College softball players bring light-hearted cheers to the dugout, in an ultra-competitive sport
Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Women's college softball games offer a constant soundtrack of players loudly cheering their teammates from the dugouts.
The sport is ultra-competitive, yet for decades, softball players have brought a light-hearted nature to dugouts and the vibe of the games, complete with cheers, chants, dances and props. Some creations are elaborate and some are simple, but something interesting is almost always happening.
The sport's surge in popularity in recent years has drawn more attention to the antics. The vibrant tradition will be on display again on Wednesday, when Texas plays Texas Tech in Game 1 of the best-of-three championship series at Oklahoma City's Devon Park.
'I think energy is just a huge part of this game and just in women's sports in general,' Texas star Reese Atwood said. 'We show a lot of passion, and I think it shows our heart and love for the game. And I think it brings just like the team together as one instead of being all about yourself.'
Beneath the light-heartedness is a serious purpose — supporting teammates, regardless of circumstances.
'Coach Z (Texas assistant coach Kristen Zaleski) says you're either doing a thing or supporting a thing, and I think that puts it really well,' Texas ace Teagan Kavan said.
The source of ideas for dugout support comes from a variety of places. Some chants are based on songs — Arizona State tweaked a line from Juvenile's 2003 song, 'Slow Motion.'
'Ooh, I like it like that, she's working that bat, I don't know how to act!'
Others chants and cheers are plays on names or jersey numbers.
It's an ever-changing art form.
'Every single year, we get new cheers because new freshmen come in, our transfers come in and they have new cheers," Connecticut catcher Grace Jenkins said during the Big East tournament. "But we just keep it loud and energized. We know that energy wins these types of games, and when we can gain the momentum in the dugout, we can also contribute that to the field as well.'
Oklahoma's Nelly McEnroe-Marinas said some chants follow players from their younger days. The Sooners don't have designated people to create them.
'A lot of the cheers we do are ones that we've been doing since travel ball,' she said. 'Anybody can come up with a cheer at any time and we'll just bring it out on the spot, but we just like to have fun with it and kind of make things up as we go.'
Oklahoma has been one of the most animated teams in recent years on their run of four straight national titles from 2021 to 2024. The Sooners say there's plenty of room for creativity.
'I feel like sometimes it'll just be like, if someone's screaming something, we'll repeat it, but just — we're just playing the game,' Oklahoma's Abigale Dayton said. 'So if something comes to mind, that's what happens.'
Jenkins said the constant noise is not a distraction. The players have gotten used to it and wouldn't know what to do without it.
'It actually helps,' she said. 'I think when the dugout's loud, especially when I'm up to bat, it keeps me in the zone.'
Atwood, a first-team National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-American, said the cheering helps players keep their minds in the proper place. She said it makes it easier to bounce back if things aren't working.
'I think if you're cheering for everyone else, it makes you a little less focused on yourself and focus on the team,' she said. 'This team — we have seen when we don't have the energy, we don't play as well. And something coach (Mike) White harps on all the time is bringing full energy, which includes all the cheers and communication.'
In the end, players say it's about having fun and making the game a better experience.
'The energy helps the game, keeps the energy, brings a lot of momentum and passion and support for each other,' Texas outfielder Kayden Henry said. 'The game doesn't know who is supposed to win, but when you have that energy at that point, anybody can take over.'
___
AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston contributed to this report.
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
recommended
in this topic
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
17 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Released WWE Star May Be Headed To TNA Wrestling: Report
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Free agent Cedric Alexander is reportedly a significant person of interest for TNA Wrestling following his departure from WWE earlier this year. A new report from has shed light on the situation. According to the report, there's been a lot of talk about TNA interest in Alexander with some believing he may be starting soon for the company. While the deal is not yet official, the report shareda sense of optimism about the possibility. PWInsider noted that they haven't been able to 100% lock down that he's coming in, but where there's smoke, sometimes there is indeed fire. Many people would agree that Alexander's in-ring talent, he would be a great fit for the current TNA roster. Alexander was released by WWE in February 2025, after a period of being used sparingly on television. His 90-day non-compete clause has since expired, making him free to sign with any promotion. Alexander's WWE journey began memorably with the 2016 Cruiserweight Classic. His performance in the tournament, particularly in a standout match against Kota Ibushi, drew chants of "Please sign Cedric" from the live crowd, ultimately leading to him receiving a WWE contract. HOUSTON, TEXAS - MARCH 11: A general stadium view during WWE Monday Night RAW at Toyota Center on March 11, 2024 in Houston, Texas. HOUSTON, TEXAS - MARCH 11: A general stadium view during WWE Monday Night RAW at Toyota Center on March 11, 2024 in Houston, Texas. More news: WWE News: Steve Austin Reveals Real-Life Vince McMahon Confrontation He went on to become a cornerstone of the 205 Live brand, culminating in him winning the WWE Cruiserweight Championship in a tournament final at WrestleMania 34 in 2018. His most prominent main roster success came as a member of the dominant heel faction, The Hurt Business. Alongside MVP, Bobby Lashley, and Shelton Benjamin, Alexander thrived, capturing the Raw Tag Team Championship with Benjamin during the group's impressive run. Known for his incredible athleticism and smooth in-ring style honed in promotions like Ring of Honor before his WWE tenure, Alexander is seen by many as a perfect fit for TNA Wrestling's dynamic X-Division or as an immediate contender in their main event scene. There has been a lot of speculation that he would be coming into AEW to join MVP, Lashley and Benjamin as the group now includes MJF. The theory was that MJF would be kicked out by a debuting Alexander. However, that doesn't seem likely now. Regardless, Alexander will be a good fit for any promotion that he signs with. More WWE News: For more on WWE, head to Newsweek Sports.
Forbes
32 minutes ago
- Forbes
Dallas Stars Fire Pete DeBoer After NHL Coaching Vacancies Get Filled
Pete DeBoer got the Dallas Stars to the Western Conference Final in all three of his seasons behind their bench. But it wasn't enough. On Friday, the team announced that it had terminated his employment, eight days after the Stars were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in five games. 'After careful consideration, we believe that a new voice is needed in our locker room to push us closer to our goal of winning the Stanley Cup,' said general manager Jim Nill in a statement released Friday. 'We'd like to thank Pete for everything that he has helped our organization achieve over the past three seasons and wish him nothing but the best moving forward.' Over his three seasons in Dallas, DeBoer guided the Stars to a regular-season record of 149-68-29 for a .665 points percentage. And this year's playoff run came in spite of an injury that kept top defenseman Miro Heiskanen out of action until the middle of the second round while forward Jason Robertson missed all of Round 1 with a knee injury. The Stars eked out a seven-game win against the Colorado Avalanche to advance out of the first round, then took down the Presidents' Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets in six games in Round 2 before falling to the Oilers for a second-straight year. Despite his success, DeBoer's tenure in Dallas will now be best remembered for his snap decision to pull starting goaltender Jake Oettinger after the Stars fell into an early 2-0 hole in their elimination game against Edmonton last week. His defense of the decision after the game raised eyebrows across the hockey world. 'The reasoning's always to try to spark your group, so that was the No. 1 reason,' he told the assembled media. 'We had talked endlessly in this season about trying to play with the lead and obviously we were in a 2-0 hole right away. I didn't take that lightly, and I didn't blame it all on Jake, but the reality is that if you go back to last year's playoffs, he's lost six of seven games to Edmonton and we gave up two shots, two goals in an elimination game. It was partly to spark our team and wake them up, and partly knowing that status quo had not been working. And that's a pretty big sample size.' The Stars lost Game 5 by a 6-3 score. The next morning, team owner Tom Gaglardi backed his coach in a conversation with Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News. 'He's a top-three, top-five coach in the league,' Gaglardi said. 'You think I want to be going into the coaching market right now, do you see who's getting hired? Pete's a seasoned coach. I'm just one voice in the discussion, but I don't see (firing) Pete being on anyone's agenda.' It appears the players were also important voices in the discussion. By the time their exit meetings were complete last weekend, word was trickling out that DeBoer's position was far from secure. At this point, it looks like DeBoer, 56, will have to wait awhile for his next opportunity. On Thursday, the Boston Bruins became the last team to fill their opening when they announced they'd hired Marco Sturm. Six other NHL teams have also hired new head coaches since the end of the 2024-25 regular season: The NHL is often labelled as a copycat league, and the same coaches often resurface on new teams. This list is a mix of established names and new faces. Quenneville, 66, ranks fifth all-time in games coached and second in wins, behind only Scotty Bowman. He's back in the NHL with Anaheim after resigning from the Florida Panthers in the fall of 2021 due to his part in the Chicago Blackhawks' sexual misconduct incident in 2011, when he was that team's coach. Mike Sullivan, 57, is a two-time Stanley Cup winner as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, now at the helm of the Rangers, and Tocchet, 61, is the reigning coach of the year who's back in Philadelphia, where he was inducted into the Flyers Hall of Fame as a player in 2021. Lambert, 60, earned his first head-coaching position with the New York Islanders in 2022. He was fired in January of 2024, after one-and-a-half seasons. The other three names are all new as NHL head coaches: Sturm, 46, is a native of Germany, and played 308 of his 938 NHL games with the Bruins between 2005 and 2010. He was behind the bench for Germany's silver-medal win at the 2018 Olympics before coming back to North America as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Kings and then the head coach of their AHL affiliate, the Ontario Reign. Muse, 42, spent the last five seasons as an NHL assistant coach, first with the Nashville Predators and then with the New York Rangers. Foote, 53, was a two-time Stanley Cup champion as a rugged defenseman with the Colorado Avalanche and an Olympic gold medalist with Team Canada in 2002. He has been promoted, after Tocchet brought him into the Canucks organization as an assistant coach when he took over in January of 2022. In addition to his run in Dallas, Pete DeBoer has also served as head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights, San Jose Sharks, New Jersey Devils and Florida Panthers. All told, he has been to the conference final six times and to the Stanley Cup Final twice — wth the Devils in 2012 and the Sharks in 2016. He has never been named a finalist for the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year, and he has never won a Cup.
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Pete DeBoer earned his firing, but the Stars' problems run deeper
It was the rashness of the decision, yanking goaltender Jake Oettinger after just two shots, neither of which was all that stoppable. It was the humiliating manner in which he made the decision, emphatically and animatedly calling Oettinger back to the bench for a globally televised walk of shame after a timeout. And it was the callousness with which he threw Oettinger under the bus in his very first response following the game, all but saying Oettinger was incapable of beating the Edmonton Oilers, and that there was 'a pretty big sample size' worth of proof. Advertisement Yes, Pete DeBoer got himself fired as Dallas Stars head coach with the way he treated Oettinger in their last game of the season, a 6-3 loss to Edmonton in Game 5 of the Western Conference final. Oh, sure, everyone said the right things two days later on locker clean-out day, but you have to think the exit interviews that day were a tad more blunt and a lot more truthful. In a battle between a famously peripatetic coach and a 26-year-old franchise goaltender, the goaltender wins every time. Oettinger is very well-liked and deeply respected by his teammates, and it's hard to imagine a coach winning back a locker room after such a public meltdown. Maybe if DeBoer didn't panic and instead let Oettinger work through it in Game 5, maybe if the communication had been stronger between the two, maybe if DeBoer fell on his own sword after the game instead of driving it through the back of Oettinger, he'd still be Dallas' coach. But he didn't. So he isn't. That's the business. DeBoer knows it all too well. Over the past 10 seasons, he's posted a sparkling record of 445-247-75, good enough for a .629 points percentage. For comparison's sake, Tampa Bay's Jon Cooper, the gold standard of head coaches for the past decade, is at .643. DeBoer is that good. He's reached the Western Conference final an astounding six times in the last eight seasons with three different teams. He's been to the Stanley Cup Final twice. Yet this is the fifth time he's been fired. He lasted just three lousy seasons with the Florida Panthers in the late 2000s. He took the New Jersey Devils to the Stanley Cup Final in his first season but was fired three years later. He took the San Jose Sharks to the Stanley Cup Final in his first season there, too, but was fired four years later. He took the Vegas Golden Knights to two straight conference finals and was fired the following year. And he took the Stars to the conference final in all three of his seasons, only to be fired yet again. The timing is cruel because there are no other job openings left in the NHL. But you can be sure DeBoer will get another job, and soon. Despite being fired so often, he's had a head-coaching job every year since the 2008-09 season. At just 56 years old, he'll get another. And then another after he wears out his welcome and gets fired from that one. Advertisement 'He'll be all right,' said Panthers coach and close friend Paul Maurice, who knows a thing or two about bouncing around the league. 'He's a good coach. I think you get elite teams, you've got to push them real hard to get to where they get to, and then at some point, you get a summer off. Pick your spot. He's going to be OK.' So, yes, DeBoer will be fine. But will the Stars? Because while DeBoer certainly earned his dismissal with the way things ended, he's hardly the reason Dallas fell a round short of the Stanley Cup Final yet again. Was it DeBoer's fault that Mikko Rantanen had no goals in the Western Conference final after all but singlehandedly beating the Colorado Avalanche in the first round? Was it DeBoer's fault that Wyatt Johnston was somehow a minus-16 through three rounds? Or that Matt Duchene was snakebitten throughout the playoffs, scoring just once in 18 games after a 30-goal season? Or that captain Jamie Benn disappeared for most of the postseason? What about Tyler Seguin? Or Mason Marchment? Or Evgenii Dadonov? Were their failures all DeBoer's fault, too? How about last spring, when Roope Hintz had fewer goals than Esa Lindell? And Hintz and Duchene and Thomas Harley and Joe Pavelski and Dadonov combined for zero goals against the Oilers? Was that all DeBoer's fault? Or Oettinger's, for that matter? The Stars are perennial Cup favorites because of their remarkable depth, with Duchene often saying they have 'three first lines.' But in these playoffs, Rantanen had to carry them early, and when he cooled off, nobody stepped up to shoulder the burden. Of course, DeBoer could have better tweaked the lines or switched up the matchups or benched a skater to try to spark things. But ultimately, hockey games are won or lost by players, not by coaches. And the players have failed in the conference final. For three straight years. Advertisement It's not for a lack of trying. General manager Jim Nill has built a powerhouse, and he's added to it at every trade deadline. Two years ago, he went out and got Max Domi and Dadonov for grit and goals. Last year, he added Chris Tanev, everyone's idea of a playoff defenseman. This year, he acquired Mikael Granlund, Cody Ceci and Rantanen, the latter of whom is one of the best players — and playoff performers — of his or any other generation. Still, it wasn't enough. 'You get things in place, but things always happen,' Nill told me early in the conference final, when I said he and his team were 'sitting pretty' for the present and the future. 'We've still got some work to do.' Yeah, things happened. Wholesale changes aren't coming. The Stars will continue to be trendy picks to win the Stanley Cup for years to come, and they'll do so with largely the same core they have now. Rantanen is signed for eight more years, as is Oettinger. Hintz is signed for six more years, Johnston and Lindell for five, Miro Heiskanen for four. Nill was adamant that Benn and Duchene, both unrestricted free agents, would be back next season, but you have to wonder if the way things ended will prompt Nill to shake things up — if just for the sake of shaking things up. Which brings us back to the coach. Who takes over now? The timing of the firing leaves Dallas with few big-name options, as the annual game of coaching musical chairs has left the Stars without a seat. Does Nill look within and promote Texas Stars coach Neil Graham, who has worked with Oettinger, Harley and Jason Robertson in the AHL? Does he try to pluck an assistant from another team's staff, perhaps even Oilers power-play mastermind and former Stars head coach Glen Gulutzan? Or does he target another rising AHL coach, such as former Stars assistant Todd Nelson? Do Peter Laviolette or John Tortorella, as abrasive and nomadic as DeBoer, hold any appeal? And most importantly, will any of them fare any better than DeBoer, one of the most successful coaches of the modern era? Or is this simply a conference-final level team, a group that performs better on paper than it does in the biggest moments? Advertisement This is now the big question facing Nill, bigger than Benn or Duchene: Who are these Dallas Stars, and what is their ceiling? 'We've been knocking on the door for a while, and you only get so many opportunities,' Nill told me. 'I've been talking to a few of the young guys here, who came in the last three or four years, and they think this is ordinary stuff, winning like this three years in a row. I tell them not to take this for granted. This is not easy. We've got an opportunity, so let's take advantage of it.' Dallas didn't. Again. Which leads to this kind of existential crisis, this kind of drastic decision. The Stars are a very, very good team. DeBoer is a very, very good coach. Together, they had very, very good results. But Dallas is looking for great. And so DeBoer is looking for work. We'll just have to wait and see who's looking for longer.
