By Jeffrey Cohen | Sports Writer
It’s been eight months since Baylor softball fell one game short of its first Women’s College World Series appearance since 2017, now the Bears will return to the diamond on Thursday to take on ACU as part of the Aggie Classic at Davis Diamond in College Station.
The Bears will waste no time getting to work, playing five games in three days, taking on No. 7 Texas A&M, Purdue, Utah State and Villanova following the season opener against the Wildcats. The Bears will play two doubleheaders over the weekend — which will be the first of eight in the early schedule. After the Aggie Classic, the green and gold will play in three more in-season events in February and March, two of which will be hosted at Getterman Stadium. Head coach Glenn Moore has his team play a demanding schedule early on to help them know what level they need to play at.
“We choose to play in tough environments for a reason,” Moore said. “They’re tough environments because they’re good teams and good programs, and it makes you perform at a level with probably a heightened sense of awareness.”
As Moore’s team journeys through a difficult schedule, he and his coaching staff focus on the team’s ability to stay consistent.
“As the thermometer, you’re going to go up and down, fluctuate,” Moore said. “We can’t be that. We’ve got to be a thermostat, and we’ve got to stay even keel early on.”
The Bears are no strangers to the top competition in college softball. Last season, they faced eight teams in the Top 25, including the top six teams in the nation. They will face nine ranked opponents throughout the 2025 campaign, beginning with the No. 7 Aggies at 7 p.m. Friday.
“You need to always say that you need to play teams that are better than you to get better,” Moore said. “That’s what we’ll start out when we play them.”
The green and gold return four of their six pitchers from last season, who only made eight starts in 2024. Baylor lost two-way star Aliyah Binford to Ole Miss and RyLee Crandall to Oklahoma State. They combined for 51 starts and 26 complete games. The retooled pitching staff that brought in two new pitchers will have to handle a heavy workload to start the season. Senior pitcher Dariana Orme believes that the unit will be able to perform well overall and back each other up.
“That’s what’s so important is out because we trust each other in the forge,” Orme said. “If I get called out and Ava [Knoll] has to come in or Sadie [Ross] has to come in, I’m very confident that they will be able to get it done, and vice versa.”
The offense, led by senior first baseman Shaylon Govan — named the No. 1 first baseman in college softball by D1Softball — could also be seeing a mix of pitching. While some units were more staunch last year, like Texas A&M’s that gave up a .211 batting average, the green and gold might gain some more momentum against Utah State and Abilene Christian. Those teams ceded an opponent average of .334 and .312, respectively. Senior infielder Presleigh Pilon sees the beginning of the season and the Aggie Classic as a way to start seeing new pitching and work out some issues.
“I think it’ll be the first weekend of working out some kinks and getting used to playing other teammates,” Pilon said. “We’ve been playing, we’ve been facing each other for all of fall, especially the last few scrimmages, so it’ll be exciting to see how we do against components.”
The Bears kick off the 2025 season against Abilene Christian at 2 p.m. Thursday at Davis Diamond in College Station.
