'The greatest to ever do it': How Patty Gasso built a superpower at Oklahoma

NORMAN, Okla. -- Patty Gasso pulled Jocelyn Alo into her bureau and told assemblage softball's eventual vocation location tally queen to spell home.

It was aboriginal April 2019, and Gasso, past successful her 25th play coaching Oklahoma, had watched her budding superstar conflict for months. After starring the federation with 30 location runs arsenic a freshman successful 2018, Alo spent the archetypal weeks of her sophomore play mired successful a slump, toiling nether the heightened expectations and attraction that followed her debut campaign. Across her archetypal 40 games that spring, Alo homered conscionable 7 times.

"I didn't cognize however to woody with it," Alo said. "I felt it each autumn and into the spring. I didn't privation to play softball. I didn't bask showing up to practice. I lived with the unit each azygous day."

More than conscionable a young hitter pressing successful the batter's box, Gasso saw Alo devolving into a frustrated beingness susceptible of dragging the Sooners' locker country down with her. So, Oklahoma's manager handed Alo an enforced interruption earlier a three-game bid astatine Kansas, barring her from practice, squad workouts and the roadworthy trip.

For 7 days, Alo lived arsenic a mean student. Watching her teammates rotation to a bid expanse from her couch. Alo abruptly felt the position she had been missing lavation implicit her. Alo returned to deed 85 location runs implicit the adjacent three-and-a-half seasons, closing her vocation successful 2022 arsenic a two-time nationalist champion and Division I softball's all-time location tally leader.

"As hard arsenic I fought Patty connected it, that was a monumental infinitesimal that shaped maine and benignant of propelled maine into my success," she said. "Coach Gasso knows however to bring greatness retired of each subordinate -- not conscionable connected the tract but successful each facet of life. There's simply not capable words to explicate however peculiar she is and however important she's been to the satellite of women's sports."

Perhaps determination aren't capable words to sum up Gasso's legacy, but numbers overgarment the representation of a assemblage softball pioneer and the game's champion coaching résumé. Since arriving to Oklahoma successful 1994, Gasso has produced 1,565 wins, 84 All-Americans, 17 Women's College World Series appearances and 8 nationalist championships, including 4 consecutive titles from 2021-24.

Gasso, 63, is authoring her latest triumph this spring. The defending champion Sooners unfastened their latest WCWS travel against Tennessee connected Thursday (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), favored to assertion an unprecedented 5th consecutive nationalist title.

"To enactment astatine the apical of the crippled and continually triumph twelvemonth in, twelvemonth retired is incredible," said Andrea Martensen [Davis], a subordinate of the Sooners' 2000 nationalist rubric team. "She's conscionable the top to ever bash it."

How did Gasso alteration Oklahoma into the sport's preeminent modern dynasty, vault the Sooners into conversations with UConn women's hoops and Alabama shot and emergence into presumption arsenic 1 of the top coaches of each time? ESPN spoke with implicit a twelve erstwhile players and softball figures to seizure the defining eras and near-constant evolutions that turned Gasso into assemblage softball's reluctant GOAT.

"My full beingness each I wanted to ever beryllium was a manager and a teacher," Gasso told ESPN. "I emotion moving with young people, I emotion watching girls crook into women, but I don't emotion erstwhile idiosyncratic credits maine due to the fact that the players person ever been the ones doing it.

"I deliberation of it similar a symphony: The conductor is up determination waving his wand astir a small bit, but it's the radical playing the instruments that are truly creating the music. That's however I deliberation astir it."

1990-2000: A coaching emergence and a dynasty that astir ne'er was

Oklahoma upset perennial powerfulness UCLA successful the 2000 rubric game. Less than a twelvemonth earlier, the Sooners' nascent dynasty was connected the verge of crumbling earlier it ever took off.

Oklahoma won 71.8% of its games from 1995-99 and reached the postseason successful each of Gasso's archetypal 5 seasons, but the enactment of laying the instauration came astatine a cost. By the 1999 offseason, Gasso's caput was fundamentally made up: She would manager the Sooners done the 2000 campaign, past resign and instrumentality to California.

"It was astir apt the hardest clip of my life," Gasso said. "I felt disconnected. I felt frustrated. I was moving retired of state .... I truly felt similar I wasn't being a precise bully ma oregon a precise bully coach."

Five years earlier, Marita Hynes spent the aboriginal autumn of 1994 connected the patio of her Norman location making telephone calls. A elder head and Oklahoma's softball manager from 1977-84, Hynes had been appointed to place a replacement for Jim Beitia, who'd near that September, months aft starring the Sooners to the program's first-ever NCAA tourney appearance.

Searching for a campaigner who could physique connected Oklahoma's momentum, Hynes sought peculiar power from leaders wrong assemblage softball's West Coast powerfulness base. Arizona's Mike Candrea. Sharron Backus and Sue Enquist astatine UCLA. Cal State Fullerton's Judi Garman. Each told Hynes astir a young manager who was dominating California's inferior assemblage scene.

Future USA Softball Hall of Famer Mickey Davis, an aged person and the diversion manager of Long Beach City College astatine the time, implored Hynes to instrumentality a accidental connected Gasso, who was 8 months large with her 2nd son, DJ, erstwhile she accepted the Oklahoma job.

"She came to sojourn the field with her husband, Jim, and we were sat successful my tiny bureau successful the shot stadium," Hynes said. "They asked if they could spell determination to speech it implicit privately. I didn't cognize if Patty was going to instrumentality the occupation oregon not. A fewer minutes later, they busted backmost into the country with small 'OU' stickers connected their cheeks. The remainder is history."

A California autochthonal who starred astatine El Camino Junior College and Long Beach State, Gasso roseate done the section precocious schoolhouse coaching ranks successful the precocious 1980s. She was 27 erstwhile she took implicit Long Beach City College's softball programme anterior to the 1990 season. Over 5 seasons with the Vikings, Gasso instilled blue-collar principles, exacting standards and compiled a 161-59-1 record, collecting 4 league championships and 2 determination inferior assemblage titles.

Members of Gasso's earliest LBCC teams grumbled done mandated six-mile jogs each week, wondering erstwhile they'd ever person to screen specified region connected the field. Only aboriginal did players similar infielder Christine Benyak recognize the intent down the early-morning runs.

"It wasn't astir carnal fittingness -- Patty wanted america to person intelligence endurance," Benyak said. "We were a squad of nobodies, and she got each azygous ounce retired of america that she could."

Gasso brought 3 LBCC players, including Benyak, and the aforesaid ethos with her to Oklahoma anterior to the 1995 season. The Sooners had a formal codification connected roadworthy trips, regular 5:30 a.m. workouts and a fierce manager dedicated to perfecting each azygous detail.

"She'd driblet by our apartments and say, 'Let's spot what's successful your fridge,'" Benyak recalled.

There were, however, reasons down each of Gasso's methods. Kisha Washington, a Sooners' infielder from 1998-2001, remembers however infectious Gasso's passionateness was. While Oklahoma collected a trio of Big 12 league titles from 1996-99, a corporate tone formed successful the years starring up to the 2000 title.

"The precocious standards she held for herself and everyone successful her programme -- Patty changed our full mindset," Washington said. "She pulled worldly retired of radical that they didn't adjacent cognize they were susceptible of. By 2000, determination was nary stopping us."

In the backdrop of the Sooners' ascendence, Gasso was moving connected fumes.

The determination to Oklahoma presented Gasso with a caller challenge, but besides a wage cut. "In the Midwest, women's athletics was obscurity adjacent wherever it is contiguous successful presumption of investment," said Gasso, who made little per twelvemonth astatine Oklahoma than successful her last play astatine inferior assemblage LBCC.

After Jim returned to California successful 1999 to pb Fullerton Junior College's shot program, Gasso recovered herself managing a Division I programme connected a slim wage and raising 2 sons alone, smothered by the juggling act.

"I couldn't negociate each of it," Gasso said. "I was worrying astir my kids erstwhile I should person been reasoning astir my occupation and vice versa, and the wealth wasn't worthy surviving beingness that way."

Hynes saw the accent connected Gasso's look daily, but noticed an unbending resilience, too. On May 21, 2000, arsenic the Sooners celebrated the determination triumph implicit Oregon State that clinched the program's first-ever WCWS appearance, Hynes made a beeline for Gasso.

"You've seen Patty grin a batch successful the past 4 years, but she didn't bash a batch of that backmost then," Hynes said. "I retrieve that day, she hugged maine truthful hard and we conscionable cried together."

2001-12: Building a victor done evolution

Oklahoma's triumph astatine the 2000 WCWS kept Gasso successful Norman with a steadfast wage bump.

But arsenic the Sooners chased that success, they often fell abbreviated implicit the ensuing decade. From 2001-04, Oklahoma made 4 consecutive trips backmost to the WCWS without advancing past the 2nd round. Super determination losses successful 2005, '07, '08 and '10 became dents during the program's leanest tally of Gasso's tenure.

Seven years aft the Sooners' past WCWS appearance, the programme returned but exited aboriginal successful 2011, past fell to Alabama successful the 2012 WCWS finals.

"There was conscionable a antithetic level of teams retired determination successful those years," said JT Gasso, who joined his mom's unit arsenic a postgraduate adjunct successful 2012. "We were ever conscionable missing a mates of those cardinal pieces."

Mississippi State caput manager Samantha Ricketts ne'er scope the WCWS arsenic a subordinate astatine Oklahoma from 2006-09. Thinking backmost to the outpouring she joined Gasso's unit aft graduation, Ricketts recalled seeing the aboriginal embers of a transformation.

"I retrieve having a speech with Patty aft she made immoderate unit moves," Ricketts said. "She knew she needed radical who were going to bargain into the imaginativeness of the program. But Patty besides seemed to cognize that she needed to marque immoderate bigger changes to propulsion america forward."

While the halfway principles the Sooners utilized to physique their archetypal nationalist rubric squad person remained central, it's been Gasso's willingness to germinate that unlocked a dynasty.

"She's the aforesaid property arsenic immoderate of these different legendary coaches. But portion truthful galore of them seemed to get near behind, she conscionable got better," said Northwestern pitching manager Michelle Gascoigne, who pitched for the Sooners from 2010-13 and was an adjunct nether Gasso from 2014-15.

Gasso and her unit were speedy to leap connected the video tools and different scouting technologies that began creeping into softball successful the precocious 2000s. She's agelong been committed to exposing her players to the latest fittingness trends, too. In the aboriginal 2010s, Gascoigne recalls the programme introducing the Sooners to a game-changing caller program: CrossFit. More recently, Gasso has embraced the transportation portal and welcomed name, representation and likeness (NIL).

However, the azygous astir transformative displacement came successful recruiting. By the mid-2000s, Gasso not lone understood she needed the close radical astir her but that the Sooners wouldn't contend consistently until they broke the West Coast powerhouses' clasp implicit the nation's apical recruits.

The bluebloods of the Pac-10 owned the 3 decades that followed the inaugural WCWS successful 1982. UCLA emerged arsenic the sport's archetypal dynasty and claimed six of the archetypal 9 nationalist championships. Candrea and Arizona followed adjacent with 5 titles successful the 1990s.

Between 1982-2012, each but 4 nationalist champions came from programs successful Arizona, California oregon Washington. And the West Coast dominance reflected itself connected the recruiting way successful the talent-rich pockets of Southern California, wherever the champion players from elite question teams funneled to the large assemblage programs crossed the region, and seldom extracurricular of it.

With her roots successful Long Beach, Gasso remained tied successful with the question shot scene. But it was lone aft the Sooners lifted the 2000 trophy that Gasso was capable to statesman chipping distant astatine Southern California's endowment pipeline successful earnest and bolster Oklahoma's credibility arsenic an charismatic landing spot.

Of the 16 players connected the Sooners' 2000 nationalist rubric team, lone 3 came from the West Coast. Over time, the scales of Oklahoma's roster slanted further west. In 2013, Oklahoma rode a halfway of Californians -- Gascoigne, Lauren Chamberlain, Destinee Martinez, Keilani Ricketts and Jessica Shults -- to the program's 2nd nationalist championship. From 2021-24, astir a 3rd of the 47 players who suited up crossed the Sooners' four-peat hailed from California.

"There's a constituent successful coaching wherever you person to merchantability radical connected your program. If you're successful, the programme sells itself and past you go a destination," said Candrea, who retired successful 2021 aft 36 seasons astatine Arizona. "Patty's gotten kids from Southern California that backmost successful the time ne'er would person near California. She turned Oklahoma into a destination."

2013-17: Gasso, IHOP aficionado and maestro motivator

A fewer years ago, astatine a coaches normal successful San Antonio, JT Gasso attended a meal of erstwhile Sooners. Around a array of erstwhile players from each epoch of his mother's career, helium realized that each procreation had experienced a chiseled mentation of her.

"The players from the aboriginal 2000s talked astir however grateful they were for however hard she was connected them," JT said. "The adjacent procreation of players appreciated having much of a transportation with my mom. And now, I deliberation she's benignant of blended the 2 ways of coaching our players."

Gasso's longevity atop the athletics is rooted successful portion to her appetite for reinvention, continually reshaping her coaching benignant portion maintaining unwavering principles. Members of Gasso's earliest teams are often awed erstwhile they instrumentality to Norman to spot their erstwhile manager cracking a grin successful the coaching container and dancing with her players aft wins.

Another wont that would person seemed overseas to earlier generations: the one-on-one breakfast/lunch meetings Gasso began holding with her players successful the 2010s.

"The happening I astir apt changed the astir is I started listening alternatively of talking," Gasso said. "I realized that I needed to beryllium much connected with them ... they yearn for that. They privation that."

A peculiar instrumentality of IHOP, Gasso uses the clip to cheque successful with her players distant from softball, often centering the conversations connected school, religion and family. Among her players, the meals person developed a deeper spot and transportation with a manager who says she's "surrendered her ego" successful caller years.

After a disjointed autumn camp, Gasso met with each of her 20 players anterior to the 2023 season. In May, they gave her an IHOP acquisition paper to commemorate Gasso's 61st birthday.

"We're radical to her, archetypal and foremost," two-time champion Shay Knighten said. "It's wherefore we were capable to play the mode we were capable to play .... She doesn't privation to alteration you. She conscionable wants you to beryllium amended and grow."

Stories of Gasso's consciousness for knowing what her teams request successful a fixed infinitesimal -- and her originative toolbox of motivational tactics -- are legend, too.

"She's a maestro motivator," said Gasso's youngest lad DJ, an adjunct manager astatine Arkansas. As a child, DJ watched his parent get ejected from a game, past helped her signifier a faux locker country tantrum. "We fundamentally decorated the locker country to marque it look similar she'd torn it up, tossing chairs and throwing worldly everyplace conscionable truthful she could nonstop a connection to the squad after."

Interviews of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan; films including "Gladiator" and "Secretariat;" covert crystal pick nether the noses of strict squad nutritionists; Gasso has utilized them each implicit the years to catalyze her teams. She spent the aboriginal weeks of the 2019 play sprinkling anonymous Janet Jackson lyrics into her pregame speeches. Eventually, her players figured it out.

"For the remainder of the year, Janet Jackson was the extremity all, beryllium all," said erstwhile outfielder Nicole Mendes. "If you wanted to accidental something, it had to beryllium a Janet Jackson quote."

Keilani Ricketts remembers the time Gasso dealt her players a needed dose of position weeks earlier the Sooners' 2013 nationalist title.

Oklahoma hosted Texas A&M for a ace determination connected May 24, 2013. Days earlier, an EF5 tornado had torn done Moore, Oklahoma, sidesplitting 26 radical including 9-year-old Sydney Angle, whose household and younker softball squad were invited to be Game 1.

"The crippled ended up getting rained retired and pushed to the adjacent day," Ricketts said. "But Patty said, 'The kids are here, fto escaped and person immoderate fun.' She organized a clump of relay races and I conscionable retrieve sloshing astir successful the rainfall with these small 10-year-old girls who were truthful blessed to beryllium there."

"Those were my past fewer weeks of assemblage softball and it felt similar determination was truthful overmuch connected the enactment astatine that moment," she continued. "Those races were a reminder of what matters and wherefore we play."

Weeks later, the 57-4 Sooners swept done the WCWS tract earlier downing Tennessee successful the finals and clinched the 2nd rubric successful programme history. Back-to-back titles successful 2016 and '17 capped a tally that cemented Oklahoma's presumption arsenic a nationalist power.

2018-present: Managing from the mountaintop

The highest years of Gasso's reign astatine Oklahoma, which saw the Sooners tally a 232-15 grounds connected the mode to 4 consecutive championships from 2021-24, coincided with a nationalist roar successful assemblage softball's popularity.

Veterans similar Hynes and Candrea callback a simpler clip erstwhile you could look up from the dugout and number the fans successful the stands astatine the WCWS. Last June, the finals hosted a grounds assemblage of 12,324 for Oklahoma's title-clinching victory. Another 2.5 cardinal viewers tuned successful from home.

"The magnitude of everything successful the athletics has conscionable exploded," said Alo. "It was unthinkable to beryllium a portion of that. But it came with a batch much unit to perform."

Oklahoma's four-peat stands arsenic the astir ascendant agelong successful the game's history, but the expectations and heightened attraction that surrounded the Sooners successful those years weighed heavily. As storylines similar Alo's pursuit of the all-time location tally grounds successful the outpouring of 2022 and a record-setting, 71-game triumph streak that began a twelvemonth aboriginal stoked the flames, Gasso felt the somesthesia rising astir her program.

In the midst of the historical rubric run, she made insulating her players a main priority.

"When it came to them playing, my cognition was to enactment retired of their way," Gasso said. "I understood that group, wherever they were really, truly going to beryllium challenged was connected the intelligence broadside due to the fact that of the magnitude that was asked of them the past fewer years. They were exhausted."

Managing a radical caller disconnected back-to-back titles, Gasso took steps to support her squad and pushed the Sooners to look inward up of the 2023 season.

Weekly media obligations were chopped down; regular routines recalibrated. The programme adjacent scaled backmost the beingness of its authoritative societal media accounts. Yet, nary opponent, outlet oregon online troll worked harder to trial Oklahoma's resoluteness astatine the tallness of the dynasty than Gasso, who dialed successful connected sharpening her team's corporate mentality.

"It was each astir slowing things down," said three-time All-American Jayda Coleman. "Some days, Coach Gasso had america doing visualization exercises successful acold tubs. Other times, we would meditate successful the outfield writer with our shoes and socks disconnected and spot however agelong we could conscionable ore connected 1 thing. She wanted america to fastener successful connected each the smallest details."

Oklahoma's nationalist rubric teams successful 2023 and '24 adopted a siege mentality. "We called it our bubble -- 21 [players] versus everyone," said pitcher Alex Storako. "It became astir the process much than the results." The Sooners posted a .937 winning percent implicit those 2 seasons.

"That mentality allowed america to play free," said Storako, a transportation from Michigan successful 2023. "And erstwhile you get players playing escaped similar that, you get the results that Coach Gasso got from america time in, time retired and support lifting trophies successful June."

While Gasso is loath to look toward the decorativeness enactment -- connected some this outpouring oregon her coaching vocation -- she has already cemented a legacy.

Some volition measurement it by her trophy case. Others, including Gasso herself, whitethorn constituent to the hundreds of lives her programme has shaped. A torchbearer who raised the barroom connected concern into the sport, Gasso's interaction arsenic the archetypal softball manager to gain $1 cardinal annually and a cardinal operator down the $48 cardinal ballpark Oklahoma opened successful 2024 ripples crossed the game.

"Everyone successful the athletics has a nicer stadium due to the fact that of Patty, and I deliberation establishing the credibility of Oklahoma softball is the hardest happening she's accomplished here," said Hynes. "But her tendency for perfection is what she'll beryllium remembered for. That's ne'er stopped successful 31 years."

Oklahoma run-ruled Alabama connected Saturday to punch its summons to Oklahoma City, extending the nation's longest progressive streak of consecutive WCWS appearances to nine.

The 13-2 win was a vintage Gasso-era victory. But with 14 caller players connected the roster successful 2025, the roadworthy to this latest WCWS travel was hardly truthful straightforward. Gasso's dependable cracked Saturday arsenic she spoke astir the "scattered" roster she began molding past September.

Of her 18 ace determination wins with the Sooners, fewer person been sweeter than this one.

"It's been an unthinkable journey," Gasso said. "The information that we are wearing these [super determination champion] hats, I inactive can't grasp however large this is. I didn't expect this. ... I deliberation there's immoderate things that we tin bash astatine the World Series that are going to astonishment immoderate people."