Rhonda Revelle discusses her initial conversation with Jordy Bahl after she entered the transfer portal

There are some phone calls that you’ll always remember taking. Nebraska head coach Rhonda Revelle had that recently when Jordy Bahl gave her a ring after the 2023 softball season had come to a close.

Bahl had just wrapped up another All-American year and her Oklahoma team had just put a championship stamp on what might go down as the best campaign in college softball history.

But the 20-year-old Bahl was thinking about an opportunity to come home to her home state of Nebraska. A few days later, she would announce her commitment to the Cornhuskers.

Revelle told the story of that first phone call during a press conference following Bahl’s commitment to the school.

“I’m actually driving in my car and in your car, you see your dashboard, you’re hooked up to CarPlay and you see Jordy Bahl’s name pop up there and you’re like, Whoa! I’m like, Well, you better answer it,” Revelle said with a laugh. “I don’t know how long we talked, maybe 15 minutes, but we didn’t talk about softball at all. It was really just a moment to reconnect. I got to tell her that when she moved in a different direction there was never one hard feeling from any of our staff. We’re we have always been Jordy Bahl fans, as a person first, as an athlete second. That never wavered.”

Bahl finished the 2023 season with a 22-1 record, four saves 0.90 ERA and .160 batting average against. She struck out 192 batters in 147.1 innings pitched.

Her Sooners team went an incredible 61-1 and ended the season with a Division I record 53-game winning streak. Bahl, who is a two-time first-team All-American, was named the Most Outstanding Player at the Women’s College World Series.

“If she was calling me, I was hoping that it wasn’t to tell me she was going to Creighton or Omaha but that she had an interest in Nebraska,” Revelle said. “That certainly was what she was calling about and that she needed to know that she would be returning to a place that is welcoming her with open arms. That was the start of it. Then how on that same dashboard, you see your phone blowing up cause she had made her statement and then it’s like from there. Full disclosure, I’ll tell on myself, I’m driving back from a funeral that I had attended in Iowa and I missed my turn off like six times. I used I think a whole tank of gas driving back and forth in Iowa. There was just a lot going on.”