Lonni Alameda says familiarity with Oklahoma State is 'great'

On the softball diamond, Florida State and Oklahoma State are familiar foes, having played each other 10 times in the last five years. The two clubs are set to face off yet again at 7 p.m. ET in their opening game of the Women’s College World Series after seeing each other in the event as recently as 2021. The two state schools also crossed paths in the 2019 NCAA Tournament and even played a home-and-home series with one another in recent years. Now, they’re back on the field together with the highest possible stakes.

All this recent history between two schools in separate power conferences and in different part of the country is rare. So, ahead of yet another matchup between the Seminoles and Cowboys, FSU head coach Lonni Alameda was asked whether the familiarity factor helps one side or the other.

Her initial answer:

“Yeah, so first of all, familiarity is always great when you’re playing teams. I think that that’s the reason why we do the schedule that we do. We try to face as many top 25 challenging opponents on the road. If we have the opportunity to get a home-and-home, which Oklahoma State has been great to do that, we’re going to do it with Oregon, there’s just different people outside of our region that we try to get to to challenge ourselves, but also know that only makes us better to play that level of softball.”

After her thoughts on playing Oklahoma State once again, Alameda emphasized that she’s happy for her team to have the experience of playing in the Women’s College World Series. For teams not named Oklahoma, a WCWS appearance is special and often rare — not an annual tradition. So, soak it all up, says Lonni Alameda.

“Then being able to play here was a really good experience for us. This is where every team wants to be, is to be here, playing in Oklahoma City. When we had the chance to come out and play Kenny and Patty and OSU and OU, it gave us a chance to come here for an hour or so, just for our freshmen to feel that, for this team to feel that, how hard it is to get here, the respect to get here, and then the opportunity of being here already this year with this team has been really special.”

Not much longer now and we’ll have FSU and OSU locking horns once again in postseason softball action, beginning at 7 p.m. ET (6 p.m. CT) on ESPN.