Welcome: Patty Gasso is prepared and enthusiastic for what lies ahead at Oklahoma

The Sooners will have many new faces in 2025, but they will also need a fresh crop of leaders to guide the program through its debut season in the SEC.

No program at Oklahoma is more SEC-ready than Patty Gasso’s softball powerhouse.

Gasso celebrated her final month as a Big 12 coach with a fourth consecutive national championship. She saw the most decorated senior class in the sport’s history ride off into the sunset with one more celebration in Oklahoma City, fueled by a Championship Series sweep of the Texas Longhorns.

The program presently has eight national championships to its name, seven of which came after 2013.

OU will probably undergo a significant transformation this offseason. Ten seniors graduated, and three more players left via the transfer site. Gasso signed eight exceptional freshmen and has already filled four of the five unfilled roster positions through the portal.

Love’s Field’s debut in 2024 was a huge success, and it would be natural that the first big recruiting triumph for Gasso at her new palace would be the recruitment of 2024 USA Softball Player of the Year NiJaree Canady, who is wanted by almost every top team in the sport.

“I’m ready to start coaching again, because I don’t have to coach this (veteran team),” Gasso stated earlier this month after winning the championship. “They know it. They got it. They coach each other. “I’m very excited about what’s coming.”

If the Sooners sign the former Stanford star, the impressive Southeastern Conference will be locked in a steel cage with Gasso and Oklahoma, not the other way around.

Top to bottom, the SEC will surely outcompete the Big 12.

Every SEC school with a softball team advanced to the NCAA Tournament in 2024, giving each conference series a Super Regional-like atmosphere every weekend.

And, while the conference’s strength is undeniable, it has not translated into complete dominance at the top, as it did for the SEC in baseball.

Since 2017, when the Florida Gators fell to Oklahoma, no SEC school has competed in the Women’s College World Series Championship Series.

Oklahoma and fellow SEC newcomer Texas have fought for the national championship twice in the last three years, and Kenny Gajewski’s Oklahoma State Cowgirls have ensured the Sooners will play another huge rated series every year beginning in 2021.

The new conference will face challenges in trading matches with Houston, Iowa State, and Texas Tech for programs like as Ole Miss, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

Oklahoma has also performed well versus prospective league opponents.

Over the last four years, the Sooners are 22-2 against the SEC.

Oklahoma lost to Georgia in the second game of a doubleheader in Athens in 2021, but they avenged that defeat at the WCWS. OU also split its two games against Florida at the 2024 WCWS, advancing to the Championship Series to face Texas. The Sooners finished 5-0 against the SEC in 2022 and 10-0 against the league in 2023.

The road atmosphere will become more hostile, but the Sooners are accustomed to traveling with a crimson horde as fans flock from all over the country to watch the nation’s dominant school compete.

And no home field advantage will be better than the one Gasso has established at Love’s Field, and the OU head coach expects her team to improve as they become more comfortable with their new surroundings in Year 2.

Regardless of who begins in the circle for the Sooners next year, Gasso’s program received a boost in 2024 from freshman Ella Parker and Kasidi Pickering.

Parker led the squad with a.415 batting average last season, hitting 13 home runs and driving in 62 runs while also hitting 15 doubles and collecting 34 walks.

Pickering finished fifth on the squad with a.389 average, 12 home runs, and 51 RBIs.

They’ll join first baseman Cydney Sanders as returning starters, and Gasso also has outfielder Hannah Coor and pitchers Kierston Deal and Paytn Monticelli.

Over the last two weeks, the Sooners have added former Utah Third Team All-American outfielder Abby Dayton, BYU’s outstanding shortstop Ailana Agbayani, solid North Carolina catcher Isabela Emerling, and Campbell’s seasoned right hander Isabella Smith to Gasso’s star-studded freshmen class in 2025.

Most significantly, Gasso will return to the dugout next year with her assistant head coaches, Jennifer Rocha and JT Gasso, to lead the club into a new competitive era.