On the day OU softball’s record 71-game winning streak ended, Patty Gasso says her team participated in a victory with eternal rewards. Gasso shares that story and more with Bob Stoops in this episode of “Conversations with Coach.”

Patty Gasso and Bob Stoops won their first national championships the same year — 2000. Gasso kept going and has never stopped.

Seven national championships later (and counting?), Gasso and the softball Sooners moved into a new stadium, Love’s Field, earlier this season. Now, they are on a mission to do something no major college softball team has ever done before: win four consecutive national titles.

On this episode of “Conversations with Coach,” Stoops and Gasso talk about how she got a start in sports, in coaching and in building a dynasty. (This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.)

Bob Stoops: Let’s go back to your journey through softball. You were born in L.A. You played at El Camino and Cal State University in Long Beach. Talk about your coming up through softball in your younger years back in California.

Patty Gasso: I’ve always been a lover of sports, not just softball, and really connected to sports when I was young with my mom. I lived right next door to a park, so my back gate opened into the park. So get home from school, get out of my school clothes, and run over to the park. The sport I loved the most was flag football. It was big back then.

My mom was a good athlete but grew up in the years when it was very uncool for a beautiful woman to play sports, or women at all. So her coaching came out of her love of sports. She was kind of a closet sports lover and then her and I — just kind of like father and son was really mother-daughter — really bonded over sports and all LA teams, Dodgers, Rams, Lakers. We were into all of them. 

As I went into my college years, I knew I wanted to coach. (I) met my husband at Long Beach State and he was into coaching so it was a wonderful match where he was coaching football but really coached soccer, now he’s coaching softball here in Oklahoma City. So it was really a good match.

Helping him (guided) me through it, got me started in high school. (I) went to Long Beach City College and coached at the junior college thinking, okay, well, if my goal is one day is D1. …

And my junior college time did not prepare me for OU. (It was) like a whole different world at D1. But I was pregnant with my son D.J., who is now at the University of Arkansas, coaching softball. Had my seven-year-old son with us when we moved from California to Norman. And now J.T. is my hitting coach.

Is OU softball still the national championship favorite? @JenniCarlson_OK gives her not-too-early Women’s College World Series projection: https://t.co/X9bTFqvJOm

Presented by @MidFirst Bank. pic.twitter.com/zsbPVc7efI

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) March 12, 2024

Bob Stoops: Doing a great job, by the way.

Patty Gasso: So it was just a full circle, bringing the kids here and not sure I’m doing such a great job at motherhood nor coaching. And I remember us saying, we’re going back to California.

Bob Stoops: That was that was in ‘99, right?

Patty Gasso: It was right before the national championship. And J.T. said, you remember more about this than I do. Jimmy went back and became a soccer coach at Fullerton Junior College. And my plan was to go back and not working. (We) won the national championship in 2000. Everything changed.

Bob Stoops: You weren’t making much money, right? You were like, this isn’t working.

Patty Gasso:  Then Jimmy came back. We never really rooted ourselves here because I wasn’t sure this was going to be the right thing to do. And after we won the championship, pay changed, facilities were better and we grounded ourselves here.

Bob Stoops: And now where’s Jim at? You said he’s coaching softball in Oklahoma City.

Patty Gasso: He’s at Mid-America Christian University and his pitching coach is Keilani Ricketts. So they’ve got a nice little gig going on.

Bob Stoops: We won our first national championship in the same year in 2000. Again, my only one — in year one — of seven (OU football national championships). But you took off after that. We tried to. We played in three more, a few more national championships. Couldn’t quite get it done. I brought the team over and we had a little batting practice. event. I can’t remember what year, but I had one pitch, my only moment of fame in softball. Was it you? I’m trying to remember who pitched to me.

Patty Gasso: I believe it was JT or it might’ve been Tripp MacKay. But I remember you specifically (and) your guys, our softball helmets could not fit on their heads. And they were trying to face our pitching and they were really …. You could see they need to stick with football. They were not really attuned to swinging bats, but then we started just doing the front toss. And it was a big moment for you. It was like your glory moment.

Bob Stoops: Yeah, JT threw me a big old watermelon, just a nice easy one, and all I kept thinking is golf. “Stay behind the ball and swing through.” I hit it over one pitch center field fence and everybody wanted me to do it again. I just dropped the bat and said I’m done. That’s my only moment.

Patty Gasso: You walked away at the right time.

Why Drake Stoops wasn’t a OU Pro Day standout — and why the former Sooner receiver should still get a shot in the NFL.

More from @JenniCarlson_OK: ⬇️ https://t.co/GfYHcAb7Jq

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) March 13, 2024

Bob Stoops: So here we are. You’ve got seven national championships and right now with three straight national championships — 2021, you’re 56-4, 2022 you’re 59-3. Last year you were 61-1. You had a 70-something-game win streak going. I said afterward, that’s probably good that they got it off their back and let it go that you lost the game finally. How did you feel about that losing the game? And I’ve read you’re not panicking and why would you? It’s just bound to happen when you play so many games.

Patty Gasso: Absolutely. You can’t be at your best every single game. I’ll tell you what got in the way of all of that was being in the new Love Stadium because I wasn’t prepared for what this was going to feel like, nor could I prepare our team for what it was going to feel like. It was astounding. It was overwhelming. And we just did not have a good weekend period. And you can’t go in like that against Louisiana who’s got a history of great coaching and great players and we deserved to lose. We probably should have lost another one that weekend, but it woke us up. We’ve learned a lot. 

Bob Stoops: That stadium has to be incredible for you. Talk about your facilities.

Patty Gasso: I don’t even know where to start. The interior is not close to being done, but they’re working on it pretty diligently. It seats I think 4,200, but we can do standing-room-only, and they’re probably close to 4,700. If we need to add more grandstands, we have the opportunity to do that.

It was a packed house and it feels louder than the College World Series. It was breathtaking. We were like chickens with our heads cut. Everybody was tight. We were nervous. My heart was beating out of my chest for some reason. And players were very, very tight and playing kind of emotionally and that never works very well.

Bob Stoops: When I watch your teams, what I love is the passion they play with, the joy that they play with, to me resonates. And when you play that way you play more free, and it’s just really fun to watch the joy, the passion, and just how well they play that way.

Patty Gasso: I think you know this too, it starts in practice. So competition and practice, they love competing. They love winning. And it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. They just wanna win. And when they are against each other, that passion comes out of practice and you can see it and it’s real. We’ve been accused of being fake with our passion and we’re trying too hard. It’s real, it’s emotions that are real and I think it has escalated the game. It makes it a little more exciting to see that kind of passion. And it’s starting to shift all over the country. And then I go out and watch kids and travel ball, and they’re flying into home plate after home run. They’re copying what the college game is doing. And it’s been really cool. I’ve been really proud of this team and just really being their authentic selves and not caring what people are saying from the outside or the judgments.

Bob Stoops: You can’t fake that passion and joy. It’s contagious. It boosts your team. Also I read a lot about your team and follow them. There’s a spiritual element to your team that I’m not afraid to talk about that just seems to resonate.

Patty Gasso: Thanks for bringing that up. I just can tell you that we do have some very passionate faith-based athletes. It really started probably about eight years ago and it just kind of went from year to year. Last year, Grace Lyons was kind of our leader. This year. It’s Alyssa Brito, Rylie Boone. We just actually had a player baptized on the day we lost and broke our win streak. One of our players got baptized in her apartment complex pool — our entire team there surrounding (her). So lives are being changed and this team really understands this is bigger than wins and losses and they are pretty secure in that side of things and who they are and it’s been really a joy to watch lives change in the process.

Bob Stoops: I love it. But here we are, seven-time national champs, 16-time Big 12 and Big Eight regular-season champs, and nine-time Big 12 tournament champs, completely dominant. What would you say are some of your key elements of coaching that you pride yourself on?

Patty Gasso: I think hard work, just that blue-collar approach, I think it’s gone away because people like this generation don’t understand as much of what that means. JT made a comment to me and said, “You’re one of the last coaches that coach the way you do. You will hold players accountable. And the younger coaching generation does not do that.” I’m not here to be your buddy or your friend, I’m here to make you better, turn you from a girl into a woman, but also bring the best out of you. And the way I do that is through hard work, discipline. I need their focus. I need their energy. I need all of those things that are really hard to get when you’re battling with cell phones and you’re battling with all the outside noise.

So I hold them accountable and I’ve kind of backed off a little bit the last couple of years and this is something that will maybe resonate with you as well:  The players came to me and said, we want you to be tougher. Be tougher. You’re not tough enough on us. So I’m like, well, I can do that pretty easy. Somebody give me a whistle. 

Subscribe: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music

Producer: Jacquelyn Musgrove
Creative Director: Michael Lane
Social media: Bobby Howard
Director of Content: Mike Sherman

Director of Audience/Sponsor Fulfillment: Jay Spear