OKLAHOMA CITY — Her Oklahoma players schemed, openly and obviously, as all newly crowned champions do when they want to douse their head coach with an ice bath. One grabbed Patty Gasso by the waist to hold her in place on the right side of the infield, and three others lifted the cooler.
Gasso stopped resisting and threw up her hands, letting the cold water and ice cubes drench her, playing her part in the Sooners’ now-annual national championship ritual. It was, of course, her third in a row. No one has done that in Division I softball in more than 30 years. Only one other program has ever won three consecutive national titles: UCLA, from 1988 to 1990.
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Make space in the record books for these Oklahoma Sooners, who sealed a three-peat on Thursday night with a 3-1 win over No. 3 Florida State that extended their Division I-record win streak to 53 games. Oklahoma has now won five titles in the past seven seasons and six in the last 10 years.
“That sounds impossible, doesn’t it?” marveled Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione on the field moments after the confetti fell.
Gasso herself would tell you the same. It did not feel possible at times. It was hard. It was isolating. There was little joy in her voice as she spoke to reporters an hour after she’d done exactly what everyone expected her to do: win another national title. Her seventh.
“The way I feel right now is free, because the expectation is overwhelming, the pressure is overwhelming,” she said slowly. “This really was the roughest (title run) I’ve ever had to go through just because with lots of fans and the growth of the sport comes a lot of pressure. I think I’ve felt that.
“Everybody’s out to get us. They want to bring down the Evil Empire. … The fact that we got here, and we won this is just mind-boggling, with all of the wave of pressure and so forth. I could not be more proud of this group.”
Florida State head coach Lonni Alameda said friends had told her they were rooting for the Seminoles because they didn’t think it was good for softball to have one team winning titles all the time. “I got the vibe of, like, take down the machine,” she said.
People really do think these wins are automatic. For Gasso, the 2023 season was just a blur of people telling her, well, if you win five more games, you’ll make history. If you win three more than that, you’ll do this. Four more after that, you’ll accomplish that. And, oh, by the way, don’t lose a game again. 53 straight. A 61-1 final record. It still didn’t quite feel like enough. Fans, even some of the ones celebrating in the stands on Thursday night, had grumbled that the Sooners were not winning by big enough margins this season. The games were too close. Requiring extra innings? What happened to run-rule victories? The expectation wasn’t just perfection; it was the most perfect version of perfection.
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“Like, I just want to go to Costco and shop and no one care that I’m there,” Gasso said. “The fans in Oklahoma are absolutely fantastic. Our fans are fantastic. But it starts to feel like you’re getting smothered a little bit because everybody wants something. I just want to coach. I want to just be a regular (person). All of a sudden, your life isn’t regular anymore.”
It never will be again, either. Gasso is a legend in a sport that she has personally helped elevate. Her successes attract comparisons to the great dynasties in all of sports, along with the likes of Geno Auriemma’s UConn teams or John Wooden’s UCLA. It is hard to do what she does, even though many people think it’s easy. She gets the best athletes and the best players and turns them into the best cohesive group in the country. It sounds simple, yet it’s one of the hardest things to do as a coach. Rosters that look good on paper can fail on the field for any number of reasons.
Not Gasso’s.
“I need a thesaurus to find more superlatives to describe her,” Castiglione said. “She pulls each team into its own form. Even though there are players who carry over from one year to another, they’re all individual, different teams. To be able to make runs and do things you didn’t think were possible — you just have to really appreciate this moment. This is so hard to make happen.”
And then she has to do it all over again. Gasso will wake up tomorrow, and her life won’t be any different than it was a week ago when she had six trophies instead of seven. She will put on the armor only she knows she wears and go back out into the world that expects and takes so much from her.
Why does she keep doing it? What drives her, after all these years and all that she’s already achieved? She gestured to the empty seats where her players had just been seated.
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“Them. I want to be my best for them,” she said, tearing up. “I want to be my best for them because they trust me. They make a commitment to me, so I need to give it back to them. I need to give it back to their parents. … They’re your family, and you promise their parents that you’re going to take care of them, so you take care of them. But you push them. I push them like a coach, but also like a mother who is looking out for her kids. If I have to discipline them, I discipline them. I raise them like they’re my own.”
So she can’t stop. Not right now. It’s not her job, it’s her life, and she can’t imagine doing anything else. At least, not for a few more years (and, you have to think, a few more titles).
“I love to compete,” Gasso said, her voice strengthening. “I love when it’s hard.”
That is what makes her great, and it is what also made the greatness she achieved this season so personally painful. Nothing gets easier from here, and Gasso wouldn’t expect that it would. But that is what Oklahoma’s standard of excellence demands, and that is what she is prepared to give to this program. This is her family. This is her life.
Next season is just around the corner, after all. Another ice bath awaits.
(Photo: Ian Maule / Getty Images)
