After a slow start to the 2023 season, Jordy Bahl finished with a bang. She closed out the season, and her Oklahoma Sooners career, by pitching 24.2 scoreless innings at this year’s WCWS. She also finished the year with a 0.90 ERA, which helped her earn Pitcher of the Year from D1Softball.
She was named Most Outstanding Player at the WCWS, and is now transferring from Oklahoma back to her home state of Nebraska. Her 0.90 ERA was second in the country behind Stanford’s NiJaree Canady.
Bahl performed her best when the competition was at its best. She had wins against Florida State, Tennessee, Stanford, Oklahoma State, Washington, Utah, Duke, Texas, and Clemson. She was the ace of a very good pitching staff.
Jordy Bahl finished the 2023 season with a 0.90 ERA, including 24.2 scoreless innings at this year’s WCWS.
Bahl was a significant part of Oklahoma’s 2023 championship run and earned the 2023 D1Softball Pitcher of the Year.@OU_Softball x @jordybahl
Though Oklahoma returns Nicole May and Kierston Deal, and we haven’t seen anything from another signee from their 2022 recruiting class, S.J. Guerin, Oklahoma is going to miss Bahl a lot.
In her two years in Norman, Jordy Bahl was 44-2 and recorded 397 strikeouts for the Sooners. In more than 288.2 innings pitched, Bahl allowed just 153 hits and 47 runs scored.
Though Jordy Bahl’s time in Norman has come to an end, her impact in Norman and on the sport of softball will continue. When the games mattered most, Jordy Bahl rose to the occasion and helped lead the Oklahoma Sooners to their third straight national title.
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Oklahoma’s chief school officer and Trump administration education secretary hopeful is now demanding that students in the state watch a video of him praying for Donald Trump.
In an email circulated to Oklahoma public school superintendents last week, Ryan Walters ordered them to play the video to “all kids that are enrolled” in their districts as well as to the students’ parents.
Walters wrote that it was “a dangerous time for this country” and that students “rights and freedoms regarding religious liberties are continuously under assault,” the Oklahoman reported.
In the bizarre video, Walters announced a new office in the state called “the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism.”
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“For too long in this country we’ve seen the radical left attack individuals’ religious liberty in our schools. We will not tolerate that in Oklahoma. Your religious Liberties will be protected,” Walters said, before bowing his head in a prayer for Trump.
“I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions. I pray in particular for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country,” he said.
When grilled by CNN’s Pam Brown about what gives him the authority to demand schools play the video to their students, Walters accused Brown of pushing a “left-wing narrative” and maintained that Trump “has a clear mandate.”
Ryan Walters bows his head in prayer for the president-elect in the video (Oklahoma State Department of Education/YouTube)
“He wants prayer back in school. He wants radical leftism out of the classroom. He wants our kids to be patriotic,” he said. “He wants parents back in charge with school choice. We’re enacting upon that agenda here in Oklahoma.”
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Several school districts in Oklahoma said they have no intention of showing the video, the Oklahoman reported.
The office of the state’s Republican attorney general, Genter Drummond, also weighed in and said that Walters cannot mandate schools to play the video.
“There is no statutory authority for the state schools superintendent to require all students to watch a specific video,” Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, told the newspaper.
“Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights.”
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Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent, is thought to currently be in the running to be named Trump’s new education secretary (@ryanmwalters/X)
Walters, who ordered schools to incorporate the Bible into classrooms and backs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s pledge to scrap the federal Department of Education, is thought to currently be in the running to be named Trump’s new education secretary.
In June, he notified all Oklahoma state schools to “immediately” incorporate the Bible into classroom curriculum, drawing immediate outrage and threats of lawsuits.
“Effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum” in grades five through 12, according to the notice from the Republican school superintendent.
“The Bible is one of the most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization, along with the Ten Commandments,” the notice reads.
At a press conference at the time, Walters said that every school in the state “will have a Bible in the classroom,” and that every teacher “will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.”
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The move, which led to him being sued by more than 30 educators and parents, propeled him into the national spotlight.
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