Tennessee

How Tennessee softball surprised Karen Weekly after early SEC Tournament exit

Published

2 years ago

May 13, 2024

How Tennessee softball surprised Karen Weekly after early SEC Tournament exit

When Karen Weekly got out of her coaches’ meeting Saturday, Tennessee softball players were already filing into the clubhouse.

The two-hour meeting ended at 10:30 a.m. and practice wasn’t supposed to start until 1 p.m. Weekly saw players putting on practice gear, and she asked them, “What are you guys doing?”

“They said, ‘Oh, we have a team meeting at 11:30,’ ” Weekly said Sunday. “They went in and had a meeting and some of them went out and started to get extra work. And I didn’t ask what their meeting was about, but I have a feeling it was, ‘Hey, we don’t want to be feeling the way we felt Thursday anymore. Let’s get to work and make sure that doesn’t happen.’ “

The “feeling” Weekly described came after No. 1 seeded UT bowed out of the SEC Tournament on Thursday after one game, losing to No. 8 seed LSU. The Lady Vols (40-10), who won their second straight SEC regular-season championship, are more determined than ever going into the NCAA Tournament.

Tennessee was selected as the No. 3 national seed on Sunday, the highest seeding in program history and will face Dayton (33-19) on Friday (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+). Miami (Ohio) and Virginia are the other two teams Tennessee will host in Knoxville.

It spoke volumes to Weekly that her team took it upon themselves to get things squared away on their own.

“It’s really gratifying,” Weekly said. “That’s when you know that your players are doing the leading. If I had told them, ‘Hey, you need to get in here and you need to do this, that,’ it would have been, it’s a have to, not a want to. When the players are initiating it, it’s a want to.”

Weekly still has upperclassmen who remember how it felt to be upset at home in the NCAA regional two seasons ago. For seniors like Kiki Milloy and Rylie West, it doesn’t take long for the bitterness to “swell up inside pretty fast” when thinking about those years, Weekly said, just like it does in her.

Weekly didn’t realize Tennessee had secured the highest seeding in program history, which beat last year’s highest seeding of No. 4. She figured legendary pitcher Monica Abbott’s years with the Lady Vols led to higher seeds.

“But now that you say that, I remember being a little bitter about a 7-seed when we were ranked number one all year (with Abbott),” Weekly joked. “I am very proud of this program. Obviously, I’ve invested a lot of years and a lot of my life and my time into Lady Vols softball, but it’s not just me … it’s everybody, and ultimately, it’s all about the players. Every win that we get is because the players go out there and win.”

TORCHBEARER: Rylie West’s dad saw potential that led to Tennessee softball career. But first he told her to quit

Tennessee brought back a strong core of veterans from last season’s run to the Women’s College World Series semifinal. Weekly doesn’t have to tell them how to spend their extra time now with classes over, and she doesn’t have to tell them to meet on their own. The players take it upon themselves, and they’re a step ahead of Weekly on a lot of things.

That kind of leadership is why the Lady Vols are primed for another successful postseason, starting with this weekend.

“It’s a player-led team,” Weekly said, “and we have some veterans who just understand how to win.”

Cora Hall covers University of Tennessee women’s athletics. Email her at cora.hall@knoxnews.com and follow her on Twitter @corahalll. If you enjoy Cora’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that allows you to access all of it.

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Tennessee

Tennessee baseball adds pitcher Ricky Ojeda, UC Irvine transfer

Published

5 hours ago

June 20, 2026

Press Room

Tennessee baseball adds pitcher Ricky Ojeda, UC Irvine transfer

Tennessee baseball received a commitment from UC Irvine pitcher Ricky Ojeda on June 19.

Ojeda, who is eligible for the MLB draft in July, announced his decision on social media. He visited Tennessee on June 15-16.

The lefthanded Ojeda had a strong 2026 season primarily as a reliever, posting a 3.77 ERA with 62 strikeouts and 20 walks in 62 innings. In 2025, he became the first reliever to be named Big West Pitcher of the Year after going 13-1 with a 3.55 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 66 innings, which also earned him a third-team all-American nod from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game.

Whether Ojeda makes it to Tennessee remains an open question. Perfect Game ranked him as the No. 179 prospect for the draft. That would place him in the sixth round.

Should Ojeda join the staff, however, he would instantly become one of the team’s top options out of a bullpen that struggled immensely in 2026. The pitching staff is also under new leadership under pitching coach Austin Knight, who was hired from ECU.

Ojeda is the fourth player to announce they will transfer to Tennessee this offseason, joining two-way Mercer transfer Braydon Kersey, Northwestern State pitcher Brody Trosclair and Air Force infielder Wyatt Hanoian.

Who’s leaving Tennessee baseball

UTL Jay Abernathy (Oklahoma)
RHP Nic Abraham
INF Ariel Antigua (Arizona)
INF Finley Bates
RHP Ari Bethea
OF Hutson Chance
RHP Sawyer Deering (San Diego State)
OF Nate Eisfelder
1B Evan Hankins (Virginia Tech)
UTL Hunter High
RHP Brayden Krenzel (Arkansas)
INF Manny Marin
INF Ethan Moore (Missouri)
UTL Chris Newstrom
LHP Taylor Tracey
C Cash Williams (West Virginia)

Who’s joining Tennessee baseball

RHP/DH Braydon Kersey
LHP Brody Trosclair
INF Wyatt Hanoian
LHP Ricky Ojeda

Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_

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Tennessee

Shooting Hunger event aims to prevent childhood hunger in West Tennessee

Published

15 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

Shooting Hunger event aims to prevent childhood hunger in West Tennessee

JACKSON, Tenn. (WBBJ) – An exciting day of sporting clays in West Tennessee is doubling as a major fight against hunger.

Today’s “Shooting Hunger” event took place at the Carroll County Shooting Sports Park in Huntingdon. It’s a partnership between Tennessee Farm Bureau, Tennessee Farmers Co-Op, Farm Credit Mid-America and Rural First.

Shooting Hunger at Carroll County Shooting Sports Park(Gray News)

Since 2015, Shooting Hunger has helped provide more than three million meals to Tennesseans with money going to food banks, backpack programs, and local hunger relief. A $500 scholarship will also go to the top youth shooter in each flight.

“We’re joining together to raise money for school backpacks to feed hungry kids. We do these, we actually do three of these across the state of Tennessee so at the end of the day we take, we take all the money we put it into a pile and when we divide equally amongst all 95 counties across the state of Tennessee,“ said Bryan Wright, executive vice president for the Tennessee Farm Bureau.

Organizers say events like this matter because one in six children in Tennessee struggle with hunger.

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Inside Tennessee 4×100 relay’s NCAA title, outlasting four botched exchanges

Published

1 day ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

Inside Tennessee 4×100 relay’s NCAA title, outlasting four botched exchanges

Tennessee director of track and field Duane Ross gauged the hunger of the men’s 4×100-meter relay team to pull off the upset.

“They said, ‘Coach, we’re going to win,’ ” Ross said. “When they bring you that much confidence, you can grab your popcorn and enjoy the meet.”

No popcorn was consumed, but the appetite was there from the start.

Traunard Folson, Davonte Howell, T’Mars McCallum and Elijah Clark finished in a school record time of 37.98 seconds at the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 12 in Eugene, Oregon. It was the the program’s first national title in the 4×100 since 1983 and the fourth-fastest in NCAA history.

Four other relay teams never crossed the line. Auburn, the two-time defending champion, had run an NCAA-record 37.75 in the semifinal, but had a botched handoff on the last exchange. Arkansas, the reigning SEC champion, also dropped its baton, along with Oregon and Houston.

McCallum said staying clean through a race of chaos starts with a focus on winning, even in practice.

“In the moment we can’t really worry about anything else, just what we can control,” McCallum said on June 18. “We came to practice every time with the idea of, ‘OK, we’ve got to make sure this is fixed, because we know if we run that time, we can win.’ “

It was the final event of McCallum’s college career. It didn’t fully hit until the long flight home to Knoxville.

“I was like, we really did it,” he said. “Now we have a school record, the first team to ever go under 38 seconds here.”

Whether belief had anything to do with what went wrong in those four other lanes isn’t something Tennessee’s runners can answer. It’s exactly what they point to for why theirs didn’t.

Clark, a freshman who ran the anchor leg, said winning was just a matter of starting the race.

“We knew we had it the whole time,” he said. “No matter who did what, what happened, we knew what the outcome would come to.”

Ross said the victory wasn’t a surprise inside the program either.

“I wouldn’t say unsung,” Ross said. “I’ve watched this team all year long, and we were expecting to come out of there with the championship. It was a tight competition down to the last event.”

Tennessee finished third in the men’s team standings with 46 points, its best total since 2002.

Howell, a junior who ran the second leg, said the belief behind the relay team’s confidence was built long before the race.

“Three of the four of us already ran under 10 seconds,” he said. “Last year we all trained together during the summer, all lived together. We already had the bond, and adding the freshman on anchor was just a cherry on top. He figured it out at SECs, ran a 10.1, season’s best, and we trusted him to bring it home.”

Clark said the title is already part of something bigger to him.

“The goal is to always make history,” said Clark, who was hired by Tennessee four years ago after a successful run at North Carolina A&T. “It’s been one of my dreams. To be able to be on the wall, especially at a school like this, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

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