Softball Wins Conference, Far cry from mid-season woes

   Friday there was fun, food and celebration as the tenth-ranked OU softball team celebrated its senior night. 

   The Sooners had just returned from Stillwater after their 6-0 dispatching of in-state bedlam rival Oklahoma State the night before.  A game in which  the Sooners seized the outright regular season conference title and the top seed in next week’s conference tournament.

   But, it hasn’t been all grand slams and double plays for coach Patty Gasso’s Sooners. 

   On April 1, the Sooners hosted Baylor for a double header.  The team had just returned from Austin, Texas where they were swept by their Red River rival in non-competitive fashion.   

   After splitting the home double-header with Baylor the Sooners dropped to 5-3 in conference play and into fourth in the conference standings. In their previous four games the team had gone 1-3, and Gasso was at a loss for words.

    “We’re in a weird place, trying to work some things out,” Gasso said during the post-game press conference that evening.  “And we’ve had a little breakdown.”

      That would soon change.

      “That was kind of a breaking point where we reached and we knew that if we stayed there we would just go down and down, and we just decided we didn’t have anything to lose,” sophomore outfielder Krystle Huey, said.  “We just said go after it , go hard, work hard every time, every game, just take one game at a time.”

       The Sooners are a young team. Sophomores and freshmen hold 11 of the 16 roster spots, and only three seniors graduated from this year’s squad. 

      “We do have a very young team, and I think that is something that a lot of people don’t realize, we have a lot of new faces in new places,” junior utility player Amber Flores said.  “The way we see it is we’re 16 strong, we have five upperclassmen and we try to lead by example, and just go out there and be calm and relaxed and have them follow our lead.”

      Gasso, though does not see the youth as an excuse.

      “Nobody, talks about this team being young, we’ve never claimed that, never used that as a crutch for us or anything.”

      Part of the problem, Gasso implied, might have been motivation.

      “We’re a team that lacks momentum so we decided we would create our own momentum,” Gasso said.

       That momentum was instrumental in closing Missouri’s four game conference lead down to one game within a span of two weeks, just in time for the Sooners and Tigers to face off on the penultimate weekend of the conference season.

       “We had a rough patch at the beginning of the Big 12, and we as a team just decided that we needed to make a turnaround, and we got sick of it,” senior pitcher D.J. Mathis, said. “We got over the hill and went into Missouri knowing we were going to win.  It was just such an amazing weekend.”

     Much of the momentum that helped the team make their comeback can be attributed to some changes made by Gasso and her team in the dug out.

    “We’ve made some changes in the way that we approach things in the dug out, it’s a little more active,  everyone’s got a job to do when they’re in there,” Gasso said.  “Some things changed with our warm-up, it’s a little more energy-filled and action, so basically just some little clicks here and there and it seemed to really catch on, and they just embraced it and we started playing well.”

   Gasso is quick to defer credit to her upperclassmen though.

    “I think when you look at the face of our program right now it’s D.J. Mathis, Samantha Ricketts, Lindsey Vandever and Amber Flores.” she said.  “And those four got together and brought on a couple of others and just really tried to go out and challenge this group, and the freshmen have responded.”

    Enough to win a conference title anyway, but Gasso says despite the changes she helped to facilitate earlier this year, she won’t be doing much tinkering anymore.

    “As we get into the stretch, I’m just kind of lettin’ them do their thing,” she said.  “And they’re doin’ it, so you just leave them alone until they need you.”

Economy Falters, Norman Businesses Prosper

Drive down Main St. in Norman and one can see the hollowed out remains of a Grandy’s, sadly sulking on the corner surrounded by prospering Norman small businesses.

Prospering you say?  In this economy?  It can’t be!

Though the old Grandy’s may be a sign of the nation’s economic health as a whole, it certainly provides no indicator for gauging Norman’s economic temperature.

“I have only seen an increase in business, really,” Polly Kliewer,  Winan’s manager, said

Bonnie Amspacher, manager of The Diner, another prospering Norman small business on Main St., said she is equally as pleased.

“It’s pretty much the same, our business has always been pretty steady, we’ve been doing ok,” she said.

Amspacher would later concede though, “I think it’s slowed down a little bit.”

The reasons for prosperity in anemic times differ from business to business.

“You know we don’t sell a lot of really large products, and I’m sure a lot of people in a bad economy, they cut down on their buying a new car or something like that, but they keep their chocolate and their coffee so I think that that really helps,” Kliewer said.  “Maybe if we do charge a little bit more for them it’s worth it.”

Kliewer’s comment may be the greatest indication of why businesses sink or swim in tough economic times.  Businesses like Winans and The Diner are for the most part niche shops, that really cater to a regular crowd. 

Business is even doing well enough at Winan’s that they aren’t even advertising right now, but at The Diner business is doing well because of its loyal following.

“We have a regular, a lot of regular clients that come in a couple times a week, or once a week.  Some people every day, but then there’s a lot of people that just stop by,” Amspacher said. “But we still, like, we have a line on the weekends all day.”

The Diner at 213 E Main St is prospering in tough times.

The Diner though, has seen a few measures taken by loyal customers to pinch a penny here and there.

“I think people kind of order waters sometimes a little more, and little things like that.”

Clara Godwin, owner of The Pet Cafe, which opened on the west side of Norman in July, says that the Norman area is a kind of economic anomaly.

“If you spend money in a big box store, 30 percent of the money is going out of the market, so 30 percent of their money is not staying in Norman.  So they’re saying we want to shop here, so the money stays here in town and we want businesses to be a success here.”

Harvey Hill, vice president of First Fidelity Bank in Norman, says he doesn’t think that it’s the community aspect of Norman that is so much keeping businesses afloat as much intelligent bookkeeping.

Harvey Hill of First Fidelity Bank in Norman believes Oklahoma has remained recession proof because of steps taken after the economic collapse in the 1980s.

“I think that those folks that are paying attention to how they run their businesses, there’s some belt tightening going on naturally right now, that I think any prudent business person will review their balance sheet and see where there are opportunities for cost-savings within that balance sheet,” he said.  But those are the people that would survive.”

Hill claims that the economic downturn of the 1980’s helped the state to understand the importance of diversifying assets and that is why the state has proved so recession proof.

Hill also says that in his view it’s only the big companies outside of Oklahoma having problems.

 “I have seen very few examples of businesses floundering severely except in the cases where they’re affected by accounts outside of the state of Oklahoma,” he said. “More specifically outside this region.”

Kliewer said she feels that the failtures of big businesses isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“I think that if companies, either they are too large or they’re making the wrong decisions with their money then they should just go under.  I don’t think that just because they’re big doesn’t mean they deserve that money,” she said.  “If it’s a smaller business that is to rise up then they deserve too, because they’re the ones that have survived, so to speak.”

Polly Kliewer, manager of Winan's, has seen an increase in business over the last year.

Norman businesses certainly are surviving.