Stanislaus standout makes history with emotional performance in NCAA Tournament
When she pulled up to the ball field Sunday, Delainey Everett found out she would pitch in the biggest game of her life.
The 2023 Oakdale High graduate and current Mississippi State junior pitcher was getting ready for Game 3 of the NCAA softball Norman Super Regional against historic powerhouse University of Oklahoma when she got the word from pitching coach Taryne Mowatt-McKinney as they exited the bus.
“She’s like, ‘I want to talk to you’. And I was like ‘… OK,’” Everett recalled in a Monday interview with the “Good Morning Softball America” podcast. “She was like, ‘How do you feel about starting today?’ I said, ‘Good.’ Didn’t even think twice. After we were done talking, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ it hit me. My heart started pounding, I’m like, ‘This is really happening.’”
Everett showed Oklahoma, and the entire nation, what Oakdale and Stanislaus District sports fans already knew: She’s ready for the moment.
That pregame conversation happened because Everett was ready when her number was called earlier in the Super. She pitched the final 1.1 innings and earned the win for the Bulldogs in Friday’s Game 1, an 11-9 comeback over the Sooners. They lost Game 2 Saturday, setting up Sunday’s winner-take-all Game 3.
Going into the game, she did not have a start this season and had pitched only 13.1 innings. In the deciding game, she pitched a career-high seven innings in a shutout with three hits, three walks and three strikeouts to eliminate the Sooners with a 6-0 win. She also threw a career-high 96 pitches.
“Delainey just competed her butt off,” Mississippi State head coach Samantha Ricketts said. “What an outstanding game.”
It was the biggest weekend in Mississippi State softball history. And Everett earned the program’s biggest win.
For most athletes, their sport is a way to escape the “real world.” Everett is no different.
Before last season, she lost her dad, Brandan. He was her coach growing up and they shared a bond any father-daughter sports duo understands. She still wears a towel with his Modesto CHP badge number. Sunday was her parents’ wedding anniversary, making the performance emotional but also even more rewarding.
“Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary,” Everett said in the postgame press conference. “Every single inning I was out there, I was like, ‘This is for them, this is for him.’ Trusting in the girls is one way to get my mind off it. I live through that and for that, but the girls is really what gets me through it.
“He would just be so proud. … Just remembering the big games that we won, all the little titles that we had just set me up for this moment, and I always know that he’s here.”
The Everetts are a softball family
Delainey’s younger sisters Raegen, Briley and Saige came through the Oakdale program. Raegen spent her sophomore season pitching at UNLV, Briley just finished her senior season at Oakdale and will play at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and Saige was Briley’s teammate at Oakdale this season, going 4-for-4 with a double, an RBI and scoring three runs in their CIF Sac-Joaquin Section playoff opener. It was the first game of Saige’s career with more than three hits and tied a career high for runs scored.
“We’ll fight more about clothing than about softball, honestly,” Delainey told The Bee in 2023. “At home, we all work out, we all sleep in the same house, so it’s kind of hard not to love each other at the end of the day just because of all the things that we go through. We’re all so different … but we all know that we’re good and we push each other to our limits. We aren’t going to put each other in a position to jeopardize our body or mental stability.”
Everett now has gained fans nationally, but locally, the softball community always supported the third-year Mississippi State pitcher. The Bulldogs’ first-ever College World Series game is Thursday at 9 a.m. on ESPN against Texas Tech.
“An underdog is still a freakin’ Dawg,” Everett said in her ESPN walk-off interview after Sunday’s win. “Everything that we worked for came through today, and we ain’t done yet.”
