Just days after winning a national championship, Shannon Saile was on the move.
Where was she headed? Back home to Florida, of course.
“I had to move out of my apartment in two or three days,” she said.
The Oklahoma graduate quickly went from the challenge of winning a Women’s College World Series for the Sooners to one of a much different variety: coaching the pitchers of the Siesta Key Phinz, a member of the Florida Gulf Coast League, the lone collegiate summer softball league in the country.
“I got here at 9 o’clock in the morning, went straight over to the fields – it got rained out – but still, I was ready to go,” Saile said, cracking a smile with a light laugh.
After her first game as the Phinz’ pitching coach—moved to Friday (June 18)—she was surprised to be selected by league director Ryan Moore to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at the league’s Opening Ceremonies.
Saile said it was more nerve wracking than the WCWS.
“[Ryan] didn’t tell me, he just surprised me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Really, you couldn’t have told me?’”
Saile’s first half of the year has been a busy one. After all, Oklahoma did win 56 games on the way to its fifth softball title and first since 2017.
“Our team was absolutely stacked at every position,” she said. “I knew from the beginning of the year we were going to be in the champ series.”
Sure enough, for the second consecutive WCWS, the Sooners were there. Almost as if Saile and fellow pitcher Giselle Juarez manifested it.
“May 17th calling it: watching the last dance: the Oklahoma Sooners are going to win the 2021 national championship,” Juarez said in a text to Saile last May, that Saile posted on Instagram after the Sooners won it all.
Oklahoma made it happen on June 10th. Just over a month of that predicted date.
“We had been in that situation before,” Saile said, referring to OU’s loss to UCLA in the 2019 WCWS. “Learning from that and getting hungry from that, letting that absolutely fuel us, that’s what drove us to be at that point.”
It didn’t come without adversity.
*** Scroll down to read more about Shannon’s thoughts on OU’s championship run, what she thinks of the Florida Gulf Coast League and what lies ahead for her…
