Dynasty's in Sports? Oklahoma's Women's Gymnastics & Softball

[OUBeliever56A]

This is a post that was on another blog site. For me it started a larger thought. I thought you might like it. The post is written by "jessecrittenden".

What is a dynasty in sports?

It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot, sometimes too much.

There’s some classic examples of airtight, indisputable dynasties. Maybe you think of the Chicago Bulls in the ‘90s, when Michael Jordan and company won six NBA championships. The UCLA men’s basketball team won seven national championships in a row from 1966-1973. The Connecticut women’s basketball team won four of five national championships from 2000-2004 and then won six of eight from 2009-2016.

There are other arguable examples across a litany of different sports, though sometimes I think the word can be overused. Alabama football won six national championships from 2009-2020, but is that considered a dynasty? How about the Golden State Warriors, who won NBA championships in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022, but failed to make the playoffs in 2020 and 2021? Those are tough calls and can surely be argued either way.

To me, a dynasty is the term for a team who wins a championship or is always in the mix for an extended period of time. There’s no proper definition, but you know it when you see it.

Regardless of any possible definition, there’s two surefire dynasties happening right now, and they’re happening in Norman — the OU softball and OU women’s gymnastics teams.

If KJ Kindler hadn’t already established the Sooners’ gymnastics team as a dynasty before this season, they sealed it with their performance on Saturday, when they won their second consecutive national championship and sixth overall since 2014.

Just look at the numbers.

The OU women’s gymnastics team has made it to the NCAA Finals in 10 straight seasons. They've won it six times and finished as the runner-up three times. They were the favorites to win it all in 2020 before the rest of the season was canceled due to COVID-19.

It’s a pretty similar, and also unprecedented, situation for Patty Gasso’s softball team. Since 2012, Gasso’s squad has won five championships and finished twice as the runner-up. Like gymnastics, they were the favorites to win in 2020 before the season was canceled. Currently, the Sooners are ranked No. 1 with a 39-1 record and boast the country's highest-scoring offense and best pitching staff.

But it’s not just the winning and dominance over the past decade that stands out. It’s what both teams have done to advance and grow their respective sports.

In 2022, when the OU women's gymnastics team won their fifth title, ESPN announced that the final meet drew an average TV viewership of 922,000 — an 11 percent increase from 2021 — making it the most-watched college gymnastics meet ever on the ESPN networks. The broadcast numbers have not been released for 2023, but I’d bet they’ll be even better than last year.

Softball has soared to even bigger heights, and the Sooners are a primary reason. 12,533 people attended Session 4 of last year’s Women’s College World Series, which included a game between OU and Texas, setting a softball record for attendance.

The Sooners’ title-clinching Game 2 finals win over Texas last year drew an average TV viewership of 1.74 million people, making it the most-watched college softball or baseball game of the year. Last month, the OU-Texas regular season game at Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City drew a crowd of 8,930, setting a regular-season record for the largest crowd in softball history.

There’s no signs of slowing down for either sport.

The OU softball and women’s gymnastics teams aren’t just dominating the competition. They are pioneering the growth of their sports both locally and nationally. They are bringing women's sports to the forefront in ways that are long overdue. And they are doing it at a time when player movement and instability in college sports is at its highest.

They are both dynasties in every sense of the word.

It’s pretty cool to be able to witness it.

[OUBeliever56A]

I received a pretty good response to my post about the article above. I thought you might like it so I added it as well.

I can't speak specifically about Oklahoma Gymnastics program but it seems to me that the way Coach KJ Kindler wins is a bit different than what other teams try to do.

Oklahoma strives to have 6 gymnasts that could possibly win the event on a given day go compete. Other programs tend to work for one or two stars and then fill in behind them. The two theories, prove out to have OU receiving 5 or more 9.900 scores routinely on each event while other programs have to use 9.850 or even lower scores for at least one gymnasts. Oklahoma is deeper in talent and produces higher scores because of that.

That is exactly how Saturday night played out. The amount of 9.900 to 9.9500 the Sooners put on the scoreboard outpointed the teams that had a 10.000 and four other scores. And they did this while ABC celebrated the 10.0's and did not celebrate the overall talent of the TEAM, that Oklahoma produced to compete and win until after they won. I think this is how Coach KJ Kindler does it. Over and over again.

BOOMER SOONER!

As for the Softball Program under Coach Gasso, I think I can speak for about that with some specifics. When the Sooners were there in 2012 (runner-ups) and 2013 (champions), the Sooners were superstar driven teams with players like Keilani Ricketts, Jessica Shultz and Lauren Chamberlain. Other players filled in to make the whole better than other teams.

The Sooners retrned to the WCWS in 2014 where they lost to the #1 Oregon and the #2 Alabama teams. The Sooners then missed the WCWS in 2015 on a super-regional field in Alabama where freshman pitcher Paige Parker pitched her heart out.

In 2016, a great freshman class that probably changed the fortune of the program, took the field for the Sooners and it became the Shay Knighten, Syd Romero, Fale Aviu and Caleigh Clifton show to go with veteran players like Kady Self, Erin Miller, Paige Parker and others to win the WCWS in a great tournament that showed everyone a more offensive side of softball. The Sooners won over Auburn of the SEC.

More of the same in 2017 with the Sooners as they won with offense and Paige Parker, Paige Lowary and Mariah Lopez in the circle. They won over Florida of the SEC for a back-to-back to match Florida's in 2014 and 2015. I think with the Sooners winning in 2016 and 2017 that the SEC dominance in D1 Softball begin to fade. The two wins changed things in recruiting and the way the game was seen and watched.

In 2018, the Sooners ran into a talented Washington pitching staff and did not make the finals. One thing that did emerge in 2018 was Jocelyn Alo with 30 HRs as a freshman. She electrified the Sooner offense. In 2019, Oklahoma once again made the finals of the WCWS and lost to UCLA with the great Rachel Garcia in the circle and a hand full of All-Americans on the field. For OU, the issue in 2019 was that their new pitching staff of Gee Juarez, Shannon Saile and Mariah Lopez ran out of a bit of gas in the later part of the season. The very good Sooner offense lead by the Foursome of Freshman from 2016 and Alo was stymied as the WCWS completed in 2019.

After the Covid shutdown of 2020, the Sooners returned to the 2021 WCWS as the #1 ranked team in the country with a brand new shiny toy called a history-making offensive power show lead by Jocelyn Alo, Taire Jennings and Kinzie Hansen among others. Their .400 BA, 161 HRs and 10+ runs per game was almost enough to win without any pitchers, but the Sooners had enough in Shannon Saile and Nicole May (FR) and a rejuvenated Gee Juarez in the finals to defeat Florida State in the Finals with a 56-4 record.

In 2022, the powerful Sooners added another dimension to the team. A superb pitching staff lead by Hope Trautwein, Nicole May and Jordy Bahl (FR). Not only did the Sooners have the best offense in the country, (155 HRs and 9.34+ runs per game.) they now had the best pitching staff in country (1.05 ERA). Even with Bahl injured during most of the playoffs, Trautwein and May did the job very well to give the offense the confidence they needed to pound the softball often and deep. Alo, Jennings and Lyons did the most damage in 2022 offensively but their were plenty of stars for the Sooners on the field. The won the WCWS over Texas in a run-rule feast with a 59-3 record. Jocelyn Alo left the Sooners after 2022 with 15 HRs in her career displacing Lauren Chamberlain with 95 HRs as the Queen of Softball Power.

BTW, the Sooner defense has been a stalwart of their play in the last decade. It is often overlooked, but it should not be. The Sooners defense is the heartbeat of the team in many ways.

In those 10 years the Sooners won 5 WCWS, was runner up in two others and made the WCWS nine times. The decade of winning is second only to the historic runs of Arizona and UCLA.

Now, the Sooners, who are 39-1 and once again leading the country in offense and pitching. If they can manage the remainder of the season with their offense and pitching and defense, they shourd find themselves in the WCWS once again with a chance to add WCWS Title #6 in the last ten years from 2013 to 2023. If they can do that and win a 3-peat, the Sooner decade of dynasty will rival those of Arizona and UCLA. The Sooner Dynasty is already ongoing, but a win in 2023, will cement into everyone minds the Oklahoma Sooners as the new 'modern' face of college softball for the foreseeable future. And the Sooners have done that with offensive softball when the game had been dominated by pitching for so long. The Sooners created a new way to win, while still having the pitching required to solidify the wins. You see this Dynasty in person when you go to a packed house game to watch the Sooners. Every game, every where. There is no comparison to the Sooner program right now. They are softball!

BOOMER SOONER!

[AustinTXSooner]

Jesse Crittenden is a staff writer for OUInsider/247Sports.