When the games began, Dave, Emily, Jordy and her brothers Hayden, Broden and Bryson, as their busy schedules permitted, gathered to watch football and eat chips and dip with Lit’l Smokies. Her dad, Dave, while tending to the kitchen, would crank the University of Nebraska fight song over the speakers attached to the computer in their two-story Papillion, Neb., home near Omaha.ĭave and Emily Bahl raised a Big Red “N” on the flagpole in their front yard alongside a replica of Lil’ Red, Nebraska’s inflatable mascot. She wanted to go home to Nebraska.įor Bahl, the smell of sizzling bacon on Saturday mornings in the fall months of her childhood called her home. She felt the need for more than the pursuit of rock star expectations. The answer, according to Bahl, involved her feelings of unfulfillment and imbalance amid all the success. So, what compelled the star of the moment on one of the best teams ever to pack up and leave a legacy in progress? “She’s going to be your Cat Osterman-, Jennie Finch-type who anybody in softball, anybody outside of softball, may notice.” “She’s a once-in-a-lifetime kid,” said Larry Swift, director of the Nebraska Gold club program Bahl played for before college. ![]() Her collegiate record is 44-2, and she allows fewer than one run per seven innings. Twice a first-team All-America pitcher, she was named Most Outstanding Player at the WCWS this month for her 24 2/3 scoreless innings in the circle over five games. Bahl started the Women’s College World Series clincher last year against Texas and finished it this season before the Sooners partied into the Oklahoma night with Toby Keith. It finished 61-1 and lost just four of 124 games during Bahl’s two years in Norman. ![]() Oklahoma won its final 53 games this season. Fans roared, and an ESPN audience that averaged 1.9 million viewers watched.įour days later, on June 12, Bahl announced ground-shaking plans to transfer from the Sooners at the height of their shared dominance. They collapsed to the infield dirt in a pile of crimson-clad bodies, celebrating a sweep of Florida State and the Sooners’ third consecutive national title at USA Softball Hall of Fame Complex in Oklahoma City.
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