The Texas A&M softball team had a productive summer. Head coach Trisha Ford and her staff plugged holes by adding transfers, while the players were plugging away on their own, bonding in Aggieland while hopefully getting better.
The Aggies came oh so close to reaching the Women’s College World Series just three months ago, dropping a gut-wrenching super regional series at top-ranked Texas. All three games were decided by one run. The loss hurt more as Texas advanced to the WCWS championship series. A&M’s returning starters didn’t dwell on the past, opting to do something about it.
“What I’m really excited about is most of returners on their own were here all summer,” said Ford, adding in the past couple of summers other things had been more important to the majority of the players. “But this year, they showed up and I was like, ‘What in the world [is going on?]’ Last year, we had a few stay on campus and then this year, the team as a unit decided we’re going to make it happen.”
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Ford said coaches and players talk about getting better, but actions speak louder.
“To be as close as we were last year, I think it has really pushed this group into a different mentality,” Ford said. “It was good to see. I thought we played some of our best ball at the end of the year, and so we were hoping that they would kind of take that and run with it.”
The team’s freshman class, ranked 12the in the country by Extra Inning Softball, was also on campus. That’s another first at A&M for Ford, who is preparing for her third season. Knowing that her players are lifting, running, training and hitting while drawing closer puts a smile on Ford’s face.
“It’s just nice to see them here,” said Ford, adding that they don’t realize four years will zoom by. “I always talk to them about not wasting time. I hate the word culture, because I think we use it so much. But that really, to me is culture. What it’s like to be great and how to chase it, and so that’s been neat to see.”
Ford’s summer has been smoother because of past results. A&M went 35-21 in her first season, including 12-12 in Southeastern Conference play as the Aggies made a six-game improvement and climbed five spots in the standings to seventh. A&M was 44-15 this past season, including 15-9 in league play for third place. Ford and her staff’s ability to build the current roster allowed them to spend much of this summer working on the 2026 recruiting class.
“I felt really good about that,” Ford said. “I was able to narrow it down and figure out who we’ve going to go after.”
A&M bolstered the 2025 team by adding four transfers. The Aggies, who lost a pair of graduate pitchers in Shaylee Ackerman and Brooke Vestal, replenished the circle by adding Washington’s Sidne Peters and Ole Miss’ Grace Sparks. Peters was 8-1 as a freshman. The right-hander from Santa Fe had a 3.35 earned run average with 70 strikeouts and 37 walks in 62 2/3 innings. Sparks was 9-2 with a 2.14 ERA. The junior right-hander from Crosby struck out 56 and walked 29 in 78 1/3 innings.
Incoming freshman pitchers are right-hander Taylor Brown from Washington, Mo.; right-hander Sydney Lessentine from Alamogordo, N.M.; left-hander Kate Munnerlyn from Mountain View, Calif.; and right-hander Della Jasinski from Brenham.
“I think we had some holes in the circle last year,” Ford said. “Nothing crazy, but I think we need to get some more depth there. We went after who we wanted, and we were able to secure them.”
A&M returns second team All-American left-hander Emiley Kennedy (24-11, 1.93 ERA) and right-hander Emily Leavitt (10-2, 3.66 ERA), but both will be seniors.
“My hope is we can develop a couple of [the freshmen] and go from there,” said Ford, who is also the team’s pitching coach.
A&M added senior catcher Olivia Johnson from Washington and senior catcher/first baseman Mac Barbara from San Diego State. Johnson is a three-year starter coming off her best season. The Pearland native batted .300 with 11 home runs and 25 runs batted in. She also walked 31 times. She hasn’t made an error in 135 games. Barbara batted .380 with 14 home runs, 49 RBIs and 36 walks along with a .759 slugging percentage and .508 on-base percentage, leading the Aztecs in all those categories. Barbara was the Mountain West Co-Player of the Year. She was the league’s POY in 2022 when she also was a third-team All-American after batting .395 with 18 homers, 14 doubles and 61 RBIs. The Long Beach native spent the 2020 and ’21 seasons at Ole Miss, playing in 16 games with four starts.
Ford said solidifying catcher was the second priority in the offseason behind pitching. A&M loses Julia Cottrill who, in two years hit .315 with 20 doubles, 19 homers and 88 runs batted in. Ford also looked to add some “juice” because the Aggies have to replace first baseman Trinity Cannon, outfielder Jazmine Hill and second baseman Rylen Wiggins, who combined to hit 38 homers and 28 doubles along with 134 RBIs in 2024.
Incoming freshman catcher DeeDee Baldwin from New Braunfels Canyon hit 18 homers as a junior. Baldwin is part of a 10-player freshman class, which will be an exception moving forward, not the norm because of the transfer portal.
“I think one of the good things about the portal is it allows you, as a coach, to make decisions on players that have played at this level,” Ford said. “I feel it’s a little bit more of a apples-to-apples comparison.”
Several Southeastern Conference teams have brought in 4-5 transfers. Three-time national champion Oklahoma added five players. OU along with Texas join the SEC this year.
“I think you’re going to see a little bit more of smaller classes coming in as freshmen and then filling some of those needs, because there’s going to be kids that always come and go [via the portal],” Ford said. “That’s just going to be the reality of our life, and so you’re going to fill those [holes] in the portal.”
The SEC is in an enviable position. The league was considered the best from top to bottom before adding the Sooners and the Longhorns. Nine of the 16 teams to reach the super regionals in May are in the SEC now.
“If you want to play at the highest level, this is the conference you want to be at, and this is the conference that’s supporting it at the highest level,” Ford said. “These kids are getting in the portal and a lot of them are headed our direction. Several of us got pieces that are going to make us very, very good.”
An exception to that might be the Big 12’s Texas Tech, which hired A&M hitting coach Craig Snider two years ago. He was 60-43 in two seasons, but couldn’t get Tech to the NCAA Tournament. He resigned to become Tennessee’s hitting coach. Tech hired Louisiana-Lafayette head coach Gerry Glasco, who had been with the Ragin’ Cajuns since 2018, making the NCAA Tournament every year.
Glasco, who was A&M’s associate head coach at hitting coach from 2015-17, has added nine transfers, led by Stanford pitcher NiJaree Canady, who was the national player of the year. She went 41-10 in two seasons with an 0.67 earned run average with 555 strikeouts in 365 2/3 innings. Many thought Canady would go to OU, but she signed an name, image and likeness deal with Tech for $1,050,024. The Athletic reported $24 was for her jersey number and $50,000 for living expenses.
“I think Gerry’s a very smart man,” Ford said. “Honestly, can recruit, I think everybody knows that about him, and he’s done well everywhere he’s been at.”
Glasco brought in five players from Louisiana, including outfielder Mihyia Davis, the Sun Belt Player of the Year.
“I think at Tech they have a donor that has supported him at a very, very high level,” Ford said. “He was able to bring a lot of kids from ULL that were part of a top level team. And obviously he brought in the arm of the portal this summer. We’ll see what all transpires. I think he has some unprecedented support from an NIL standpoint.”
Coleman, Williams transfer to Texas State. Former A&M Consolidated standout Aiyana Coleman and outfielder Keely Williams are a pair of juniors who have transferred to Texas State.
Coleman started 22 games as a freshman for the Aggies, all at designated player, including four games at the Austin Regional. She batted .297 with four homers and 15 RBIs. She started only nine games in 2024. She often was used as the first pinch hitter. She batted .200 with three homers and 18 RBIs.
Williams made 34 starts as a freshman, hitting .307 with three homers and 20 RBIs. She started 22 games this past season, hitting .242 with a homer and nine RBIs.