After Thursday’s initial day at the PGF Show Me the Money event kicked off with pool play, Friday took on a whole new feeling not only because it was the first day of bracket play, but because—suddenly—the Champion’s complex in Newberry, Fla. became a lot more crowded.

And it had everything to do with Oklahoma’s winning the Women’s College World Series Thursday night over Texas.

Because the Sooner’s fourth straight DI championship closed the DI season, it allowed the college coaches at that level to begin recruiting in person. Meaning, if Texas had won Game 2 and pushed a Game 3, the DI coaches would have been delayed another day.

Didn’t happen so we saw several head coaches in attendance like Lonni Alameda and her Florida State staff watching players such as already committed 3B/C Anna Hinde of Team North Carolina.  

Other head coaches we saw included John Rittman of Clemson and Kenny Gajewski of Oklahoma State, who was sitting with his newly hired assistant Greg Bergeron, who was hired within the last week.

Very interesting background story as Gajewski and Bergeron have known each other since they were five years old and went to elementary school, high school and most of their college careers together with the major difference being that Coach Greg spend 25 years of his career in baseball.

And it’s been a very successful one as—during his 10 years on staff at UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State combined—he helped coach those teams to eight NCAA appearances and five super regionals.

The trust and friendship between the two who great up in Southern California is evident and it will be interested to see how the successful friends since age 5 work together… and win together.

In the OSU hiring release, it was noted that the bulk of Bergeron’s experience has come as a hitting coach and in working closely with infielders.

“Greg brings stability, ethical ways and wisdom, something that with a young staff, will be good for all of us,” Gajewski said. “He’s coached a lot of games and is aware of attention to detail, which I always need help with. He will make this staff the best it has ever been and we’re excited to add him.”

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What other programs were there? It would be easier to ask which ones WEREN’T there. We didn’t see the Oklahoma Sooners there but it would be understandable after their title-winning final game just Thursday night.

But pretty much every program in the Power 5 was there—from Florida to Arizona, Florida Southern to Furman, Nebraska to Jacksonville State and so on.

And these college coaches knew exactly who they wanted to watch.

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The best team I saw on Friday was the Georgia Impact 18U – Sampson/Gusaeff team which is loaded with 12 committed players going to top programs such as Oklahoma, Washington, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and others.

In fact, the only player not committed on the team is 2026 C/UT Catelyn Yeager who showed her speed as she got on base with a bunt single, stole second and went to third before scoring on a slap single by 2024 OF Lisey St. Jean, who’s headed to North Carolina State.

One of the stars on the team is catcher Kendall Wells, an Oklahoma committed catcher who is from Athens, Ga. which, as you probably know, is where the Univ. of Georgia is located.

Kendall reveals that many of her friends are die-hard Dawg fans and she got a lot of (mostly) good-natured ribbing because she loves Georgia football and one of her friends is the daughter of football coach Mike Bobo!

I did an video interview with Kendall and it’s very entertaining! We’ll post in the next few days.