With replays of Mia Scott’s grand slam starting to loop on the Devon Park jumbotron and Texas’ double-digit lead beginning to sink in, Mike White raised his fists and high-fived his pitching coach.
“Woo hoo!” he bellowed.
Then, the Texas coach took the celebration to another level — he started smiling.
White, as softball fans everywhere know, is not a smiler. Not on the field. Not during a game. And certainly not during the deciding night of the Women’s College World Series.
But there he was Friday evening, standing in the third-base coach’s box, smiling.
“Oh, yeah, a little bit,” he admitted.
Which is true, except for the little bit part. He was grinning ear to ear.
“Couldn’t help it,” he told The Oklahoman.
The smiles were only beginning for White and the Longhorns.
On a night Texas softball won its first national championship, there were lots of reasons why. A supremely talented ace in Teagan Kavan, who threw 31⅔ innings in the WCWS and allowed no earned runs. An offense that averaged four runs a game in the WCWS and had its biggest explosion in the season’s most important game. And yes, an opponent whose ace, NiJaree Canady, ran out of juice and exited after giving up a five spot in the first inning.
But the Longhorns don’t reach the pinnacle without White.
“He’s the best,” Kavan said. “He’s so competitive — he wants it just as bad as we do, of course — and he pushes us to be better every day.
“He’s the bomb.”
He’s a builder of programs. He’s an collector of talent. He’s a teacher of excellence.
He’s also the Bill Belichick of college softball. Or John Calipari. Or Kim Mulkey. White is the villain of the sport, and ironically, a big part of that reputation has ties back to the field on which he and his Longhorns celebrated Friday night.
It’s where he flipped off the umpires after losing a challenge, blowing a gasket and getting ejected during a 2022 Big 12 Tournament game against Oklahoma State. He quickly apologized, but the aesthetics were bad.
It’s where his team was coming the next season to play Oklahoma, and during an interview in the lead-up, White made comments that seemed to question the integrity of the Sooners and head coach Patty Gasso in recruiting.
It’s a place that hasn’t always been kind to White.
This was his eighth time to make the WCWS. He did it five times as the head coach at Oregon, and this was his third at Texas. And even though he had brought really good teams to Oklahoma City — his Longhorns last year were the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament — none of them ever went home with the trophy.
In two of the last three years, Texas made it to the WCWS Championship Series but lost both times to Red River rival OU.
Did White ever doubt a title would happen?
“Doubts?” he said. “No, not really. … I believe in myself and I believe in the coaching staff I have and I believe in the athletes we recruit.”
Still, the almosts and the not-quites start to wear on you.
“I know he thought he was never going to get this,” said a woman who understands as well as anyone what White has come through.
Jody Conradt, now a special assistant in the Texas athletic department, spent three decades coaching the Texas women’s program. In each of the first three years of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, her Longhorns fell just short of the Final Four. They lost in the Elite Eight the first two years, then lost a heartbreaker to Western Kentucky in the Sweet 16 in the third year.
Finally, the next season, Texas broke through and won a national title.
After the game Friday, the 84-year-old Conradt stood near home plate watching White and his team celebrate.
“It’s not easy,” she said.
She chuckled.
“I thought we got too happy too soon,” she said.
When Scott hit that grand slam in the fourth inning, it expanded on Texas’ early lead, pushed its cushion to 10 runs and placed it into run-rule territory. But even that reminded White of difficult memories.
“They were talking to us about the run-rule being in effect,” he said, “and we said, ‘Yeah, the reason they brought it in was because of us. We were gettin’ walloped by Oklahoma, 16-2.’”
That’s true, except that the score was actually 16-1. After the Sooners beat the Horns by two-plus touchdowns in the first game of the championship series in 2022, the NCAA decided to use the mercy rule in the champ series, too.
Still, Texas looked like it might be able to benefit from it Friday. A quick game and an early celebration seemed possible.
But Texas Tech chipped away with three runs in the fifth and one in the seventh. The lead that Texas built, however, was too big. In a WCWS that will forever be known for close games and walkoff wins, there would be no such fireworks in the tournament’s final game.
When the final out was made, White stepped from the dugout, pumped his fists and bearhugged his assistants.
There would be lots more hugs as the celebration picked up steam, but none was more vigorous than the one White got from Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte, who bearhugged White, then grabbed him by the back of the neck, shook him a bit and pulled him back into another bearhug.
“The amount of effort he’s put into this program from when we hired him,” Del Conte told The Oklahoman, “he just poured out his heart and soul. And he’s been so close. To see him break through … I’m just elated.”
White was, too. But there were also moments of disbelief.
After all his players were called to the stage to receive their national championship trophies, the public address announcer started calling up the coaches.
“Head coach Mike White!” the voice boomed.
He almost looked surprised to hear his name.
“Ooo,” he said.
Half an hour or so later, as he sat by the national championship trophy in Devon Park’s interview room, White admitted everything felt surreal.
“I’m still trying to process the whole thing,” he said. “It’s something you dream about. First of all, you start dreaming about going to the World Series, that’s never easy. … Now to fast-forward to this point in time, having been here eight times, gone to three national finals and then to finally win it, it’s amazing.”
Some in the softball world may still think of Mike White as the villain, but after Friday night, they’ll have to think of him another way, too.
As a champion.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Texas softball coach Mike White ends years of agony with NCAA title