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.”

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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.