OSU Softball: Cowgirls’ Sophomore Class Looks Even Better in Year 2

STILLWATER — Kenny Gajewski has been excellent at recruiting the transfer portal, but his sophomore class is the latest example that Gajewski can also do it on the old-fashioned recruiting trail.

The world was introduced to Karli Godwin and Rosie Davis last season when the two were freshmen at Oklahoma State. Both were starters on OSU’s most recent Women’s College World Series team and both were Freshman All-America selections. But now Katie Kutz and Tia Warsop, the other two sophomores on OSU’s 2025 roster, have started making an impact as well.

Kutz has already pitched more innings this season that she did all of her freshman year. She’s 6-1 in the circle with a 2.31 ERA while holding teams to a .205 batting average. Warsop was used primarily as a pinch runner as a freshman but has already taken more at-bats this year than she did last. She’s hitting .471, which is best among Cowgirls with at least five at-bats. Her on-base percentage of .571 is a team-best, which is made all the more valuable by the fact that she’s stolen eight bases on eight attempts.

“When you recruit, you think they’re all gonna be amazing, and they can be,” OSU coach Kenny Gajewski said. “A lot of it is just about toughness, to be honest. It’s really cool because we haven’t had a lot of kids that haven’t played well as a freshman that have played well past that. They’ve been OK, but we’ve almost had this thing as like, ‘Man, if you struggle as a freshman, it may be hard here,’ you know what I mean? We’ve had some kids that have done it, but we don’t have a ton of those stories.”

The group was highly touted coming in. Softball America and Extra Inning Softball each listed Godwin as a top 10 recruit in the 2023 class. Softball America considered Kutz the No. 6 player in the class. Extra Inning Softball tabbed Warsop as the No. 14 player in the class. Warsop said the quartet all went on their first visits to Stillwater at the same time and that it’s cool they’re now all having success on the field.

Given the modern landscape of college athletics, Gajewski said he wouldn’t have been shocked had Warsop and Kutz elected to look elsewhere after not breaking into regular playing time as quickly as Godwin and Davis did, but he said when he talked to Kutz at the end of the year, he didn’t get “even an inkling” that she was thinking about leaving. Warsop said she didn’t even have a thought to hop in the portal.

“That comes from parents,” Gajewski said. “That’s where that starts. When we’re recruiting, this is about recruiting parents who aren’t quote, unquote soft. I don’t mean that in a derogatory term for anybody who’s left here, but like, we gotta have buy in from parents, too, that we can tough this out and it’ll be OK. That’s hard. It’s just hard.

“I’m a parent, too. I get it. It’d be easy for me — my son is at (NOC)-Tonkawa and not starting — be easy for me to go, ‘You should leave. You’re not gonna play, you should leave.’ That’s not what I’ve told him. I’ve said it’s hard, but you gotta dig in, man. Like, you’ve gotta dig in and earn what you get. That’s what these two kids (Kutz and Warsop) have done here.”