A warm June afternoon finds the faithful gathered in northeast Oklahoma City, tailgaters and succulent smoke surrounding the stadium.

Plenty of familiar crimson and cream and orange and black mill around in the crowd interspersed with Vol orange, Seminole maroon, and other colorful signifiers of universities around the country. The Women’s College World Series is in full swing.

And college isn’t the only game in town. Youth softball teams have come from all over the region and possibly beyond, sporting their team shirts and no doubt hoping to catch a glimpse of their own athletic futures.

Below, on the field, a banner proclaims, “Greatest Show on Dirt.”

Welcome to Oklahoma City, world capital of the sport of softball.

Fans watch the Oklahoma City Spark at Devon Park in Oklahoma City. The venue also hosts the annual NCAA Women’s College World Series and numerous other events. Photo courtesy Hope Heinen / OKC Spark

Or is it?

“You might call it that, because we are winning consistently,” chuckles Patty Gasso, the University of Oklahoma’s legendary head softball coach. Her Sooners clinched a national championship three-peat during the 2023 series. “Now, we are going for a fourth consecutive national championship, which has never been done in our sport. So what’s different for Oklahoma is that we are reaching pinnacles that have never been reached.”

USA Softball, headquartered in Oklahoma City, is the national governing body for the sport, and as far as it is concerned, Oklahoma is unquestionably the center of the softball universe. When then-executive director Don Porter moved the organization from New Jersey to Oklahoma in 1966, geography was a big factor.

Oklahoma City Spark outfielder Jocelyn Alo and University of Oklahoma catcher Riley Ludlam pose at Devon Park at the home of USA Softball in Oklahoma City. Photo courtesy Shevaun Williams

“He was also looking for the right deal,” says current USA Softball executive director Craig Cress. “And the city of Oklahoma City, as it continues to be, was gracious and was able to come up with some relatively cost-effective grounds.”

He found that deal with Alvin Eggeling, dubbed Mr. Recreation in Oklahoma City because of his deep involvement with golf, softball, and the city’s recreation department. Eggeling and his buddy Bick Auxier—who was known as Mr. Softball and was the commissioner of the Oklahoma City Softball Association—helped ASA scout a location with growth potential. Porter always knew he wanted a complex.

“He wanted at least one field and preferably two,” Cress says.

The complex, in fact, now offers four fields, including what’s formally named Devon Park. It’s the one that hosts the Women’s Softball World Series each summer. It sits steps away from the Softball Hall of Fame, which features two floors of history and also serves as USA Softball’s headquarters. The stadium itself, Cress says, is the largest softball-only facility in the world.

“Mr. Porter’s vision was always to come to the center of the United States,” Cress says.

Here, Porter thought, was where USA Softball could lay out plans not only for an office building but a site that would draw visitors to experience the game for themselves.

Tallen Edwards graduated from Southmoore High School a year early to join the Oklahoma State University Cowgirls team. Photo courtesy OSU Athletics

In 2023, women’s sports were blowing up. The NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four Tournament broadcast that spring reached new heights for the event on ESPN, averaging 6.5 million viewers per game. Kansas City’s Current soccer club watched its future home take shape along that city’s riverfront, the first facility in the country built exclusively for a women’s professional sports franchise. In August, 92,003 people packed the University of Nebraska’s football stadium to watch a women’s volleyball match, shattering global records for women’s sports attendance.

Amid this, though, softball has stood above all. No doubt, the University of Oklahoma’s nonstop victory laps—and the can’t-look-away matchups they fought through to get there—have played a role. But the ambitions of young women all over the country also fueled the fire.

“To me, this generation of athletes is just phenomenal,” Gasso says. “It is fun to watch elite athletes work, whether male or female. I think there are so many more elite athletes, elite pitchers, elite hitters, and the passion that teams play with—I really see that specifically in ours.”

Softball wasn’t even on Oklahoma State head coach Kenny Gajewski’s professional radar for years, even in 1994, when he was a member of the University of Oklahoma’s national championship baseball team. Softball caught his attention when Wichita State University named his best friend Tim Walton its head coach in 2003. When Walton moved to the University of Florida in 2013, Gajewski had watched enough softball to happily join his staff as an assistant coach. His first season in Stillwater was in 2016.
“Softball was so much more exciting, much faster,” he recalls. “I got around these athletes, and it was intriguing to me how good they were. That was wild. They’re so good. So when I got the opportunity, I jumped in.”

And just as importantly, the supporters are here for it. Gajewski has seen it for himself at games around the state.

“It’s crazy,” he says. “I mean, people show up and watch. People who don’t even have kids are showing up.”

The Oklahoma Secondary Schools Athletics Association’s figures bear that out. Ticket sales for the state’s fast-pitch tournament have grown steadily in recent years, from 17,030 in 2019 to 21,245 in 2023. It’s a moment Oklahoma long has seen coming. On March 31, 2023, nearly 9,000 people packed USA Hall of Fame Stadium to watch OU take on the Texas Longhorns, setting a new NCAA regular softball season attendance record in the process. Fresno State’s record of 5,724 against Arizona had stood untouched since 2000. It left even OU’s normally unflappable head coach awed.

“I remember sitting in this stadium in my late twenties, watching the World Series with two thousand people, thinking, ‘That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’” Gasso told reporters after the game. “And now you’ve got nine thousand people watching a conference game here with their cell phone lights on. It was unreal.”

Pitcher Donnie Gobourne came to the Oklahoma City Spark from the University of South Carolina. Photo courtesy Hope Heinen / OKC Spark

How did we get here?

Softball’s history dates back to the 1880s, but women didn’t pick up their bats in significant numbers until the 1930s, as the low-cost sport surged in popularity. Softball proved wildly popular in Oklahoma, especially in Tulsa. Bud Howe, a YMCA director, brought softball here in 1930 through the Tulsa Church Athletic Association. The Amateur Softball Association’s launch in 1933 threw fuel on the fire, with twelve teams participating in the first year. By the 1940s and 1950s, softball had become serious business in Oklahoma and across the country. Started in 1952, The Indian Fast Pitch Tournament has drawn hundreds of teams to Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma All Native Sports Association took it over in 2001. In 2012, it was rechristened the Native American Softball Tournament, and teams continue to battle it out in Wheeler Park’s Eggeling Stadium every July.

Softball’s early years offered a mélange of regulations that varied from league to league. The ASA and other organizations managed to impose order, giving the sport a firm footing from which to grow. In 2017, the ASA rebranded itself as USA Softball.

Since 1990, when USA Softball first partnered with the NCAA to host the Women’s College World Series, the spotlight has turned each summer to the elite Division I athletes who take to the field at Devon Park. The series has played out in Oklahoma every year with the exception of 1996, when organizers moved it to Georgia to coincide with that year’s Olympics in Atlanta. And every year, the tournament has a local economic impact of $25 million—much of it driven by the more than 25,000 visitors arriving from out of state.

“On the first weekend, 70 to 72 percent of the people who attend are from out of state, so, it’s not like it’s all driven by the state of Oklahoma,” Cress says. “We’re a destination for them. It’s a part of what they do on a yearly basis.”

Riley Ludlam was named 2023 Southern Conference Player of the Year for Furman before Patty Gasso recruited her to the University of Oklahoma. Photo courtesy Shevaun Williams

What brings in the crowds year after year? As far as OU’s Gasso is concerned, it’s the players.

“They play with that passion at practice every day,” she says. “It’s genuine, and I think people love to see athletes get excited. When you watch softball, it’s a big deal. Everybody is involved in it. It’s a good team sport to watch. But the athletes are at a different level—stronger, faster, smarter.”

Now, more than 120,000 teams play under USA Softball’s umbrella, with millions more in other leagues and other programs here and all over the world. Their ranks include people of all ages at levels ranging from tee-ball to professional.

Still, you have to circle back to Oklahoma to find softball’s winningest coach. Oklahoma City University’s Phil McSpadden captured that milestone in March 2023, when the Stars swept a double-header against Mid-America Christian University, boosting his career wins to 1,860 total. Since then, he has added more than thirty more to his record.
The common thread running through it all is that for many, softball is more than a mere sport.

“It’s a process that never ends,” McSpadden said in an interview in early 2023, shortly after his team cinched him win number 1,850. “God gave me some abilities, and my gift to God is what I’m going to do with them, and so I’m going to work on that craft every day and try to be the best athlete-slash-softball player I can be. That’s all part of that process, and that’s what college athletics is all about.”

For Oklahoma State University pitcher Lexi Kilfoyl, softball is life.

“I’ve always been around softball,” she says. “I grew up playing it; it’s all I’ve ever known. It’s just so much fun.”

Still, it’s a major commitment.

“It feels like a full-time job in the best way possible,” Kilfoyl says. “I wouldn’t want any other.”

Lexi Kilfoyl earned All-America recognition in her first season as a Cowgirl player. Photo courtesy Landry Beldsoe / OSU Athletics

Sooners senior outfielder Rylie Boone remembers the first time Gasso showed up to watch her play—when she was in the seventh grade. Back then, Boone was far from the pageantry of the college softball world series, playing for Tulsa Edison against Piedmont. The facilities were pretty basic.

“It wasn’t the best,” Boone says. “We had tryouts in a gymnasium.”

When Gasso showed up, the Piedmont fans and players were confident she was there to get a look at another standout pitcher. Boone says she later found out Gasso had come to watch her instead. When the scholarship offer came, Boone was ready. She loved the atmosphere at the University of Oklahoma, the fellow players, and of course, her coach. In her four years, the now-senior said the spotlight on softball as a whole has grown more intense.

“Four years ago, there was some attention, but every time we’ve won, it has increased enormously,” she says. “Our battle series, our literal inter-squad game—that is now being broadcast on ESPN.”

Plays from that game even made it on SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays of the Day.

“That wasn’t normal four years ago, so the game is just growing,” Boone says.

Spark players celebrate a home run. Photo courtesy Hope Heinen / OKC Spark

Collegiate success is beginning to spill over into the professional world. The Oklahoma City Spark launched in the summer of 2023 with college luminaries like OU’s Jocelyn Alo and OSU’s Chelsea Alexander on the roster. The Spark was among four teams playing as part of the Women’s Professional Fast Pitch league. And in that first season, with only eighteen home games in 2023, the Spark sold 23,000 tickets.

“That first year, our expectations . . .” softball superfan and Spark owner and general manager Tina Floyd trails off for a moment recounting that summer. “Well, we didn’t know our expectations. You assume and hope that Oklahoma is going to embrace a softball team just because of the nature of where we’re at. And they did.”

Even overseas, the team drew respectable crowds. The Spark played two exhibition games in Buckinghamshire, near London, taking on the Great Britain Women’s Senior National Fastpitch Softball Team. Softball isn’t as well known in the United Kingdom, so it didn’t offer as big a platform, making the turnout a pleasant surprise.

“But the ones who do know about softball came out,” Floyd says. “The park was full. They were so excited just to see that. I think we helped bring them the awareness of the sport.”

The Spark removed itself from the Women’s Pro Fast Pitch league for the 2024 season. It was a move the players supported, Floyd says.

“It allows us to play some international teams,” she says. “You’ll probably get to watch us play really good international teams based out of North America. We know what to do and how to do it. We just need to put in the work and do it.”

For Floyd, watching the inequality between women’s and men’s sports fuels her approach. She empowers her players, making sure they get the things they need to stay in the game—be it childcare, a place to live, or just words of encouragement. The players responded with a fierce inaugural season, ending with a 21-14 record. Three of WPF’s top four home run leaders came from the Spark, with outfielder Jocelyn Alo’s six home runs falling just shy of the nine-run top mark.

“I’m thankful for this great group of women I get to play alongside every day,” Alo says. “As a woman in the sport, I am looking forward to the future and the growth of softball in the professional realm . . . and just happy I get to be a part of this incredible journey.”

Jocelyn Alo played for the University of Oklahoma before joining the Oklahoma City Spark in 2023. Photo courtesy Shevaun Williams

As far as Floyd is concerned, the journey is just getting underway. She’s watching top players go to Japan, where they can earn decent pay in that country’s professional softball league. And America has developed an appetite for softball, though she says professional softball remains a work in progress.

“We want to say we’re the front-runner, that we have it all together for softball,” she says of the team. “It’s a battle, but the Spark’s not going anywhere. We’re going to keep pushing it forward for others.”

That includes reaching the bright-eyed girls at the World Series, watching their heroes stride confidently out onto the diamond.

Written By

Brett Jones And Dyrinda Tyson