State Charted Course To OKC Long Ago
May 27, 2026 | Softball, Joel Coleman
STARKVILLE – To arrive at a desired destination, it's best to know where you're going and how to get there. Aimlessly wandering and hoping for the best isn't a sound strategy.
To the outside world, it might look as though this year's Mississippi State softball team used the risky latter plan to reach this year's Women's College World Series. After all, the Bulldogs are the only unseeded team in the field in Oklahoma City. To get there, they had to pull off a road regional win in Oregon before toppling mighty Oklahoma on its home field in the super regional round.
None of this was a fluke though, as evidenced by the fact MSU literally charted its course to Oklahoma City months ago.
"We did it early in the fall," State's Morgan Stiles said. "We came up with this idea, because we knew what our goal was. We knew we wanted to get to the World Series and we knew we had the ability to. We knew we had the pieces we needed and had something special.
"So, we had the idea to kind of put it on paper – put it in a place we all could see and look at to keep it at the front of our minds. We ended up drawing it all out on the glass right outside the team film room because we walk right by that glass every day."
The Dawgs plotted every part of this magical journey, from the first day they were together as a team up until now.
"The roadmap starts at the first day we were all on campus," Stiles explained. "First day of practice, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all of our fall games – it's all on there.
"Then, it starts again in the spring with our first practice. Every game we've played has been a stop on the map. It's also evolved and has different sayings and drawings on it. We've drawn stick people of everyone on the team and staff. It's really become something bigger and more special than we thought it was going to be when we first came up with the idea."
Maybe the biggest benefit to State's uniquely crafted map has been how it's kept the Dawgs on track, even on the difficult days. In a long season, there are numerous speedbumps and potholes.
MSU certainly hit a few, but the Bulldogs never veered off course. They never found themselves stuck in a ditch. State always picked itself up, dusted itself off and moved on, because the Bulldogs knew they had somewhere to be.
"Even with all the bumps we hit along the way, we could always still see the road to get to Oklahoma City," MSU's Peja Goold said. "You can't have a perfect season. We knew things were going to happen.
"Towards the end of conference play for us, things got rocky there. There was hope there for a while we could host our own regional, and I think our minds were set on that, so it was discouraging when that was no longer in the picture for us. But to be able to reset and zoom out and see the map and see there was still a path for us to get to Oklahoma City was super helpful."
The path was there, indeed. And now, the Bulldogs are at their desired destination. Mississippi State will play its first-ever Women's College World Series game on Thursday at 11 a.m. against Texas Tech.
"It's crazy looking back now," Goold said. "The map was a great visual representation of what this year could look like for us and what we wanted the year to look like and what we wanted to achieve. It's awesome to see that we pulled through everything at the end of the day and accomplished everything we'd been hoping."
Well…Almost everything.
At the end of State's roadmap, right there on the glass they've looked at so many times, a national championship trophy is drawn.
"Oh yeah," Stiles said. "We've known all of our goals from the very beginning."
