Cowgirls Prepare for Second Leg of Third Season Knowing They Never Leave the State
STILLWATER – Oklahoma State softball should be back at home on Monday afternoon. The Cowgirls have work to do. Despite losing in their first game, a quarterfinal loss to BYU, last Thursday in the Big 12 Tournament they still came away with a national seed at No. 5 and they will play on their diamond, sleep in their beds, eat their favorite meals all the way through the next two weeks in working to earn a fifth straight trip to Oklahoma City for the NCAA Women’s College World Series.
“I told our team that this is so hard. It is not easy to do what they have done,” head coach Kenny Gajewski said to the media on Zoom Sunday night. “You have to earn these things. You don’t get them handed to you, there are no favors. As I sit here looking at Lexi (Kilfoyl) and Caroline (Wang) it makes me so happy for these guys and what they’ve poured into this program. Caroline for one year and Lexi for two years, they mean so much to us. They have come in here and embraced the Cowgirl way, embraced this program from day one, and it is so exciting to have this opportunity with these guys.”
Kilfoyl and Wang are two older players on a young team. Kilfoyl came from Alabama where she pitched for the Crimson Tide coming out of Land O’Lakes, Fla. Gajewski recruited here out of high school and did it again with better success out of the portal. This season all she did was earn Big 12 Pitcher of the Year honors and will be an All-American.
“At the end of the day I think we all knew we were going to be in the top eight and to host a regional and a super regional is all we can ask,” Kilfoyl said of the seeding. “I think we’re all excited that we get to stay at home and I think we’re excited to go out and play some new competition.”
Wang is an even better story as a one-year transfer that wound up at Oklahoma State, so she could study in a program that would get her into physical therapy school. Wang, the only married player on the team, got physical with the Big 12 leading the Cowgirls in home runs with 17 and also in every other hitting category.
“I talked to Lexi after the Big 12 Tournament and I thought the same thing, even after the loss I knew it was not okay and that was like a punch in the gut to me,” Wang said to the media. “It felt like it was coming quickly, ‘oh shoot’ whatever it is. I knew we would be okay (in the seeding) but it made me realize that we are coming down to the end. It’s not like I lack confidence in what this team can do.”
This is not unchartered territory, last May the Cowgirls lost to Kansas in the Big 12 Tournament and went down to Broken Bow for their anuual rest and reset for the NCAA. They were placed at home and made their way to Oklahoma City with five straight wins beating University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Wichita State, and Nebraska by a combined 20-2 to win the regional and then beat Oregon two straight, 8-1 and 9-0. The Cowgirls had played all their postseason competition in 2023 except UMBC. They were 0-2 with Wichita State, 2-0 against Nebraska in the regular season, and had opened with a 3-0 win over Oregon in Mexico.
This regional they have not played any of the teams in Northern Colorado, Michigan, and Kentucky. They will match up with the winner of the Fayetteville Regional if they take care of their work in Stillwater. They have not played any of those teams either.
“We haven’t played anyone,” Gajewski said of the Stillwater Regional field. “They have all earned being here in their own right. We’ll dive in and go. I’ve seen Kentucky play more than any of them. I know more about them than anyone (coming to Stillwater). I haven’t seen a lot of Michigan this year. I don’t get a lot of Big Ten games. I get more SEC games, so I haven’t seen Michigan or Northern Colorado but we’ll dive in.”
Plenty of time to watch video and study numbers on that bus ride home from Broken Bow.