ESPN

OKLAHOMA CITY — Finally, Texas has broken through.

Mia Scott hit a grand slam, Teagan Kavan won again and Texas defeated Texas Tech 10-4 in Game 3 of the Women’s College World Series championship series on Friday night to claim its first national title.

Texas had lost to Oklahoma in the championship series two of the previous three years. Oklahoma was one of the teams Texas beat on its way to the championship. And Texas coach Mike White finally won in his ninth World Series trip between his coaching stints at Oregon and Texas.

“I’m still trying to process the whole thing,” White said. “Actually, it’s something you dream about.”

Kavan, a sophomore, allowed no earned runs in all 31⅔ innings she pitched at the World Series. She went 4-0 with a save in the World Series for the Longhorns and was named Most Outstanding Player.

She was happy to win it for White in the Longhorns’ first year playing in the SEC.

“Without Coach White, I don’t know if we’re here,” she said. “He’s the best. He’s so competitive. He wants it just as bad as we do, of course. And he pushes us to be better every day. He makes me a better pitcher mentally and physically. And so there’s no one else I’d rather play for. He’s the bomb, and I’m glad we got it done for him.”

Leighann Goode hit a 3-run homer, Kayden Henry had three hits, and Scott, Reese Atwood and Katie Stewart each had two hits for Texas (56-12).

Texas Tech star pitcher NiJaree Canady, who had thrown every pitch for the Red Raiders through their first five World Series games, was pulled after one inning in Game 3. The two-time National Fastpitch Coaches Association Pitcher of the Year gave up five runs on five hits and threw only 25 pitches. She had thrown 686 consecutive pitches dating to the start of super regionals before exiting.

The loss came after she signed an NIL deal worth more than $1 million for the second straight year.

Not even support from former Texas Tech football star Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, who were in attendance, could put the Red Raiders (54-14) over the top.

Canady’s night started like many of her others, as she struck out the first batter she faced. After that, she didn’t resemble the pitcher who entered the game leading the nation in wins and ERA. Goode’s homer in the first put the Longhorns up 5-0.

Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco said he was pleased with Canady’s effort throughout the season, but he pushed her a bit too far.

“If I had a game in two days, that’s who I want beside me to go to war with,” he said. “She’s an unbelievable talent.”

Scott’s blast came in the fourth inning and gave Texas a 10-0 lead.

Hailey Toney was a bright spot for the Red Raiders. She singled to knock in two runs in the fifth, then singled to knock in another run in the seventh.

It was a surprise run for the Red Raiders. Glasco left Louisiana to coach at Texas Tech this season. The team had only three returning players and had to mix a group of newcomers together.

It won the Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles and reached the World Series for the first time.

“To end up in this position, playing for the national title, making it go all the way to three games — just a historic season, and I’m really proud of my team and the effort that they give us from top to bottom,” Glasco said.

Dave Wilson | ESPN

Texas Tech softball coach Gerry Glasco doesn’t fear much.

When Glasco watched Oklahoma’s Abigale Dayton blast a game-tying two-run homer in the top of the seventh inning on Monday night, “Sooner Magic” might have momentarily rattled him. But the Red Raiders rallied to finish off Oklahoma’s dynasty run in the bottom half of the inning.

On Wednesday, Texas Tech dropped the first game of the Women’s College World Series finals to Texas, a heart-wrenching 2-1 loss to the Longhorns in Game 1 of the best-of-three series (Game 2, 8 p.m. ET Thursday, ESPN). But Glasco’s not the type to panic with his back against the wall. He has overcome much more than this.

“Nothing about softball is scary to me,” Glasco told ESPN in April.

Glasco has lived a colorful life and has taken a winding path to becoming one of the best coaches in college softball at 66, making a run at a national title in his first season at Texas Tech.

But he also has the kind of perspective that comes from immense tragedy. In 2019, his youngest daughter Geri Ann died in a car accident when she was a volunteer coach for him at Louisiana.

“Once you realize that you don’t have fear of failure to keep you from doing things, you realize there’s things you can’t understand,” Glasco said. “You go for it.”

Glasco never thought he’d be taking on Texas in Oklahoma City. He never even thought he’d be a college softball coach. So how’d we end up here? It’s simple, said Glasco: Because of drug cartels.

Glasco is a gifted storyteller, which explains why he’s such a talented recruiter. Still, sometimes he glosses over things. So, let’s slow down a little bit.

“I’m a hunting guy, a dog handler,” Glasco said. “That’s all I did for a living four months a year. And then I go home and coach softball from March till November because I have three daughters. I just coached softball for fun.”

Glasco became the go-to hunting and fishing guide for more than two decades, taking businessmen and wealthy hunters quail and duck hunting in Mexico — about two hours south of Brownsville, Texas. He and his wife Vickie wanted to retire south of the border and build a house after Tara, Erin and Geri Ann got out of school in Illinois. He didn’t enjoy being away from his girls, but he tried to work to balance his livelihood with his family life.

“That was my whole childhood,” said Tara Archibald, Glasco’s oldest daughter and his pitching coach at Texas Tech. “He would leave in October and he would come back in late February, early March, coming back for holidays and stuff. I can remember him driving 48 hours from Mexico to Illinois, where he watched my eighth-grade basketball game and drove all the way back.”

But beginning in 2007, his trips across the border started becoming more treacherous.

“I’m driving 40 guns through Mexico and [the guns] are issued permits by the [Mexican] Army,” Glasco said. “In 2006, they stopped me three times and I showed the permits. In 2007, I got stopped 18 times and they made me get all 40 guns out. And they looked at every single serial number. I’d never done that.”

Finally, in 2008, some of his guests arrived late one night, so he was driving to pick them up at 1 a.m., when he was cut off by a truck. Glasco says soldiers jumped out, hit the ground and aimed rifles at him. He got out to try to assure them he didn’t want any problems, when he says he was struck by the butt of a rifle and swarmed by the Mexican army, before he was released.

The next day, Glasco says he was summoned by the local comandante, who apologized to him, before telling him they’d done that so no trigger-happy soldier took a jittery shot at him. But he was told that the disputes between rival drug cartels made it too dangerous for him to continue operating his business as usual, and he couldn’t just show up unannounced anymore. When he got back home to Illinois, he had a conference call with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who told him his clientele were too high profile and would become kidnapping targets if their travel arrangements or hunting licenses were leaked and the wrong people knew they were coming.

So Gerry Glasco pivoted.

Glasco had always loved softball. As a hobby, he spent seven seasons as the assistant softball coach at Johnston City (Illinois) High School, and spent one season as the head coach of the junior high team, where he went 27-0 and won a state title in 2007. His Illinois Southern Force organization that he built finished in the top 20 four times at nationals and won the 2004 18U Gold national championship. That year, Glasco and his staff were named the national travel softball coaching staff of the year by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association.

Georgia coach Lu Harris-Champer had recruited one of Glasco’s star Force pitchers, Kasi Carroll, who would become one of the best players in Georgia history. She asked Glasco where he was finding all his talent, because there wasn’t a huge softball scene in Illinois, and he explained that he’d recruit athletes off his daughters’ volleyball or basketball teams and teach them to play. She was impressed and told him that if he ever wanted to be a college softball coach, to give her a call.

With his dog-handling days in jeopardy, he started pondering that route. The Glascos weren’t wealthy. Gerry had grown up on a pig farm. He called his dad and asked if they could start it up again, but then he remembered how much he hated pig farming. His dad encouraged him to find something he loved.

So in 2008, he called Harris-Champer, interviewed, and got the job. He and Vickie took the leap and moved to Athens, Georgia, and the Bulldogs made it to the WCWS championship series in his first season. Harris-Champer said she was always drawn to how hard Glasco’s players played for him, because he was funny, charming and they knew he cared for them.

“It’s always fun,” she said of working with Glasco. “He’s hilarious. There’s energy. Whether things are going in the right direction or the wrong direction, doesn’t matter. The energy is there, the passion is there. The belief is there and the figure-it-out mindset is there.”

And that’s what Glasco was doing, figuring it out. First, as a recruiter, then as a hitting coach at both Georgia (2009-14), where his teams set 20 school offensive records and at Texas A&M (2015-17), where they broke eight.

When he landed the head coaching job at Louisiana, he didn’t slow down. From 2018-24, Glasco led the Ragin’ Cajuns to a 300-88 record, with five Sun Belt Conference regular-season titles and advanced to the NCAA tournament each season.

Along the way, he got to coach Hall of Famer Cat Osterman in the National Pro Fastpitch league.

He proudly remembers the pilgrimages he made, taking his girls, then a college freshman, an eighth grader and a preschooler to St. Louis, getting to a game two hours early and setting up lawn chairs behind the home plate backstop. It was there, he told them, that they were going to see the equivalent of Michael Jordan in high school, a high school junior from Texas named Cat Osterman.

She struck out 20 batters with 50 college coaches in the bleachers behind them as Glasco befriended her father, Gary, an engineer, who told him how he analyzed the spin on pitches and studied the engineering aspect of making the ball break.

“And she had the greatest rise ball in the world at 18 years old,” Glasco said.

By 2014, Glasco was no longer a fan of Osterman. His softball journey allowed him to coach her.

“Who would’ve thought in ’99, I’m watching the best pitcher in high school softball and 15 years later, I’m going to get to be her coach. That can’t happen,” Glasco said, adding that he didn’t do any coaching of Osterman other than to pencil her name into the lineup.

Now a general manager for the Volts in the Athletes United Softball League, Osterman has admired Glasco’s rise all these years, and seeing him work firsthand, she wasn’t surprised.

“He enjoyed watching how I worked and why I worked the way I did, because obviously I was well into my professional career when we crossed paths,” she said. “He’s always wanting to learn, which is kind of cool because sometimes people will feel like they know it all and they’re going to come and impart their wisdom. Gerry was the opposite. He took the opportunity to soak in what everybody had to say.”

Osterman, a Texas graduate, knows how impressive his work has been at Texas Tech, which had never won a conference title before this season. She’s not surprised that he was able to recruit NiJaree Canady, above and beyond the $1 million NIL deal. She knew firsthand how much his Louisiana players loved him, having coached star hitter Mihyia Davis in travel ball, who scored the game-winning run against Oklahoma that clinched the Red Raiders’ spot in the championship series. She said Davis’ star rose in high school and had Power 4 opportunities, but stayed committed to Louisiana.

“It was because Mihyia loved Gerry,” Osterman said. “When Gerry was leaving, he told her she should feel out her options. And she said, no, I’m coming with you. Mihyia entered the portal with the ‘do not contact’ label next to her name. She was either going with Gerry or not going anywhere.”

Four of the Red Raiders’ top seven hitters came with Glasco from Louisiana, something that wasn’t lost on Canady when she was considering making the move.

Those relationships matter to Glasco. He was devastated to beat another of his former players, Oklahoma pitcher Sam Landry, who wore No. 12 as a tribute to Geri Ann at Louisiana and had Geri Ann’s name on her glove during Monday’s game. The two embraced after their semifinal game, with Gerry telling her he loved her.

“We’re all part of Gerry’s family,” Osterman said. “His wife knows all of us. We all know Miss Vickie. I’ve gotten to know his daughters over time. He wants everyone to feel like they’re part of the Glasco family.”

That even includes his friend Texas coach Mike White, who coached Geri Ann at Oregon. He admires White for his path from New Zealand to a stellar coaching career in which he’s never lost a regional, something Glasco says is “impossible.”

“I thought about it last night,” Glasco said in a Tuesday news conference. “If Geri Ann was here, I don’t know if she’d root for me or White because she loved Whitey. She used to compare us a lot. She’d say, Daddy, Coach is just like you. He’s just got a more colorful vocabulary. She probably thought he was a little smarter than I am.”

Archibald, who left a head coaching job at Eastern Illinois where she went 40-17 last year to get a chance to work with her dad, said those family memories — including keeping Geri Ann close — have been a big part of the Red Raiders’ experience in Oklahoma City.

“There’s a lot of pride, there’s a lot of happiness, there’s a lot of excitement, but there’s also some grief involved,” Archibald said. “It’s hard to put into words obviously, but I feel like Geri Ann’s really right here with us and sending us signs everywhere we go. We walk in the stadium today and there’s a 12 in front of our face. I go to the laundry room and there’s a 12 on my washing machine.”

“I just feel like it’s kind of been written and supposed to be this way. With Sam [Landry], that was hard. That was so, so hard because she is a daughter to my parents and has been just so good to our family.”

Now, after ending the Oklahoma dynasty and beating Patty Gasso, who has the highest winning percentage (.811) of any coach with at least 1,000 wins, Glasco has one more shot at history in a championship series against Texas.

Harris-Champer expects Glasco to go all out, laughing how “awesome” it was to see Glasco calling Makayla Garcia to steal home in a win over UCLA on Saturday, saying she doesn’t remember ever seeing anyone do that at the WCWS before.

Texas Tech’s Makayla Garcia stuns UCLA by stealing home in epic fashion

Makayla Garcia breaks the stalemate by stealing home for Texas Tech in the top of the fifth inning vs. UCLA.

“He loves to steal home,” she said. “He loves to squeeze, loves to do things that are to force the offense, to force that aggression.”

Archibald said that’s all part of Glasco’s makeup. He goes for it.

“If we don’t have what we need to get it done, we’re going to find it,” Archibald said. “If we can’t score a run, we’re going to steal home. It’s an intensity that’s unmatched. He’s going to do things the right way, but where most coaches would be worried about how stupid am I going to look if we get thrown out stealing home, he doesn’t care. If that’s how we’ve got to score a run for NiJa, we’re going to figure out how to score a run for NiJa.”

As the WCWS has gone on, Glasco has become an overnight star, much like Canady was two years ago. There’s an adage around Lubbock this year with the media attention that she has drawn: They’ll come for NiJa and stay for Gerry.

“When we first started this whole process, some people were talking about doing a documentary on NiJa and the story and the team,” Archibald said. “We started laughing and we’re like, yeah, they think they’re going to do a documentary on NiJa. They’re going to get here and they’re really just going to follow Gerry everywhere he goes. He’s the real show.”

When he can find the time away from softball, Glasco still hunts quail, still has his part-time hunting guide business, and still goes to Mexico. He believes some things are predestined, including getting the Tech job when he did, at a school that was willing to go all-in on NIL, allowing him to land Canady and build an offense around her. He’s made his mark on softball history, the sport that saved him from pig farming.

He has one last chance this season to go for it.

Cydney Henderson | USA TODAY

The Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) is officially set to debut in early June and the women’s professional softball league now has major investor: Major League Baseball.

MLB and the AUSL announced a wide-ranging partnership on Thursday, marking MLB’s first investment in a women’s professional sports league. The partnership coincides with an exciting time in the sport — not only is the 2025 Women’s College World Series set to begin Thursday, softball is set to make its Olympic return in Los Angeles in 2028.

“This announcement today is really a watershed moment for the AUSL,”Athletes Unlimited CEO and co-founder Jon Patricof told USA TODAY Sports. “For us, the sport has tremendous momentum in many ways. It’s been a sleeping giant. It’s performed so well at the college level, but maybe received less attention than some other sports out there. Major League Baseball is really going to be able to come in and help us shine a light on the incredible athletes and incredible action that exists in pro softball.”

Not only does the AUSL have the support of MLB, the women’s professional softball league will be shepherded by icons that have helped introduce the world to softball.

“We brought on board almost all the legends of the game, including seven members of the 2004 gold medal-winning Olympic softball team involved as coaches, general managers and advisors,” Patricof said, referring to Lisa Fernandez (Talons GM), Stacey Nuveman-Deniz (Bandits head coach), Cat Osterman (Volts GM, advisor), Kelly Kretschman (Volts head coach), Jennie Finch (advisor), Jessica Mendoza (advisor) and Natasha Watley (advisor). Patricof added, “Kim Ng is on board as the commissioner and now Major League Baseball is on board as a strategic partner.”WOMEN’S SPORTS: The latest news and insider insights from USA TODAY Studio IX.

Here’s everything you need to know about the AUSL’s partnership with MLB:

MLB partnership will amplify pro softball league

The AUSL’s inaugural season kicks off June 7 and will feature four teams — Talons, Bandits, Blaze and Volts — playing a 24-game season across 10 cities, including Chicago, Austin and Salt Lake City. The AUSL season will complement the league’s pre-existing All-Star Cup, where 60 players compete for an individual championship using Athletes Unlimited’s innovative scoring system that makes every softball play meaningful.

Athletes Unlimited’s creativity is what first caught MLB’s eye. Tony Reagins, MLB’s Chief Baseball Development Officer, told USA TODAY Sports that Athletes Unlimited offered “something that was a bit different” and “unique.”

“We’ve really been watching the organization from afar for a couple years. We watched how they operated the business — very creative initially in the softball space, utilizing their players and getting the players more involved in different ways on and off the field,” Reagins said. “We wanted to align ourselves with an organization that we thought had a like mind in the long-term goal of promoting women’s sports, softball in particular, and Athletes Unlimited really checked all the boxes.”

With the partnership, MLB will leverage its broadcast partners and platforms to promote the visibility of the AUSL. Major League Baseball’s financial investment will also assist with AUSL’s “operational costs and key growth initiatives,” MLB announced. Patricof added, “The MLB is going to be supporting AUSL really in all facets, marketing, promotion, and commercial development of the league.”

AUSL taps Kim Ng as commissioner

Kim Ng was named the commissioner of the AUSL in April, highlighting another tie between professional softball and baseball. Ng played college softball at the University of Chicago and went on to become the first woman to serve as the general manager of a major North American men’s professional sports team when she was named the Miami Marlins GM in 2020.

Get the Sports newsletter in your inbox.

Sports news, no matter the season. Stop by for the scores, stay for the stories.

Delivery: DailyYour Email

“To see what she’s been able to accomplish as a professional and an executive in baseball and now be able to take the reins as commissioner of AUSL is exciting, because I know her work ethic, intellect and what she will put behind this effort,” Reagins said. “These discussions (between AUSL and MLB) happened before Kim was named commissioner. But to then have Kim come on board and have that familiar face that you know from a historical perspective, it made the partnership make even more sense. We think we have a great ally with Kim being at the helm of AUSL.”

At the time of her appointment, Ng said, “Softball was my first love growing up, so it’s both gratifying and humbling to be given this responsibility at such a pivotal moment for the sport.”

Dee Lab | Just Womens Sports

Stanford shattered the NCAA softball attendance record this weekend, welcoming 13,207 fans inside the university’s football stadium for Saturday’s “Big Swing”  game against Cal.

In the most-attended non-football contest in Stanford Athletics’ history, the Cardinal softball crowd surpassed the sport’s previous attendance record of 12,566, set on the first day of the 2024 Women’s College World Series (WCWS) in Oklahoma City.

The history-making game also blew past the NCAA softball regular-season record of 9,259 fans, a feat reached less than two weeks ago when reigning champions Oklahoma defeated local rivals Oklahoma State on April 9th.

“It was kind of like a mini College World Series experience,” Stanford junior outfielder Kyra Chan said after the game.

Despite dropping the record-breaking matchup 10-8 to their new ACC rivals, No. 16 Stanford ultimately secured the three-game series against the Golden Bears with wins on Thursday and Friday.

Friday’s 9-3 victory was particularly impactful, clinching the Cardinal a spot in their first-ever ACC championship tournament next month — the first postseason stop as Stanford hunts a third-straight appearance in the WCWS semifinals.

Stanford softball fuels argument for larger women’s sports venues

Softball isn’t the only sport leading the recent surge in record-breaking NCAA women’s sports crowds.

After shifting a volleyball match into its football stadium in August 2023, Nebraska welcomed not just the sport’s biggest crowd, but the largest to ever attend any women’s sporting event in the US.

Shortly thereafter, Iowa’s “Crossover at Kinnick” blasted through the NCAA women’s basketball attendance mark by moving an exhibition game featuring the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes into the university’s football venue.

Though the move to massive football stadiums was intentional to snag both Nebraska’s and Iowa’s respective records, Stanford’s venue shift was not initially an attendance-hunting move.

The Cardinal’s entire 2025 softball season is being played on the gridiron as the team’s new $50 million stadium and state-of-the-art training facility is under construction.

Taking advantage of that added capacity was a no-brainer, with Stanford specifically branding and marketing their rivalry “Big Swing” game to capitalize on their temporary digs — and to continue making the overall case for expanding women’s sports’ venues.

“I think that you see a consistent theme that there aren’t big enough venues for women’s sports to be able to draw the fans that they can draw,” Stanford softball head coach Jessica Allister pointed out.

“Hopefully, a lot of people who showed up to Stanford for the first time to watch a softball game will come back and see us in our beautiful stadium.”

By Erin Achenbach | ClutchPoints

Former Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng has been named the first commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, the league announced Wednesday, marking another milestone in her trailblazing career and an important moment in the growth of professional women’s sports.

Ng, who served as the Marlins’ GM from 2020 to 2023, brings more than 30 years of experience in Major League Baseball to the role. A longtime advocate for women’s sports, she called the opportunity both personal and historic.

“I love this sport,” Ng said, as reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN. “From middle school on, I played softball, played in college … it’s been a big part of our lives. When you talk about this, I think it’s part of a movement.”

The AUSL is preparing for its inaugural tour-based season, a 24-game summer slate across 10 cities beginning June 7. The tour includes stops in Rosemont, Illinois, and Wichita, Kansas — where the most games will be held — and will conclude with a championship series in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The league intends to transition to six permanent teams in 2025.

Ng previously advised AUSL before accepting the full-time role. She said that her MLB background helped prepare her to lead a league, not just manage a team.

“When I hear the word commissioner, it just means leadership,” she said. “And I think being at Major League Baseball really helped me to understand the commissioner’s office and the services that they provide. It’s not just to understand what the clubs need, but you have to lead as well.”

AUSL’s structure is unique, with the entire league owned by one group and an emphasis on player input. Ng said there is a focus on stability before growth and the league is aiming to use social media and college outreach — like the upcoming “AUSL College Draft Show” on ESPNU — to boost its visibility.

Jon Patricof, Athletes Unlimited co-founder, credited Ng with unifying college and professional circles.

“Kim sets the bar … She has helped bring (key figures) into the league and into the sport. That’s a major differentiator.”