The Sooners (59-3) dispatched Texas 10-5 on Thursday night to sweep the best-of-three series at the Women’s College World Series to finalize a historic, record-breaking season with its fifth national championship in nine years.
For the second consecutive night, the Longhorns (47-22-1) jumped out to a first-inning lead, taking a 2-0 lead early on the top-seeded Sooners. But Oklahoma’s defense, highlighted by multiple highlight-reel plays from the Sooners’ outfield, kept OU in the game until the nation’s top offense could strike.
Alyssa Brito crossed home for the Sooners’ first run of the night when she scored off a Texas error in the top of the fourth – the Longhorns had two errors on the night. Taylon Snow then knotted the game at 2-2 a few at-bats later when she singled to center and plated Kinzie Hansen. Brito doubled down the left-field line in the fifth inning to send Tiare Jennings home and give OU its first lead of the night. Then in the next at-bat, Hansen delivered a three-run home run, her eighth long ball of the year, to give Oklahoma a 6-2 lead that it wouldn’t surrender. The Sooners pushed four more runs across in the sixth inning to put the game away.
A team for the ages, Oklahoma set WCWS records with 64 runs, 15 more than last year’s OU team that set the rewrote the WCWS record book. All-Americans Jocelyn Alo and Tiare Jennings combined for 10 home runs and 28 RBI’s in the WCWS. Jennings alone set a new WCWS record with 15 runs batted in, and her five home runs are tied with Alo for a new series record. The Sooners dominated every facet of the game all season long, outscoring opponents 579-65 on the season.
True freshman Jordy Bahl got her first WCWS start and earned the win, throwing four innings and allowing just the two runs in the first. Nicole May and Hope Trautwein closed the game out over the final three innings to deliver the title.
Oklahoma’s six national championships – 2022, 2021, 2017, 2016, 2013 and 2000 – are the third most all-time behind UCLA and Arizona, and the Sooners are the first team to go back-to-back since OU’s squads did so in 2016 and 2017.
Full recap to come.
