OSU Coach Kenny Gajewski Meets Former Team on Softball’s Biggest Stage

STILLWATER — Kenny Gajewski was recruiting in Tennessee on June 13, 2015 (also his mother’s birthday) when he received a phone call.

Then an assistant with Florida, Gajewski had interviewed for the Oklahoma State job, and he was expecting a phone call one way or the other. He answered the phone to hear OSU athletic director Mike Holder’s voice.

“Man, he talked to me for 20 minutes before he said anything, and all he was doing was telling me how great all these other people were,” Gajewski said Monday. “I was like, ‘Just tell me I don’t have the job.’ Honestly, I thought ‘This is a waste of my time right now.’ I was like, ‘If you’re not gonna hire me, I don’t need to be buttered up.’

“Then he just said, ‘Hey, you’re the best guy.’ I just said, ‘I’m in.'”

Gajewski said Holder told him to talk it over with people, but Gajewski’s mind was already made up. He was coming to Stillwater.

Gajewski called Florida coach Tim Walton to tell him the news. He said it was a hard talk. In 2013, Walton had hired Gajewski away from Tennessee where he was the Volunteers’ director of baseball operations. While at Florida, Gajewski was on staff for Walton’s WCWS championship teams in 2014 and 2015 before Holder scooped up Gajewski as the Cowgirls’ head man.

When Gajewski accepted the OSU job, he got the OSU players’ phone numbers, and he started calling one by one.

“I just told them, ‘Hey, I know that you didn’t choose me, but I chose you,'” Gajewski said. “‘If you don’t want this opportunity, I’ll let you go. If you want it, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to gain your trust.'”

Holder’s hire has proven to be excellent. The Cowgirls are in their first WCWS since 2011, and the program has shown sustainable, consistent growth since Gajewski has been in Stillwater. OSU was 21-31 in 2015, the year before Gajewski’s arrival, and the Cowgirls have steadily grown since.

Thursday won’t be the first time Gajewski will face off against the man he used to coach under, but at 6 p.m. Thursday, the two will meet on softball’s biggest stage in Oklahoma City at the Women’s College World Series.

OSU and Florida met three times in an NCAA Regional in 2017, where the upstart Cowgirls managed to take a game off the blue blood Gators, but Walton and the Gators went on to win the regional over Gajewski and the Cowgirls.

Gajewski said Walton sent a congratulatory text after the Cowgirls’ first Super Regional victory this past weekend, and Gajewski said Walton called after the second game, not knowing if the Cowgirls had won or lost yet.

“When we won (the third game), I called him first,” Gajewski said before pausing to fight back tears. “… I just wanted to tell him thanks.”