It definitely wasn’t easy, but the Oklahoma Sooners are on their way to the Women’s College World Series Championship Series in hopes of claiming their 3rd straight championship!
Yesterday at Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City, the hometown Sooners were able to scrap and claw their way to a 4-2 win over Stanford in 9 innings to punch their ticket to the championship series. The win pushes the Sooner’s remarkable winning streak to 51 games. The Sooners are just 2 wins away from winning their 3rd straight national championship…something that hasn’t been done since the legendary UCLA teams from 1988-1990.
As mentioned before though, yesterday’s win for OU did not come easy. As a matter of fact, the Sooners had to come back from an early deficit to continue the win streak. Stanford got out to an early 2-0 lead thanks to 2-run home run by Kylie Chung in the bottom of the first. But, like OU has done all year long, they answered. OU put up 1 run in the 2nd inning thanks to an Alynah Torres sacrifice fly which scored Kinzie Hansen from 3rd. That would cut the lead in half, but OU didn’t have to wait much longer to tie things up as Jayda Coleman smacked a HR to center field 1 inning later to tie things up at 2. Then, the pitchers went to work. Both starters (Nicole May for OU and Alana Vawter for Stanford) would each put up zeros to end their days as May went 5 innings and Vawter went 4. After those two were pulled, both head coaches turned to their aces. OU handed the ball to Jordy Bahl and Stanford went to NiJaree Canady. Both aces held their opponents down for multiple innings and 7 innings was not enough for this one. After Stanford failed to score in the bottom of the 8th inning despite getting a runner on 3rd with no out, the game would enter the 9th inning tied at 2. That’s when OU decided that they had had enough and went to work.
Grace Lyons would lead off the 9th inning with a double to left field. Things were starting off great. However, OU would follow that up with back to back groundouts. The 2nd groundout would advance the runner to 3rd…but there were 2 outs. Jayda Coleman was intentionally walked to put runners on the corners. It was all up to Tiare Jennings to get the job done. Jennings fell behind in the count 0-2 and Stanford was 1 strike away from getting out of trouble. However, Jennings laced a ball into right center field for a double, scoring 2 runs, and giving the Sooners their first lead of the day. Bahl would sit down Stanford 1-2-3 in the bottom half of the inning to secure the win and secure their spot in the championship.
OU will now set their sights on a familiar foe as the Seminoles from Florida State await them in a best of 3 series which starts tomorrow. Florida State and OU know each other all too well. The Seminoles and the Sooners met in the 2021 championship which OU would win. The two sides even met earlier this season (March 14th) and played a thriller that OU would win 5-4 to push them to 21-1 on the season. Now, the Sooners sit at 59-1 and winners of 51 in a row. FSU will have their hands full as they will have to figure out a way to beat this dominant team twice in order to claim the title and take it away from the 2 time defending champions.
The Championship series will start tomorrow (Thursday) at 7PM at Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City. The teams will play Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary).
