STILLWATER – The Oklahoma State Cowgirls are hitting the road for the upcoming NCAA Regional as they’re headed to Fayetteville, AR, and will face Indiana on Friday, May 16.
Joining the Cowgirls will be No. 4 seed Arkansas, Indiana and St. Louis.
This marks the first time since 2018 the Cowgirls won’t be hosting a regional in Stillwater.
“This is what we’ve earned,” Oklahoma State coach Kenny Gajewski said. “And like we talked about as a group, we’re going to be thrilled wherever it goes, wherever it happens to be.”
And excited they were when they found out.
The Cowgirls finished their regular season 33-18 overall and 13-9 in Big 12 play, certainly down from where they’ve been in the past. They won six of their final eight games but are currently sitting with more losses since the 2018 season.
They’ve shown throughout the season they have what it takes to win some big-time games, and the Cowgirls have six players with batting averages above .300 and junior pitcher Ruby Meylan is rolling with an ERA of 1.61 in 39 appearances.
But Fayetteville is going to be a challenge locale.
“Arkansas is a really awesome stadium, they’ll be full,” Gajewski said. “Their fans are really good. So, I look at it as they’re the ones, like Arkansas has got the pressure in this regional. They’re supposed to win this. So, like I told our team we got nothing to lose. Let’s go take it.”
In that same vein, with watching their reactions to the selection show, it seems the Cowgirls are feeling good, and Meylan expressed that in the Zoom with the media Sunday evening.
“I think just watching the show, seeing the top 16 seeds,” Oklahoma State pitcher Ruby Meylan said. “I looked at Audrey and I go, ‘dang, we kind of beat a lot of them.’ We’re like pretty close. And for a lot of us this year feels like a roller coaster, and I think we’re a lot closer than we think, but we’re all expecting perfection out of ourselves and at this level it’s not realistic. So, I think keeping it all perspective like I don’t know how Arkansas is feeling right now, but I bet you they’re not very happy.”
Again, the Cowgirls will face Indiana this coming Friday at 3 p.m. on ESPN2 over in Fayetteville.
