Oklahoma State Heads Back to Women's College World Series With 10-4 Win Over Arizona

STILLWATER – For the fifth time in five years, the Oklahoma State Cowgirls are headed back to the Women’s College World Series as they pulled off the series sweep of the Arizona Wildcats,10-4, in game two of the Stillwater Super Regional.

With the win, the Cowgirls moved to 49-10 overall on the season. 

“Just so proud of these guys, this whole program,” Kenny Gajewski said after the game. “I don’t know where to start, it’s just what we’ve been able to do here with so many different players and [coaching] staff, and as our staff grows, I know there’s a lot of people who counted us out at the beginning of this year. We just kept telling these guys they’re good enough and they can do this. They’ve now put themselves in a position to achieve their goal, and that’s to win a national championship. It feels really cool and we’re going to enjoy that tonight. But we’ll get back to work in the next couple of days and be focusing on what’s next.”

Ivy Rosenberry got the start in the circle for the Cowgirls, going three innings and giving up three runs, each of them earned, on seven hits with four strikeouts and one walk. 

Just as it was in game one, it was a strong offensive start to the first inning for the Cowgirls on Saturday evening. Jilyen Poullard drew a four-pitch lead-off walk, bringing up sophomore Tallen Edwards, who put the Pokes on the board first with a two-run blast out of the park in left field.

Karli Godwin hit a one-out stand up double, bringing about the first pitching change of the game just five hitters into the game. Rosie Davis hit a single in the next at-bat, advancing Godwin over to third. Davis advanced over to second on a wild pitch, with Godwin scoring on the very next pitch, which was also a wild pitch to put the Cowgirls up 3-0.

 Rosenberry gave up three hits to start the bottom half of the first, allowing a run with no outs. But with one out, Arizona’s DiNardo lined out to third and Shockey was thrown out trying to score to end the inning, 3-1.

In the top half of the third inning, Rosie Davis hit her eighth home run of the season to get the run back from the first inning, putting the Pokes up 4-1 with two outs. With the next at bat, Clarie Timm hit her tenth home run of the season to put the Cowgirls up 5-1. 

The Wildcats rallied a bit at the plate recording two hits and putting two on, but Rosenberry pitched a pop fly for the second out and struck out DiNardo on six pitches to get out of the inning with no runs.

With two outs in the top of the fourth, Caroline Wang with a bloop single to score two more runs, putting the Pokes up 7-1 to bring up Godwin, who hit a hit fly ball to center field, which was dropped. However, Wang attempted to score from first and was thrown out by several feet. But Gajewski challenged the call after the Wildcats had left the field, with call being upheld. 

In the bottom half of the fourth, Rosenberry gave up a two-run home run to make it a 7-3 game, before being replaced by Lexi Kilfoyl, who came in and recorded two strikeouts and a groundout to get out of the inning. 

Timm recorded a standup double to score Davis from first to put the Pokes back up five, 8-3, forcing another pitching change. The Cowgirls plated two more runs to go up 10-3 before the severe weather horn sounded at 7:30 to suspend play in the top of the fifth inning.

After a two-plus hour rain delay, the Cowgirls restarted with a grounder up the middle by Edwards, which was fielded by a diving Biehl at short stop for a force out at second to end the inning. 

The Wildcats got one run across in the bottom half of the fifth inning to make it a six-run game, 10-4, but Kilfoyl was able to limit the damage to end the inning. She also kept the Wildcats off the board in the bottom half of the sixth. 

Kilfoyl pitched a perfect bottom half of the seventh inning, with Tallen Edwards fielding a grounder and throwing the third out to first.