Sooner fans savor sweet tradition
With the descending sun casting a blinding glow over Marita Hynes Field, Bill Ronne and his Diamond Club friends swiftly moved through the infield seating with jumbo packs of Twizzlers.
They passed the containers up and down the rows like a collection plate traveling through the pews of a church on Sunday.
But the crew of OU softball boosters weren’t taking up a pregame offertory — they were passing out pieces of the candy to whoever who would take them.
In just a few minutes, the No. 3 Oklahoma softball team would begin its final regular-season game against Bedlam rival Oklahoma State, and only seven innings separated the Sooners from the program’s first undefeated Big 12 season.
It was a big moment, and Ronne, the uncle of senior outfielder Nicole Pendley, knew he needed to bring out the big guns: Twizzlers.
The red licorice candy was never meant to be the Sooners’ rallying symbol. But thanks to Ronne’s grandson, Owen, a snack during last year’s regional became OU’s good luck charm through the 2017 postseason.
And now, the Twizzlers are back for another year
as the No. 1 seed Sooners open the Big 12 Championship weekend with games against Texas and Iowa State on Friday.
“I think it’s just fun,” senior pitcher Paige Parker said. “We look up, we see our fans with the Twizzlers, and we just want to get our fans involved in any way that we can because we appreciate them so much, and I think the Twizzlers are just a part of that.”
Ronne admits the whole thing happened by accident.
In the fifth inning of OU’s regional game against Tulsa last year, Ronne dug down in his grandson’s snack bag and fished out a couple of Twizzlers between the bags of Goldfish. The Sooners were trailing the Golden Hurricane by a run, and if OU lost, it was eliminated from the postseason.
Just as Pendley stepped up to bat, Owen, then 4 years old, started to twirl the Twizzler in the air.
Five pitches later, his cousin smacked a home run into right center field to tie the game.
“The next person comes up, and we just started passing out Twizzlers,” Ronne said. “We started circling them in the air. We took that all the way through the regionals, super regionals, College World Series. Everybody was having Twizzlers. That was our rally cry in the stands so the girls would come out and see us shaking Twizzlers.”
It started out as a fifthinning antic, but it didn’t take long before it was happening throughout the entire game.
After junior Syndey Romero smacked a fourthinning home run in that season-finale win against
OSU, the crowd twirled their Twizzlers to the beat of MC Hammer’s "U Can’t Touch This" as it blared through the stadium.
“I think it’s cool especially in big moments when we have momentum on our side, all you see is the fans twirling them around,” Romero said.
OU athletic director Joe Castiglione was sitting behind Ronne and his family during the original Twizzler moment in 2017. A lifelong lover of the candy, he immediately joined in.
“There’s actually a technique because you can twirl those things too hard, too fast and they’ll go flying and then you’re left with what’s between your fingers,” Castiglione said. “I had to learn by trial and error.”
During the Women’s College World Series, Castiglione helped smuggle bags of the candy into Hall of Fame Stadium and even tagged Twizzler in a tweet that featured a picture of the bag during the marathon 17-inning game.
The candy giant took notice of the free publicity and answered Castiglione’s tweet with a personal delivery.
On the morning of OU’s national championship celebration last summer, a box of footlong Twizzlers landed in the athletic director’s office.
“I’ve never seen them in the store,” Castiglione said. “They’re like industrial quality.”
Even with its success last season, the tradition didn’t immediately carry over this year. Because OU doesn’t allow outside food in the stadium, it was difficult for fans to bring the candy to games. But after a push from the team, fans were allowed to bring the candy in for the Bedlam games.
Like Marita Hynes Field, Hall of Fame Stadium doesn’t allow outside food, but fans will be able to purchase Twizzlers for $1.50 per pack at the concessions stands. With the postseason nearly here, Ronne’s been working the phones, trying to get a couple more boxes of Twizzlers donated for OU fans.
Ronne hasn’t gotten a response yet, but someone shipped Castiglione a couple bags of a new Twizzlers, ones that have a filling in the normally hollow center. But he’s not going to chance it by bucking tradition.
“I think the red is the tried and true,” Castiglione said. “I think if it’s a situation where if it’s working, don’t change the mojo.”