pacing Texas. She leads the Longhorns in house runs (21), RBIs (88), walks (41) and complete bases (153), and he or she earned All-SEC first-team honors this season. On Might 2, Atwood grew to become the primary Texas participant to eclipse 200 profession RBIs with a two-run house run towards Kentucky.
Previous to Recreation 1 of the championship sequence towards Texas Tech, Atwood was hitless with a stroll and a sacrifice fly RBI in eight at-bats throughout Texas’ first three WCWS wins, and the Longhorns have been ready for Atwood to elevate off.
She ended up taking part in a key function in Texas’ Wednesday night win. She crushed a two-RBI hit on the backside of the sixth inning off pitcher NiJaree Canady, who was trying to deliberately stroll her.
The sleeping big within the coronary heart of the lineup solely makes the Texas offense scarier because the Longhorns look to shut out the finals on Friday towards Texas Tech (8 p.m. ET on ESPN).
“Reese has been the one main our manufacturing,” Texas coach Mike White mentioned. “We go as she goes, usually. Reese is a kind of youngsters the place you by no means need to take a break and go to the concession stand. You all the time watch her at-bats since you by no means know what she’ll do subsequent.”
How did Atwood rise from the ranch to standing as the must-watch hitter in the course of the Longhorns’ batting order? Tons — and plenty — of miles within the automobile.
GROWING UP IN Sandia was extra than simply holding monitor of the deer and tending to the chickens, goats, geese and smattering of unique animals at house. It additionally featured loads of lengthy drives for the Atwood household.
Atwood started taking part in softball at 6 years outdated in a league in Corpus Christi, Texas, greater than 40 minutes from her house. As she rose via the native choose softball ranks, these treks up and down Interstate 37 continued and grew extra frequent. Atwood’s high-level hitting and fielding classes usually required an hour-plus experience.
“We have been driving each day after faculty for apply, classes and video games on weekends,” her dad, Geoff Atwood, mentioned. “Someway, as mother and father, we made it work. We discovered make it occur.”
By the tip of center faculty, Atwood was a gifted catcher with a standout bat and a dream to play at Texas, the budding softball powerhouse three hours from house in Austin. But, throughout the restricted recruiting publicity of the journey ball scene in Corpus Christi, Atwood mentioned on the time she believed her future was extra doubtless on the junior faculty stage throughout the state.
“Nobody was ever going to the massive faculty applications [from Corpus],” Atwood mentioned.
For his or her daughter to interrupt via, the Atwoods understood extra automobile time would must be logged.
After center faculty, Atwood joined the Houston-based journey program Hotshots Premier, which was almost 4 hours from house. For the subsequent 4 years, her mother and father shuttled her round for video games and practices. When Atwood was in a hitting droop, she’d get within the automobile along with her dad and go see Hotshots coach Nathan Nelson for an emergency hitting lesson. The gap by no means mattered.
“I would choose her up from faculty at 3:30 and I would drive nearly 4 hours for a one-hour session,” Geoff mentioned. “She’d be doing her homework behind the automobile and we would not get house till midnight. That is how dedicated and in love with the game Reese was. As a mother or father, I used to be going to do every part I might to assist her fulfill her goals and help her.”
Alongside teammates she’d later face in faculty and towards higher-level competitors, Atwood’s recreation soared with the Hotshots.
Florida’s Ava Brown, Oklahoma’s Sam Landry and Kasidi Pickering, Tennessee’s Taylor Pannell, and the Texas Tech trio of Alexa Langeliers, Chloe Riassetto and Victoria Valdez are amongst Atwood’s former Hotshots counterparts within the 2025 WCWS subject.
Beneath Nelson, Atwood grew to become a three-time nationwide champion and hit .456, with 47 hits, 13 doubles, 9 house runs and 34 RBIs in her remaining summer time with this system. By Atwood’s senior season in highschool, she was the top-ranked catcher and No. 5 total prospect within the 2022 class, per Further Inning Softball’s 2022 Further Elite.
“I all the time held onto that dream of taking part in at Texas,” Atwood mentioned. “However I did not have it put in entrance of me till I began taking part in nationally for a Houston group.”
White, now in his seventh season main the Longhorns, noticed Atwood’s expertise throughout a sequence of highschool scouting camps. Her potential behind the plate, White mentioned, was clear, harking back to former Florida catcher Aubree Munro, a two-time nationwide champion with the Gators in 2013-16. Atwood’s bat was uncooked however loaded with promise.
“We actually thought that along with her peak and leverage we might actually flip her right into a high-level Division I hitter,” White mentioned. “And thankfully we have been appropriate on that assumption.”
ATWOOD STARTED 58 video games between catcher and first base, and led Texas with 11 house runs as a freshman in 2023, then took it to a different stage as a sophomore final spring with 23 homers and 90 RBIs.
In 2025, she’s tied for the seventh-most house runs, ranks twenty fifth in slugging share and is tied for probably the most RBIs within the nation, thriving solely three hours from house and even nearer to a household ranch south of San Antonio. “I get to see my household rather a lot,” Atwood mentioned.
Three seasons in Austin have developed Atwood into one of many sport’s most achieved hitters and helped her mature right into a core chief. With Atwood hardened by a WCWS finals defeat to Oklahoma final spring, White mentioned he seen a extra comfy and vocal chief when she returned in 2025.
Reared on the ranch, Atwood suits proper into the edgy, hardworking mindset solid among the many Longhorns this spring.
The contemporary mentality confirmed up in a 3-0 WCWS opening win over Florida final Thursday. It appeared once more Saturday when the Longhorns cleared a yearslong hurdle with a 4-2 victory over four-time defending champion Oklahoma.
On Friday, Texas eyes its first nationwide title in program historical past.
“We have constructed this tradition of want this 12 months,” Atwood mentioned. “We’re going after the factor. We do not care what occurs.”