Oklahoma State softball catcher Caroline Wang chose Cowgirls due to one key factor

STILLWATER — Caroline Wang had one immediate question for every college softball program that called to recruit her when she entered the transfer portal last spring.

Does your school offer a speech pathology degree?

If the answer was no, Wang politely ended the recruiting process right there.

A talented catcher with eye-popping statistics over her four years at Liberty, Wang was a highly pursued target for a lot of programs, but many didn’t make it past her opening question.

Oklahoma State did, and that has opened the door to one of Cowgirl softball’s best seasons by a catcher in program history.

Wang will fill her usual spot in the heart of the batting order as fifth-seeded OSU opens the NCAA Tournament against Northern Colorado at 4:30 p.m. Friday in the opening round of the Stillwater Regional at Cowgirl Stadium.

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Wang leads the team with 17 home runs and has a shot at breaking Samantha Show’s program record of 20, set in 2019. Her .372 batting average and 48 RBIs also lead the team while she has filled a crucial spot in the lineup and behind the plate.

OSU coach Kenny Gajewski likes to rotate catchers to limit the strain on their legs throughout the season, but Wang’s bat has been too important to the lineup. So over the first half of the season, Gajewski would use Wang as his designated player, or he’d move her to right field to limit the physical demands. But he knew he needed her in the middle of the order, which is why she has appeared in all 54 games, starting 53 of them.

Of course, if not for Wang’s vision of her future beyond softball, she wouldn’t be at OSU right now. In fact, she never would’ve left Liberty, where she was the back-to-back Atlantic Sun Conference Player of the Year in 2022-23.

“I had just graduated and I wanted to do speech pathology,” Wang said. “They had it here, and when Oklahoma State calls, you’d be silly not to give them a shot. Two days later, I was on a plane to come out here for a super-regional game.”

When possible, that has become a favorite recruiting strategy of Gajewski, bringing potential transfers in during the postseason so they can experience a game day environment, rather than visiting in the summer when player activity is minimal.

“I wanted to bring her in the most crucial time of our year, so she could see how we are,” the coach said. “Come see what we’re really like. See what we’re like under some pressure. It didn’t scare her away, and I think that told me a lot about her.”

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Seeing Cowgirl Stadium for a Stillwater Super Regional game against Oregon last May was the second piece of the puzzle falling into place for Wang, followed closely by her instant comfort level with her future teammates.

“It was an awesome environment, something I had never played in, and it’s exciting,” she said. “It makes you want to play in that environment.

“Everyone was so welcoming here, like, unbelievably so. I was convinced (Gajewski) had told all the girls, ‘Hey, she’s coming. Be nice to her.’ But they swear he didn’t say that. I’ve asked.”

During the game, Wang turned to her mother with a simple question: “How could someone not want to come play here?”

The degree field made OSU a possibility, and the visit made it an easy choice.

Wang has known for a while that she wanted to work with children in some fashion, but she hadn’t identified her exact path until last year. In fact, her biography page on the Liberty softball website listed her career pursuit as pediatric anesthesiology.

“I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher, because I don’t love school,” she said. “And I didn’t want to be a doctor, either. This is right in the middle.

“The people who work with kids in private practice, they get to play games — I mean, obviously, it’s with a purpose, but they sit on the floor and play games with kids all day long and I think that sounds awesome.”

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Gajewski, who stutters, has a soft spot in his heart for speech pathologists. He’s had multiple players pursue that career, including a couple of former catchers, Taylor Tuck and Mackenzie Thomas.

“I like to recruit speech pathologists, I need all the help I can get,” Gajewski said with a laugh. “I knew when she was here, the way she communicated, the maturity, the way she talked to us.

“We were like, this is easy. We need her, we want her and we think it’s a good fit.”

And it’s been a better fit than either side could have predicted.

“Leaving Liberty last year, I had no idea what it was going to look like,” Wang said. “I had no expectation of what type of softball program I was going to be on. I was going to go somewhere with speech pathology, whether that was some tiny little place I had never heard of or — I really had no expectation of it being here.

“I’m so thankful for this opportunity, the community that’s around us here, and being part of this program, and having so much fun playing softball when I was prepared to just go and have a job to do.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State softball catcher Caroline Wang transferred for degree