By Mallory Mattingly
Patty Gasso, the Oklahoma Sooners’ softball coach, wants to create winners on an off the field, but she didn’t always have that perspective.
In an essay for Guideposts, Gasso, who’s now taken her team to seven national championship wins, shared that her first championship “wasn’t enough.”
“Playing in the WCWS the next year consumed me. Winning became everything,” she said. “Every night, I was on the phone with recruits, trying to sell them on Oklahoma and our program. Between calls, I’d read a bedtime book to my younger son, so exhausted that I would nod off mid-story. Hearing DJ say, ‘Finish, Mom! Finish!’ I would jolt awake. Then I’d be back on the phone or studying game film.”
Over the next several years, Gasso and her team failed to reach the WCWS (Women’s College World Series). She felt defeated and unsure of what to do.
“‘This isn’t working, Lord,’ I said. ‘I thought this was what you wanted for me.’ Yet I wasn’t succeeding as a coach or as a mom. I wasn’t winning. I was ready to walk away from my dream career and the game I loved,” the head coach wrote.
Gasso then began to quiet herself, and that’s when she heard from God.
“You’re doing this wrong,'” she remembered God telling her. “God wasn’t speaking out loud but in my mind. ‘I didn’t bring you here to win ball games. Focus on your players. Let them see you living out your faith. You open the door, and I’ll do the rest.'”
As she listened to God’s call, she reflected on the example her mom set for her.
“She showed me I mattered by sharing the joy of the game with me,” Gasso said. “By being present, giving me her full attention even when she must have been worried about having to feed us hot dog and bean casserole at the end of the month, when her paycheck ran out.”
“That’s what I could do for our players. Share joy. Be present. Talk less, listen more. Show them I valued them beyond what they did on the field,” she continued. “I might never win a championship again. But each young woman would leave this program knowing I cared about them and, more important, that God cared about them too.”
Since Gasso changed her coaching style, she has won six more national championships. Her love of Jesus has trickled down into her players, who are also passionate about serving the Lord.
Related: Oklahoma Softball Coach Patty Gasso is ‘Here to Win Souls’
“Our team loves Jesus. We work really hard on the field to give Him the glory,” Gasso told ChurchLeaders earlier this year.
“I do think it has something to do with coaches opening the door for that. And that’s something that I’m very proud of, even though I’m not at a Christian university,” she continued. “But our players are very bold and unapologetic about sharing their faith, so when they’re in press conferences, they’re giving glory to God. Nobody’s wanting to write these [faith comments] down. [Reporters are] waiting for the juice, you know, but [the players] keep praising God for their talents.”
While winning used to be everything, Gasso doesn’t worry about it as much anymore, instead prioritizing her players.
“We’re not afraid to lose games,” she told ESPN. “We like to go in and just give it all we have, and if it’s not good enough, we know what we need to do to be better.”
It’s incredible to see Gasso use her platform to win souls and help her team become the best they can be on and off the field.
Read Next: How Oklahoma’s Softball Coach Uses Faith to Inspire Her Team
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