• Vanessa Shippy enters her final home game with a feeling that OSU is on the rise,
STILLWATER — Vanessa Shippy used to get nervous before big games.
As a freshman on the Oklahoma State softball team, Shippy would wander onto the field and lie down, listening to music to dull her nerves. Entering the final home game the third baseman is guaranteed in her fouryear Cowgirl career, Shippy has no such feelings amid a series against No. 3 Oklahoma.
“Now, every team we play is really big, and we don’t look at any other team as bigger than the rest,” Shippy said. “OU is our most important game this year, but that’s only because it’s the next one, not because it’s OU.”
Although the No. 22 Cowgirls’ 8-0 loss Wednesday in Norman erased their hopes of a Big 12 title, they have plenty to play for in the series’ final two games. OSU hasn’t won a Bedlam game since 2011. With a strong finish in this series and next weekend’s Big 12 tournament, the Cowgirls could be a regional host for the first time since 1998.
The thought of this program’s rise, to even be in that conversation, gave Shippy chills. It’s a credit to the work coach Kenny Gajewski has done in his three seasons heading the program, she said.
Through scheduling, Gajewski has worked to bring OSU to national prominence while also preparing the Cowgirls for Bedlam. This past weekend, they visited Los Angeles, where they suffered two losses to No. 1 UCLA.
“We played teams that the jersey has some credit and some juice, and we’re trying to get our name back to where it’s got juice,” Gajewski said. “It just takes time.”
Gajewski, a former Oklahoma baseball player who is 0-8 against his alma mater, recognizes the series’ importance, adding its weight comes not from the opponent, but the late-season timing.
“The team that can be normal is the team that’s gonna win,” he said. “... Our first year, I don’t think we played very normal. I thought last year, we were pretty close to that. Close doesn’t win, unfortunately, so we’ve just got to continue to get better as a program.”
Although Gajewski pines for more, he is the coach of a program on the rise. Monday, he and Shippy shared a smile thinking of how there would be no sweating through Selection Sunday. These Cowgirls are regional-bound. It’s only a matter of staying or going.
“That’s a big step for a program to get to where a regional is just expected,” Shippy said. “It’s very cool to know that, going forward, that’s gonna be the expectation here for many years.”
Shippy knows she might not get to be a part of the program by the time it rediscovers its juice, but she’s comfortable with the foundation she, her fellow seniors and their predecessors have laid.
“It’s probably pretty cool for the alumni to sit back and see what they started,” she said. “I hope that we can kinda say the same thing in 10 years when this program has won a national championship.”
If that time comes, there will be no need for music to calm her down.