Welcome to the SEC: Patty Gasso is Ready and Excited for What Lies Ahead at Oklahoma
- The Sooners will have plenty of new faces in 2025, but will rely on a new crop of leaders to tackle the program’s first season in the SEC.
No program at Oklahoma is more SEC-ready than Patty Gasso’s softball juggernaut.
Gasso celebrated her final month as a coach in the Big 12 with a fourth straight national title. She watched the most decorated senior class in the history of the sport ride off into the sunset with one last celebration in Oklahoma City, brought on by a sweep of the Texas Longhorns in the Championship Series.
The program now has eight national championships to its name, with seven of those coming since 2013.
OU will undoubtedly undergo a major facelift this offseason. Ten seniors graduated and another three players left via the transfer portal. Gasso signed eight talented freshmen and has already filled four of five open roster spots out of the portal.
Love’s Field’s opening in 2024 was a major success, and it would be fitting that the first blockbuster recruiting win for Gasso at her new palace could be the addition of 2024 USA Softball Player of the Year NiJaree Canady, who is sought after by virtually every top team in the sport.
“I’m ready to start coaching again, because I don’t have to coach this (veteran team),” Gasso said earlier this month after winning the title. “They know it. They’ve got it. They coach each other. I’m really excited about what’s coming.”
The Sooners went 5-0 against the SEC in 2022 and 10-0 against the league in 2023. Road atmospheres will get more hostile, but the Sooners are used to traveling with a crimson horde as fans flock from across the country to watch the nation’s dominant program play.
And no home field advantage will be better than the one Gasso has built at Love’s Field, and the OU head coach only expects her team to play better as they get more familiar with their new surroundings in Year 2.
Regardless of who starts in the circle next year for the Sooners, Gasso’s program got a shot in the arm in 2024 from freshmen Ella Parker and Kasidi Pickering.
Parker finished first on the team with a .415 batting average, blasting 13 home runs and batting in 62 runs while also hitting 15 doubles and drawing 34 walks last year. Pickering was fifth on the team with a .389 average, belting 12 home runs and totaling 51 RBIs.
They’ll join first baseman Cydney Sanders as returning starters, and Gasso also has experience coming back in outfielder Hannah Coor and pitchers Kierston Deal and Paytn Monticelli.
The Sooners also added former Utah Third Team All-American outfielder Abby Dayton, BYU’s star shortstop Ailana Agbayani, steady North Carolina catcher Isabela Emerling, and Campbell’s veteran right-hander Isabella Smith over the past two weeks to join Gasso’s star-studded freshman class in 2025.
Most importantly, Gasso will return to the dugout next year alongside her pair of associate head coaches, Jennifer Rocha and JT Gasso, to guide the program into its competitive new era.
