OU softball has dynasty, but more women's sports thriving in Oklahoma
Walking into OU softball’s new Love’s Field home for the first time earlier this year, Jayda Coleman couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.
“We finally have a facility like football,” Coleman said. “And I can hassle Billy (Bowman, OU football player and Coleman’s fiancé) about it all the time.”
On OU’s campus and nationally, women’s sports are thriving.
The 2023 NCAA women’s basketball championship game between LSU and Iowa drew a then-record women’s college basketball game audience with 9.9 million viewers.
This year, viewership was up even more.
More: Oklahoma State softball earns fifth straight WCWS trip as Cowgirls sweep Arizona
The Final Four rematch between LSU’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark drew 12.3 million.
Clark’s Hawkeyes’ national championship game loss to South Carolina drew nearly 19 million viewers on average — the most-viewed basketball game of the last five years and more than four million viewers more than the men’s title game between Purdue and UConn, according to Nielsen.
Viewership of the Women’s College World Series, set to begin Thursday at Devon Park, has steadily risen in recent years.
Last year’s WCWS finale drew an average of nearly 1.9 million viewers on ESPN, peaking at 2.3 million viewers.
The ratings for that game finished behind only the Sooners’ 2021 WCWS Championship Series-clinching win vs. Florida State in recent softball rankings.
Sooners coach Patty Gasso has been right in the middle of the softball boom, turning her program into a dynasty but also raising the sport’s national stature.
More: How OU softball's seniors led Sooners to their eighth consecutive WCWS
OU coach Jennie Baranczyk
OU women’s basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk has a unique perspective on the recent boom.
Gasso’s program was well-entrenched as one of the nation’s best when Baranczyk arrived in Norman in 2021 but has grown since then, winning the last three WCWS titles.
Baranczyk has been close to Clark’s family for years, hosted her at camps when Clark was coming up and watched Clark’s rise not only through that lens but also the lens of an Iowa alum who was part of coach Lisa Bluder’s early success in Iowa City.
“You’re watching Caitlin become a household name, not just for people that are in women’s basketball or from the state of Iowa,” Baranczyk said. “She’s really been able to elevate. Look at what she’s already doing from the WNBA perspective.”
Clark’s regular-season WNBA debut for the Indiana Fever against the Connecticut Sun drew an average audience of 2.12 million viewers on ESPN2, the most-watched WNBA game in more than 20 years.
“You talk about Lisa, you talk about obviously Patty and (OU women's gymnastics coach) K.J. (Kindler), they’re classy and they have elevated their sport," Baranczyk said. "They haven’t just been so tunnel-visioned in terms of what they’re doing on any given day but they don’t just elevate their own sports on national levels, but they elevate all women and women’s sports. They’re these strong, incredible people that have humility and grace and worth and the ability to be competitive and yet raise the level of the people around them.
“I don’t know how I got so lucky to be able to be around a lot of them, but I have and those are the things that radiate.”
While Baranczyk was at the Final Four in person to watch Clark and the Hawkeyes, Gasso was watching intently on television every chance she could.
“I love watching elite athletes play,” Gasso said. “Whether it’s bowling, golf or softball or women’s basketball. I love to watch elite athletes. … I don’t know what the viewership was, but I was tuning in because it was intriguing. They’re elite athletes and that’s what intrigues me. All that other stuff, I don’t care about. I care about watching 35-foot bombs and it was unbelievable. I love good competition and elite athletes competing and there’s nothing better than that.”
More: Mussatto: How Oklahoma State softball has become 'toughest ticket in town'
Jocelyn Alo and the 'ballers in our sport'
Jocelyn Alo has seen the shift in the perception of women’s sports since she arrived at OU in 2018, through a record-breaking career that ended as the career home run record-holder and now through a professional career that has included stints not only in professional softball but also with the Savannah Bananas baseball team.
“People are starting to recognize us as more than just women playing with a ball,” Alo said. “We’re actually ballers in our sport. We’re so good and we work so hard at what we do, we just don’t get enough credit for what it is that we do.
“I think with what women’s basketball doing what they did in the postseason and just seeing women’s sports on the rise right now, it’s like, ‘Man, we’re really damn good athletes,’ and we just have needed that time to have people recognize that and I think now that people are recognizing it. I think from the softball standpoint we’re starting to get a little more recognition but I think it’s going to take just a little bit more from the people to get it out there the way we know it can be.”
Coleman watched plenty of the women’s basketball tournament the last few years, especially when it came to Reese and Clark.
“It honestly brings me to tears to see how much all women’s sports are just growing because I know one day I want my daughter to be able to go be an athlete and not ever have to depend on a man to go make her money or anything like that,” Coleman said. “Just go out there and be a boss woman.”
OU third baseman Alyssa Brito has seen the crowds — in the stands and in autograph lines — shift.
“We have young boys seeing female athletes and they’re so amazed by them too,” Brito said. “I think not just young girls, how it’s inspiring, but for the next generation of young men that see the value in women’s sports too and just having more of a partnership together in that.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU softball has dynasty, but more women's sports thriving in Oklahoma
