We continue our year-end look at the Top 10 Softball Stories of 2024…  Here is the schedule for this list which will run the rest of December and into January 2025, when we’ll publish the No. 1 Softball Story of The Year:

• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #10 – The Alliance to Hold All National Championships In Indy (Dec. 23, 2024)
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #9 – The State of the Pro Game (Dec. 24, 2024)
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #8 – The Power of GoFundMe in Softball (Dec. 25, 2024)
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #7 – The Passing of 2016-17 Gatorade National Player of the Year Taylor Dockins (Dec. 26, 2024)
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #7 – Thu, Dec. 26, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #6 – Fri, Dec. 27, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #5 – Sat, Dec. 28, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #4 – Sun, Dec. 29, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #3 – Mon, Dec. 30, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #2 – Tue, Dec. 31, 2024
• Top 10 Softball Stories of the Year: #1 – Wed, Jan. 1, 2025

Also, on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, Line Drive Softball will list all the Top 10 stories together and then on Saturday, Jan. 4th we’ll will run the “Other Stories Considered” List.

For each topic (story), an article that we ran earlier this year on Line Drive Softball or was published by our friend at D1 Softball, Justin McLeod, the Associate Editor and former workmate of mine.

So how were the Top 10 picked?

We looked at what were considered the most memorable and important stories of the year as they impacted the sport. In researching the Top 10, we talked to those at at all levels of softball, including college and travel ball coaches, other media members and YOU—the fastpitch community.

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Softball

*****

The Top 10 Softball Stories of 2024: #6…Oklahoma’s Launch of Love’s Field Raises the Bar For Softball Stadium (Dec. 27, 2024)

As if the Oklahoma Sooners didn’t have enough to sell recruits on…

Earlier this year, the SEC powerhouse opened its new stadium, Love’s Field, in Norman, Okla. and it is impressive, to say the least.

The project cost $48 million and was covered by more than 1,000 donors highlighted by a $12 million contribution by Love’s Travel Stops, which gave the company the naming writes.

As OU’s athletic website details:

“Love’s Field is the crown jewel of college softball stadiums. Boasting a fan capacity of 4,200, it is the largest on-campus softball facility in the country, and features a 10,669-square-foot indoor training center and several team spaces, including a locker room, training room, meeting room, equipment room and lounge, as well as a recognition area to showcase national championships, All-Americans and other outstanding accomplishments.”

The first game in the stadium was played on Friday, Feb. 1, 2024, and the Sooners won, but it didn’t come easily: it took a two-run walk-off home run by Kinzie Hansen to give the home team a 9-7 victory against the Miami Redhawks.

Justin McLeod of D1 Softball commented:

“Love’s Field raised the bar for college softball facilities. It’s an incredible stadium—from the front gates to the Oklahoma-shaped scoreboard and the permanent outfield stands. Even the most minute details within the stadium are well done.”

Below are two articles which previews the Love’s Field launch as well as details of the first game played there…

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Softball

*****

Softball Opens Love’s Field with OU Tournament

Originally published Feb. 29, 2024, on SoonerSports.com

NORMAN — No. 1/1 Oklahoma Softball celebrates the historic opening of Love’s Field this weekend with five games over the course of three days in Norman.

The Sooners (14-0, 0-0 Big 12) open the inaugural season at their new home on Friday, March 1, against Miami (OH) at 2 p.m. CT and will follow with a contest against Liberty at 5 p.m. the same day. All tickets, including standing-room only areas, are sold out for opening day at Love’s Field. OU will also face Louisiana (11 a.m.) and Liberty (1:45 p.m.) on Saturday, and Louisiana on Sunday (12:30 p.m.).

Liberty will play Tulsa at Marita Hynes Field at 12:30 p.m. on Friday followed by a 5 p.m. ULL vs. Miami (OH) matchup at Marita Hynes. Liberty and Louisiana will play neutral-site games at Love’s Field on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m.

Each game of the OU Tournament featuring the Sooners will be streamed on ESPN+ ($). All five OU games will be broadcast on 1560 AM/103.3 FM The Franchise 2 with all but Friday’s first game also airing on 107.7 FM The Franchise.

To celebrate Love’s Field’s historic day on Friday, an Opening Day and Dedication Ceremony will take place outside the main stadium gate (Gate 1) at 11 a.m. Season ticket holders and the public are welcome to attend. The event will be standing room only on the south side of the stadium, off Imhoff Rd. Following the ceremony, stadium gates will open to fans who hold tickets to the 2 p.m. home opener.

WEEKEND PROMOTIONS

The first 1,000 fans through the gates on opening day will receive a commemorative Love’s Field softball. Saturday’s games feature the celebration of Jayda Coleman’s senior day while Sunday will include a special front-page poster giveaway.

THE NEW HOME OF SOONER SOFTBALL

Love’s Field officially opens its gates this weekend.

The facility features a 10,669-square-foot indoor training center and several team spaces, including a training room, locker room and classroom.

Constructed at the northwest corner of South Jenkins Avenue and Imhoff Road, Love’s Field is approximately one-half mile south of Marita Hynes Field and accommodates a capacity of 4,200.

The complex’s overall square footage is 44,000, compared to 15,168 at Marita Hynes Field, OU’s previous facility. The team areas grew from 2,598 square feet to 5,593 square feet and the indoor practice facility jumped from 4,744 square feet to 10,669 square feet.

ABOUT LAST WEEKEND

OU went 5-0 at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic last weekend, extending its NCAA-record winning streak to 67 games. The Sooners outscored their five opponents 43-5 with three run-rule wins and closed the tournament with three straight shutouts.

Oklahoma’s lineup batted .378 over the weekend, belting eight home runs and nine doubles on its way to producing a 1.095 OPS. Sooner baserunners were a perfect 7-for-7 while the club’s defense committed just two errors to field a .984.

Freshman outfielder Kasidi Pickering batted .667 with a team-high eight hits, going 8-for-12 at the plate with five runs scored. Senior shortstop Tiare Jennings led OU with nine RBIs and four extra-base hits (3 2B, 1 HR) while batting .500 (7-for-14). Senior outfielder Rylie Boone collected a hit in all five games, going 7-for-12 (.583), and collected three doubles.

AN UNPRECEDENTED STREAK

Oklahoma’s NCAA-record winning streak stands at 67 games entering the weekend. The historic streak has featured 46 wins over Power Five opponents, 38 shutouts, 28 wins over ranked teams, 30 run-rule wins and just three extra-innings victories. OU has defeated 40 different programs over the course of the win streak, the most wins coming against Texas and Iowa State with four each.

The Sooners have scored 538 runs while allowing just 62 during their winning streak, generating a whopping +476 run differential. OU averages 8.03 runs per game and has recorded a 0.89 ERA in the circle across the stretch.

Oklahoma is hitting .365 with a 1.114 OPS during the 67-game streak, blasting 129 home runs and 115 doubles. Opposing teams have hit just .164 off the Sooner staff with a meager .457 OPS over the streak.

The Sooners’ 4-3 victory over Washington on Feb. 9 extended their winning streak to 56 games dating back to Feb. 24, 2023, establishing a new record for the longest winning streak in NCAA history. OU’s 56th consecutive win broke the previous all-division record held by then-Division II program Western Kentucky.

A LEGACY AT MARITA HYNES FIELD

As Oklahoma begins its next chapter at Love’s Field, the program fondly looks back at 26 seasons of success at Marita Hynes Field. OU went 548-62 (.856) from 1998 to 2023 at Marita Hynes, winning nine Super Regionals and 17 Regionals at the complex.

WHAT A RELIEF

Oklahoma’s bullpen has been lights-out to open the 2024 campaign. The Sooner pen’ has yet to allow a run in 29.2 innings this spring, limiting opponents to a .112 average (11-for-98) with a 28:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio. All 11 hits allowed by the relievers have been singles, helping the group record a .321 OPS against and a 0.71 WHIP.

LEADERBOARDS

The Sooners enter March ranked top-three nationally in multiple categories. OU is second in shutouts (9) and fielding percentage (.989) and owns the third-best ERA in the country at 0.73. Oklahoma’s 22 home runs tie the team for 10th across the NCAA. Graduate right-hander Karlie Keeney is the only pitcher in the nation to have not allowed a run in at least 15.0 innings pitched, leading the country with a 0.00 ERA. Four Sooners rank among the top eight in the Big 12 in ERA while Alyssa Brito and Tiare Jennings are top-five in the conference in OPS, slugging percentage and RBIs.

For updates and more information on Oklahoma Softball, follow the Sooners on Twitter/X and Instagram (@OU_Softball) and like Oklahoma Softball on Facebook.

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Softball
Brentt.Eads@LineDriveMedia.com

*****

Oklahoma Opens Love’s Field By Avoiding Historic Upset

Originally published March 1, 2024, on D1Softball

It was no surprise that an All-American christened Love’s Field with a home run in the first inning of the first game ever played in the $48 million crown jewel of a ballpark.

It was a bit of a surprise that it wasn’t any of Patty Gasso’s legion of stars, but instead Miami’s wonderfully dynamic All-American Karli Spaid who took Nicole May deep into the Oklahoma afternoon.

It wouldn’t be the last surprise. Or the biggest. It wouldn’t even be Spaid’s last home run.

Thanks to Kinzie Hansen, again, No. 1 Oklahoma’s 68-game winning streak is intact. But the three-time defending champions had to work for a one-game winning streak at Love’s Field. Hansen’s walk-off two-run home run, after Miami homered its way back from a four-run deficit in the top of the seventh inning, was the difference in Oklahoma’s 9-7 wild win.

The hero of Oklahoma’s last win at Marita Hynes Field etched her name in Love’s Field lore.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 💥#ChampionshipMindset pic.twitter.com/5qLaLiYmE1

— Oklahoma Softball (@OU_Softball) March 1, 2024

At stake was a winning streak dating back to Feb. 19, 2023, when the Sooners lost at Baylor, and a 65-game home winning streak (now 66), that goes back almost exactly four years, to a Leap Day loss against North Texas at Marita Hynes Field in 2020.

Oklahoma hadn’t even practiced in its new home prior to the game—according to OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, the stadium was still receiving finishing touches as late as Friday morning (also part of the weekend tournament, Liberty and Tulsa played at Marita Hynes Field prior to the game at Love’s Field). The stadium looked gorgeous on television, every bit the standard setter it was hyped to be. But from untended land around the ballpark visible in aerial shots to the practice schedule, the proceedings felt slightly rushed.

So often comfortable in the spotlight they’ve created for themselves through their success, the Sooners, perhaps correspondingly, looked oddly discombobulated at the outset. May’s typically impeccable control wavered. She walked leadoff batter Allie Cummins and missed her spots on back-to-back home runs by Spaid and Holly Blaska. The Sooners hadn’t given up more than three runs in a game all season. Friday, they were down three before they even got to bat.

They rallied, first in drips and drops and then like an Oklahoma downpour. By the fifth inning, Alyssa Brito’s solo home run tied the game 3-3 and finally chased resilient Miami starter Addy Jarvis (temporarily, as it turned out). In the sixth inning, they gave the capacity crowd of more than 4,000 what they came for. Riley Ludlam’s pinch hit single broke the tie and back-to-back home runs from Jayda Coleman and Kasidi Pickering left the dugout and crowd delirious.

🥶 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 🥶 pic.twitter.com/wr4BiIVbB5

— Oklahoma Softball (@OU_Softball) March 1, 2024

At that point, Miami’s strong start looked destined to be just a footnote in Love’s Field history.

Instead, the Redhawks very nearly made history. After Chloe Parks led off the top of the seventh with a single off Karlie Keeney, Cummins, Jenna Golembiwski and Karli Spaid went back-to-back-to-back to tie the game 7-7—Golembiewski’s moon shoot leaving the stadium.

After one game, we have a pretty good measure of the noise at Love’s. Because if it will rarely get much louder than after Coleman and Pickering’s home runs in the sixth, it will never get any quieter than after Spaid’s second home run of the day erased the seemingly safe lead.

Miami got a runner to second against Oklahoma reliever SJ Guerin, but couldn’t quite find the go-ahead run. Even on this day, when nothing felt normal and Miami played with such confidence, that felt like too much of a door left open for the Sooners.

Jarvis returned to the circle for the bottom of the seventh, and after Rylie Boone led off with a single, Hansen delivered the walk-off blast.

It’s tough to elbow your way into record books crowded with the likes of Jocelyn Alo, Lauren Chamberlain and Keilani Ricketts. But by hitting the game-tying, two-strike, two-out, seventh-inning home run in Oklahoma’s final game at Marita Hynes Field and the winner in its first game at Love’s Field, Hansen will be even more difficult to dislodge from her perch than any those other stars.

Spare a thought for the visitors. For months, sitting there all alone on the schedule, Miami probably struck some as little more than a prop. Oklahoma couldn’t very well play the first game in its new stadium without an opponent. They were anything but the equivalent of homecoming fodder.

🎤 The Captains

💻 » https://t.co/AC10c99ATy #ChampionshipMindset pic.twitter.com/xlMsplAOUX

— Oklahoma Softball (@OU_Softball) March 1, 2024

A year ago, needing games during a Big 12 bye, Oklahoma traveled to Oxford, Ohio, to play an April mini-tournament. They rolled into town as the biggest show in softball, fans standing in line for unclaimed tickets at a venue that normally doesn’t charge admission. And they rolled over a very good Miami team, maybe not quite as comfortably as the 13-1 run-rule score suggested, but, you know, pretty comfortably.

That day, Miami played as if even it wasn’t sure it belonged on the field. That certainly wasn’t the case Friday. Perhaps because they saw their own home game against Oklahoma morph into a spectacle—a joyous spectacle with a festival atmosphere, but a spectacle all the same—they were at ease here.

The home runs helped. They usually do. A year ago, only Oklahoma finished the season with a better slugging percentage than Miami. Only four teams, including the Sooners, hit more home runs per game. Most of those hitters returned for head coach Kirin Kumar, on whose watch the program has become one of the most consistently prolific in Division I—in addition to 2023, Miami ranked second nationally in slugging in 2021 and eighth in 2022. All of that for a program that barely cracked the top 100 in slugging the year before Kumar arrived. These days, Spaid is a deserving All-American, Golembiewski and Cummins are right there with her.

That’s the world Oklahoma helped create, just as much as one in which an edifice like Love’s Field is possible, one in which a softball landscape scrambling to match OU’s standard produces a Miami.

Friday, it wasn’t quite enough to make history. But no one in Norman is going to forget the opener—or the Redhawks—anytime soon.

• During an in-game interview, Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said work was still being done to finish the stadium this morning—apparently including installing the final seats.
• Castiglione also suggested they are still considering ways to expand seated capacity in the future beyond the current 4,200.
• Also during the broadcast, Nicole Mendes and Erin Miller called out another new feature, at least by Oklahoma standards: walk-up songs. Apparently, Patty Gasso dangled them as a carrot at Marita Hynes Field, but only if players met near-impossible academic goals.

— Justin McLeod/D1 Softball