Why Nebraska softball switched up its fall schedule for 2024

The Nebraska softball team’s fall schedule will look different this season.

In past years, Nebraska would typically host other schools in the Midwest for exhibition games. This time, the Huskers will scrimmage internally instead. NU will host four scrimmages open to the public on Wednesdays in October, starting on Oct. 9 at the Bowlin Stadium.

The change comes after three Husker pitchers — Jordy Bahl, Emmerson Cope and Caitlin Olensky — each had their 2024 season cut short due to injury. Nebraska did add right-hander Kylee Magee and left-hander Hannah Camenzind to its roster in the offseason but the lack of healthy pitching caused the Huskers to approach the fall differently.

Assistant coach Olivia Ferrell, a pitcher at Nebraska from 2018-22, and graduate assistant Allie Light, a former pitcher at Arkansas and San Diego State, will help round out Nebraska’s pitching depth for the scrimmages.

Other notes

Impactful commit: Nebraska softball landed a player for the future this week when Mountain View (California) Saint Francis infielder Jaime Oakland announced her commitment to NU’s 2026 recruiting class.

A potential star in the making at shortstop, Oakland hit over .500 as a freshman and increased her batting average to .629 in her sophomore season of varsity softball. She is the younger sister of a player who’s already made a name in Big Ten softball — the conference’s reigning player of the year, Minnesota’s Jess Oakland.

A second-team All-American in 2024, the Gophers’ starting shortstop slugged 20 home runs last season. It’ll be several years before Jaime Oakland can help Nebraska in a similar way, but the Huskers have added her to their future plans.

Schedule shaping up: While Nebraska is still waiting to learn its Big Ten Conference matchups for the season, much of the Huskers’ nonconference slate has been set.

Nebraska will return to two weekend tournaments in February, the Troy Cox Classic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from Feb. 14-16, and the Mary Nutter Classic in Cathedral City, California from Feb. 20-23. The Mary Nutter Classic in particular typically contains a field of postseason contenders and will provide Nebraska with an early nonconference test.

The Huskers are also set to travel to Wichita, Kansas for a weekend tournament at the end of February before hosting its first home games the weekend of March 6. Nebraska will welcome Northern Colorado, South Dakota State and Northern Iowa to Bowlin Stadium that weekend.

US gymnast Jordan Chiles has filed an appeal to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland after being stripped of a bronze medal she won at the Paris Olympics. Chiles, who had originally finished third in the women’s floor event, lost her medal to Romania’s Ana Barbosu following a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Chiles had scored 13.666 in the event, putting her in fifth place; however, her score was upgraded to 13.766 following an inquiry into her difficulty rating by her coach. Romania’s Olympic Committee filed an appeal to CAS, indicating that Team USA’s probe into Chiles’ score was submitted outside the one-minute time limit. The appeal was upheld after it was found that the inquiry by Chiles’ coach was submitted four seconds outside the time limit, with the medal being awarded to Barbosu. Chiles’ lawyers claimed that CAS refused to consider footage that “unequivocally proves” the athlete’s coach submitted the inquiry on time. US media reports claimed that the head of the panel overseeing the appeal had links to Romania, with CAS later condemning such “outrageous statements.”

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