'Familiarity is always great' as Oklahoma State softball meets Florida State again at WCWS
Scott WrightKenny Gajewski turned on video to begin scouting third-seeded Florida State, but immediately wondered if he needed to bother with it.
The coach of sixth-seeded Oklahoma State is quite familiar with his team’s first-round opponent in the Women’s College World Series. Thursday’s 6 p.m. showdown at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium will be the 10th meeting between the teams in the last five years, and the fourth in the last three months.
“I watched some video and I just wanted to turn it off,” Gajewski said at WCWS media day Wednesday afternoon. “I feel like I already know what they are and who they are. They’re obviously a little bit different than what they were when we played them in (March).
“But they’re really good, well coached, and we’ve got a lot of respect for what they’ve done and how (coach Lonni Alameda) has done it.”
While the teams have played five games in the past two regular seasons — part of a home-and-home series that saw the Cowgirls go to Tallahassee for two games in 2022 and Florida State to Stillwater for three games last March — this marks the third time the teams have aligned in the postseason since 2019.
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And when you examine sixth-seeded Oklahoma State’s four straight WCWS appearances, their super-regional upset of defending champion Florida State in Tallahassee in 2019 has to be considered one of the moments that catapulted the Cowgirls to national prominence.
“Looking back at my time here, that was probably my best memory so far,” OSU super-senior center fielder Chyenne Factor said. “We were the 13 seed, going to the defending national champs, just being able to come out of that and see where we've gone from there, I think it's cool.”
In 2021, the teams met in a WCWS elimination game that was originally scheduled for an 8:30 p.m. start, but because of rain, didn’t begin until a hair before midnight and concluded at 2:18 a.m. with Florida State surviving in a 4-2 ballgame and eventually finishing as national runner-up.
The NCAA adjusted its scheduling philosophy the next year, a reaction to the late finish.
Overall, OSU is 4-5 against Florida State the last five years, winning two of three in 2019 and two of three earlier this season. The more intriguing aspect of this matchup is the overwhelming familiarity.
On this stage, short of meeting a conference opponent, teams have rarely faced their WCWS foes.
OSU and Florida State rely on veterans who have been mainstays in the lineup since 2019, including pitchers.
In this season’s three-game series, OSU ace Kelly Maxwell pitched 10 ⅔ innings and Lexi Kilfoyl threw 7 ⅔. Dating back to 2021, Maxwell has thrown 17 total innings against FSU and Kilfoyl has thrown 24 ⅓, including a couple of matchups when she was at Alabama.
Same goes for FSU ace Kathryn Sandercock, who has thrown 25 innings against OSU, beginning in the 2019 super regional.
“Getting to see their pitching staff, Maxwell has been great for the years she's been there,” said Florida State senior outfielder Kaley Mudge, who will be facing OSU for the seventh time in her career. “Getting to see Lexi at Alabama as well, just to get information throughout the past couple years.
“I'm just excited to see them on this stage.”
While the frequent matchups might make it difficult to catch the other team off guard, knowing your opponent isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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“Familiarity is always great when you're playing teams,” Alameda said. “I think that's the reason why we do the schedule that we do. We try to face as many top-25 challenging opponents on the road.
“This is where every team wants to be, is to be here, playing in Oklahoma City.”
That’s why, when she brought her team to Oklahoma for the three-game series against OSU, followed by a Tuesday matchup against OU, Alameda made a stop at Hall of Fame Stadium while heading south on Interstate 35.
“It gave us a chance to come here for an hour or so,” Alameda said of her team’s brief stop at the stadium back in March. “Got on the field, can we touch it, can we be here when we want to be here at the end of the year?”
“Just for our freshmen to feel that, for this team to feel that, how hard it is to get here, the respect to get here, and then the opportunity of being here already this year with this team has been really special.”
Both coaches pointed to the fact that they schedule highly ranked teams to prepare them for the postseason gauntlet.
Now, they get to meet under the sport’s brightest of lights. And though OKC has become a regular stop for both programs — four in a row for the Cowgirls and four since 2014 for FSU — the opportunity is not lost on either coach.
“It feels good to be sitting here because I could be at home and not here, and I'm very appreciative of that,” Gajewski said. “So I'll never complain about any of this kind of stuff because this is really neat, and it's an experience that each year, it just changes and gets better.”
