At this point—a few years after the rule changes allowing for seismic player movement in college sports—it feels hard to be too surprised by anything that happens in the transfer portal. Yet the news out of college softball this week still managed to feel genuinely shocking.
Sophomore pitcher Jordy Bahl is leaving Oklahoma.
The announcement was stunning both in that it came from this specific player and from this specific program. Bahl won back-to-back championships in her two seasons at Oklahoma—the second of which came just last week and saw her named Most Outstanding Player. (She threw a complete-game shutout in Game 1 and closed out Game 2.) Bahl entered college as one of the best pitching recruits in the game and has only gotten better in the time since. Even on a loaded staff, she was the clear ace, part of a squad whose future looks almost impossibly bright. (Yes, even after three consecutive titles, Oklahoma is still the favorite to win another next year.) Yet Bahl said she wanted to be closer to family in Nebraska—reportedly to play for the University of Nebraska, about an hour from her hometown of Papillion, though she has yet to announce a destination herself.
Bahl’s decision was her own, a statement on her priorities, her life, her playing career. Yet it could also play as something else. It felt like a bit of a rejoinder to some of the questions that dogged Oklahoma through its recent championship run: Was this team too good? Was it a problem to have a superteam built with transfers like this? Was Oklahoma bad for softball? And here was a piece of an answer.
Nathan J Fish/The Oklahoman/USA Today Network
The transfer portal works both ways. (Bahl has been joined in the transfer portal by Oklahoma backup catcher Sophia Nugent.) Talent can flow out as well as up. If Bahl goes to Nebraska, she can help spark a program that has been to the Women’s College World Series only twice in the last 25 years. And if Oklahoma looks like it’s nevertheless destined to be on top … that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good one.
The Sooners’ run of dominance is striking. They have now won three straight titles and six in the last 10 years. (The program has seven championships total under coach Patty Gasso.) They boast a record win streak—53 games and counting—after going 61–1 en route to the title in 2023. If it stings for them to lose Bahl and graduating redshirt senior Alex Storako, well, there’s plenty of talent left in this pitching staff. There’s Nicole May, who led this team in ERA at 0.91, and Kierston Deal, a top recruit who seems poised for a bigger role here next year. That’s indicative of how this program works as a whole right now: There’s such incredible depth that any losses barely seem to register. (Oklahoma’s offense lost NCAA home run queen Jocelyn Alo to graduation last year and barely skipped a beat!) It’s only natural that it can be positively maddening for opponents.
“A lot of people were texting me throughout,” Florida State coach Lonni Alameda said after losing in the championship. “A lot of people don’t like that one team’s winning all the time. I get a little vibe sometimes of, like, Take down the machine.”
But there’s more to focus on here. Sports are made on villains. If Oklahoma seems like the Evil Empire right now, that comes with attention and story lines and excitement that should only drive the whole endeavor forward. And this championship series was close. Oklahoma won the decisive game by a score of 3–1, and if the wind had carried just a tad more for Kalei Harding, or if this jump had not been timed quite so well by Jayda Coleman, the result might have been entirely different. Oklahoma had been challenged in earlier games, too: Stanford’s NiJaree Canady solidified her spot as one of the most electric pitchers in the game by repeatedly flummoxing Oklahoma’s offense. This program is historically good. But it’s certainly not unbeatable. That’s a challenge for everyone else next year as much as it is for the Sooners.
These questions are hardly new for women’s college sports. (UConn women’s basketball was asked to answer them for decades.) But if the modern portal dynamics shift the conversation, they don’t manage to make it seem any less redundant or any more interesting. A dominating program does not automatically have to hold everyone else down. It can instead be the reason for the rest of the field to push up. And for all the talent coming into elite programs via the transfer portal, just as much can head out, seeking more playing time or a different environment or anything else a player might want.
Regardless of whether all this success is good for softball, writ large, it has been plainly good for the Sooners. That’s reflected in their championships but also in their home field. This was their last season playing at Marita Hynes Field. The 1,400-capacity ballpark, named for the former coach and administrator, was considered state of the art when it opened in 1998; even now, decades later, it is still one of the finest college stadiums in the sport. But the Sooners will begin play next season at Love’s Field, a new ballpark that will more than double their seating capacity, funded in large part by $12 million from the travel store brand Love’s. It is the largest philanthropic gift to a specific female sport in program history. The result is almost too neatly packaged to be a useful metaphor. They’ve gone from playing on a field named for one woman and her dreams to one that attracted so much notice it could be funded by corporate partners.
Which, yes, is a competitive advantage when it comes to bringing in recruits and transfers. But it can also be a model for other programs—a standard to aspire to on and off the field.
Look no further than how Alameda followed up her remarks about taking down the machine.
“It can be frustrating at times or it can raise our game,” the veteran coach said. “It’s raising our game. It’s making me a better coach. It was just really cool.”
