Year in Review: The People, Moments, and Stories of 2024

The dawn of a new year means that an old year is ending and past and 2024 had more than its share of memorable times.

With the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 mere hours away, here’s a look back at some of the people, moments, and stories that made ’24 noteworthy.

The People

After breaking onto the scene as a freshman in 2023, NiJaree Canady became a bonafide superstar in 2024. She led Stanford to their second straight trip to the Women’s College World Series, earned All-American honors, and picked up National Player or Pitcher of the Year honors from every major organization, including USA Softball, the NFCA, and D1Softball. When she entered the transfer portal this summer, Canady landed an NIL deal at Texas Tech that reportedly dwarfs anything the softball world had previously seen.

On the professional level, veteran pro and former Florida Gator Amanda Lorenz had quite the year. She won the Athletes Unlimited crown for the first time in her career, maintaining a captain’s chair for four weeks of the five-week AU season, and also took part in Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby X events in early fall.

Patty Gasso became the first head coach to win four consecutive national championships when her Oklahoma Sooners took home their 4th consecutive Women’s College World Series title in June. Earlier in the 2024 season, she moved into sole possession of 3rd place on the all-time wins list with the 1,458th NCAA victory of her career. Later in the season, she earned her 1,500th career victory as the Sooners’ head coach. In September, the Sooners unveiled a statue of Gasso outside Loves Field.

These five became synonymous with one another and we certainly aren’t separating them now. Tiare Jennings, Jayda Coleman, Kinzie Hansen, Nicole May, and Rylie Boone won four national championships, all together, at Oklahoma. The quintet literally does not know what it’s like to end a season with a loss. They’ve been called the greatest senior class in softball history and the evidence backs that up. The sport and Norman, Oklahoma will look very different without this group on the field.

In the final year of her college playing career, Jala Wright made the most of the time she had left as a Duke Blue Devil. Wright starred in the circle for Duke, led the Blue Devils to their first-ever WCWS appearance, and became one the year’s breakout stars and personalities. Following Duke’s elimination at the WCWS, a viral video showed Wright signing autographs for dozens of fans, cementing her legacy as a fan favorite.

Wright’s college coach, Marissa Young, vaulted her own way onto the list of people who defined 2024 in softball. Young is the architect of the Duke program, the only head coach that the Blue Devils have ever known. Under her watch, Duke grew into a national contender, including hosting a Super Regional in 2023. In 2024, the Blue Devils went on the road for the Super Regionals and kept the road trip going all the way to Oklahoma City.

Speaking of breakout stars, Jocelyn Erickson and Reese Atwood were each exactly that. Erickson, in her first year as a Florida Gator after transferring, and Atwood, a second-year Longhorn, both reached superstar status in their own rights after sensational years that made them both household names across the sport. Erickson earned SEC Player of the Year honors, while Atwood earned the same award from the Big 12, and both led their teams on return runs to Oklahoma City and the WCWS.

Tim Walton‘s own Year in Review is going to be pretty full in its own right. The Florida head coach earned his 1,100th career win last season in the midst of leading the Gators program back to the top of the softball mountain. A year after traveling for the first round in the NCAA tournament for the first time under Walton, the Gators won the SEC, earned a top-4 national seed, and played in the Women’s College World Series semifinals. Oh, and Walton was inducted into the NFCA Hall of Fame in December – a fitting end to a stellar year for Gainesville’s longtime leader.

The story of 2024 in softball wouldn’t be complete without a nod to Karli Spaid, who finished her record-setting career at Miami Ohio. Spaid vaulted into second place all-time on the Division 1 home run record list, joining all-time home run queen Jocelyn Alo as the only players to cross the 100-home run plateau in D1. Spaid earned MAC Player of the Year honors, set five program offensive records including batting average and RBIs, and became the first Redhawk softball player to have her number retired by the program.

The Moments

Florida had already won once to force the winner-take-all game; either the Gators or Oklahoma would advance to the WCWS Championship Series to face Texas. And the game, it was tight. So tight that things went to extra innings. On that stage, with those stakes, the moment could have been bigger. And as she did so often, Jayda Coleman rose to the moment. In the bottom of the 8th, Coleman hit a walk-off solo home run that gave the Sooners the win and the berth in the championship series – two games later, Coleman and her compatriots were champions once again.

Speaking of high stakes, the Columbia Super Regional also went to a winner-take-all final game, this one with a berth in the WCWS on the line. After a 0-0 game went into extra innings, a scoreless 8th inning followed. Then came the 9th; in the top of the 9th, Duke scored four runs to take what seemed like a commanding lead. In the bottom of the frame, Mizzou responded with three runs of their own. The tying run was on base, the winning run at the plate, when…

A moment so key, yet so understated, it might quickly be forgotten in the larger picture of the season and even the series. When Oklahoma visited Texas for the latest chapter in the softball edition of the Red River Rivalry, the series lived up to the hype. The play at the plate that ended game two of the series, a 2-1 Texas victory, was the electric kind of play that can define a team the rest of the way – and for the Longhorns, it did, setting the stage for a series victory and a Big 12 championship to follow.

The SEC really liked playing into (many, many) extra innings, but perhaps no game was more thrilling than the battle between Auburn and UCF in an elimination game in the Tallahassee Regional. The teams battled through weather delays and into the wee hours of Sunday morning, completing a game that totaled nearly four and a half hours in length and went to 12 innings before Amelia Lech’s RBI base hit gave Auburn a 2-1 victory.

Speaking of extra-inning games in the SEC, by the way, how about a pair of 14-inning affairs at the SEC tournament? Alabama and LSU battled for the equivalent of two full games, with the Tigers pulling out the win on a Taylor Pleasants walk-off single. Sydney Berzon pitched the entire game for LSU and registered five strikeouts with more than 200 pitches thrown.

Mere hours after the Tigers and the Tide set an SEC tournament record for the longest game, 14 innings were in store again, this time between Georgia and Auburn with the Bulldogs pulling off the win on a Sarah Gordon walk-off longball. Gordon’s game-winner came three batters after Jayda Kearney hit a 3-run shot that tied the game.

Arizona specifically scheduled a midweek game against Louisville, in Louisville, to take program great and Gold Glove winner Allie Skaggs back to her hometown before her time in a Wildcat uniform was over. Her team took the loss, but Skaggs made sure to give her hometown faithful a great memory when she hit a towering 2-run home run in the sixth inning.

The superlative award for Best Comeback of the year might have to go to the Southeastern Louisiana Lions, who clinched their first NCAA tournament berth in dramatic fashion. The Lions seemed to be in control of the Southland championship game, up 5-0 through four innings, until Incarnate Word came roaring back. UIW scored seven unanswered runs, taking a 7-5 lead entering the bottom of the 7th, but the Lions refused to go quietly. With two on and one out in the bottom of the 7th, Lexi Johnson’s three-run home run gave Southeastern the walk-off win and a trip to the NCAA tournament.

A couple of moments that weren’t caught on video:

• UCLA basketball standout Gabriela Jaquez returned to her high school softball roots for a few weeks, joining the Bruin softball program as a speed threat. Jaquez’s made her first appearance in a Bruin softball uniform to cheers from the Easton Stadium faithful.

• There were plenty of firsts during the 2024 season, including a program’s diamond debut. The beginnings of the Wofford softball program had been a few years in the making and the Terriers turned out a quality home crowd for their first-ever game. It was just one game later before Wofford recorded their first win in program history; the Terriers finished above .500 in conference play and opened the SoCon tournament with their first-ever postseason win.

• UC San Diego pitcher India Caldwell earned the win in a February game against North Florida, but the stats in the scorebook only told part of the story. Caldwell left the game in the 5th inning, journeying to the visitor’s locker rooms to take a quiz. She completed the quiz, earning a B, and raced back to the dugout. She re-entered the game in the 7th inning with the tying run at the plate and got out of the jam to lock down the victory.

The Stories

The D1Softball staff put their pens (or possibly keyboards or cameras, as it were) to some incredible stories this year, conveying some terrific accounts that embody some of the best parts of the game we all love.

Rhiannon Potkey’s spotlight on Tiare and Tele Jennings was a poignant look at the value of family. A story entitled “That ‘Crazy’ A&M Fan? She’s a Survivor” gave an incredible behind-the-scenes view of Revis Ward-Daggett, who initially gained notoriety for her dancing and seemingly-endless energy in the stands at Texas A&M games.

A late-fall feature on Army softball’s Julia Farris and a mid-fall profile of “Lone Ranger” and Army softball alum Brook Mitchell shone a spotlight on two young women achieving extraordinary things both on the field and in their service.

When Kelley Lynch threw a no-hitter for LSU against Auburn in April, it was an impressive achievement, but one with an added level of specialty since it occurred on Teal Weekend in Baton Rouge and meant a little something extra to Lynch, who lost her father to cancer.

Raelin Chaffin heard the words “you have cancer” for herself this fall. Just weeks after transferring to Mississippi State, Chaffin had to deal with a diagnosis of thyroid cancer and the ensuing steps to return her to full health. Just a few weeks later, Chaffin detailed her journey as a “Bulldog Battler”.

Graham Hays put together a scene-by-scene look at the dynasty that Oklahoma softball has built, chronicling ten of the key moments that serve as pillars of the program’s climb toward history. Just weeks later, the Sooners christened Loves Field with a tight win over Miami Ohio, then saw their record 71-game winning streak come to an end just two days later at the hands of the Ragin’ Cajuns.

From in front of the camera, Jenna Becerra visited with Krista Humphreys at the Mary Nutter Classic in Cathedral City. The mom of KK and Sierra Humphreys, of Oregon and UCF, respectively, Krista Humphreys had just seen her daughters play one another for the first time in college. A former national champion at Arizona during her own playing career, Krista wore a split jersey, representing both the Ducks and the Knights, as she talked about watching her daughters go head-to-head.

While at the Mary Nutter Classic, Paige Halstead sat down with Rachel Garcia for a reunion of former UCLA batterymates. The duo helped lead their alma mater to the 2019 national title and talked about all things softball.

And finally, from the Women’s College World Series, a pair of Stanford alums caught up when Jenna Becerra and Jessica Mendoza got together to talk about the WCWS and the growth of softball as a whole.