The softball journey isn’t over yet for national champion Hope Trautwein. The former North Texas and Oklahoma star signed with the USSSA Pride of Women’s Professional Fastpitch, a professional women’s softball league.
Although her time was short at OU, Trautwein anchored the best pitching rotation in the country with a 22-1 record with a 0.77 ERA. She also just had the seventh most strikeouts in college softball.
While she was at North Texas, Trautwein became the first pitcher to strikeout all 21 batters in a perfect game.
The WPF just began its inaugural season after being announced last year. Trautwein will end up playing against her former teammate Jocelyn Alo, who signed with the Smash It Sports Vipers, the other team in the newly founded league. Alo was taken first overall in the WPF’s inaugural collegiate draft earlier this year.
The WPF, ran by another Sooners legend, Lauren Chamberlain, has plans to expand to six or eight teams down the road. With college softball getting more and more attention on the national stage, perhaps they will end up doing just that.
ESPN’s Women’s College World Series coverage averaged one million viewers per game for the third consecutive year, so there is definitely a market for what the WPF offers.
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