Cowgirls Ignite 7-Run Comeback For First Sweep Of Texas In Program History

While freshman Hayleigh Galvan talked with reporters, junior star Vanessa Shippy interrupted to give her a hug.

“I love you so much,” Shippy told her.

For the first time in program history, the Oklahoma State softball team swept Texas with a 10-9, eight-inning victory. The Cowgirls needed five runs in the bottom of the seventh to tie it, and Galvan delivered a 2-out, 2-run seed over the left-field wall that scored runs No. 4 and 5 in the inning. She has the team’s second-lowest batting average at .217.

Galvan was the pinch-hitting savior, but Shippy was the winner.

After the Longhorns scored in the top of the eighth, the Cowgirls needed a run to keep it alive or two to win it. Randee O’Donnell scored to move the score to 9-9, and with the bases loaded, Shippy grounded one through the middle that scored Maddi Holcomb for the walk-off win.

FINAL: #OKState 10, Texas 9
What a game. Cowgirls score 7 (!!!) in the last two innings to complete their first sweep of Texas in history. pic.twitter.com/4xjjOQukZX

— Hayden Kyle Barber (@HK_Barber) March 26, 2017

Coming into the conference-opening series with Texas, OSU had lost six straight against the Longhorns. The last win was April 25, 2014. Shippy said this is all coach Kenny Gajewski’s doing.

Gajewski replaced Rich Wieligman on June 13, 2015. In Wieligman’s final season, parking was easy to find, fans were not so easy to locate and the Cowgirls were swept in all but two Big 12 series.

Sunday, fans were sent to overflow parking, the crowd was as large as it has been in years and a fan tried to bring a broom into the stadium.

Gajewski has been in Stillwater for less than two years.

“He’s everything,” Shippy said. “Not just on the field. He brought a lot to our team on the field with where he came from and his mentality, but he changed the culture off the field. That’s won that game. It wasn’t the talent. It was the heart that we had in the game.

“And he also put all those people in the stands, and that’s huge. A lot of people don’t remember, but we had dozens of people (my) freshman year, instead of hundreds of people.”

Gajewski said this is the best possible start to his career at OSU that he could have imagined. He is just thankful that he has the community and the athletic office to back him up, he said.

Administrators and athletic officials send him texts about their support of the program, he said. Sunday, athletic director Mike Holder made his first appearance in the press box at Cowgirl Stadium in years. Gajewski said that’s important to him and his players.

“This town is so orange,” he said. “They are so behind us. They are so involved in everything OSU, and if you’ll just do the right things, if you’ll be a good person, be a great teammate, you’ll do well in school, they’ll support you win or lose.”

At the Cowgirls’ media day before the season, Gajewski said there were some conference games last season when he wondered how his team could play so poorly and others where he wondered how the Cowgirls lost. He said that is all so different now.

In the third inning, Texas scored four runs off two errors and took a 4-2 lead. There were several heads down. Gajewski went up to a couple of those players and said, “Hey, it’s over. Let’s go. The thing is done with. You can’t change it. Now it’s up to you to get us back on track.”

“We’re just more mature,” he said. “We’re a little more seasoned, still got a lot of growing to do. But I said this from day one: Last year’s team created some momentum that this year’s team has grabbed and kept going with.”

Shippy said this team is well-coached, and it was last year, too, but this season, the Cowgirls are showing that with their bats.

“Our coaches did everything they could last year, and I just don’t think we really helped them out at the plate and put together a good offense,” Shippy said. “And we lost a lot of one-run games, but this year, our confidence at the plate is huge.”

Gajewski said the program is growing quickly, and there is plenty of evidence of that. After making the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011 last year and earning their first sweep of the Longhorns, who finished third in the Big 12 last season, OSU is likely to improve upon this past season’s 32-26 record and regional final.

“If I’m you, I’d jump on now because it’s gonna be hard to get seats here, and it’s already hard now,” Gajewski said. “I’m excited for what the kids have built and are building.”