Only One Person Understands the Pressure On Oklahoma's Jocelyn Alo: Lauren Chamberlain
Not many in the human species can fully comprehend what Jocelyn Alo is going through right now.
Lauren Chamberlain is one who absolutely understands and appreciates it all — the burden, the pressure, the glory, the expectations, the disappointment. Everything Alo feels as she prepares to reset college softball’s home run record, Chamberlain has been there.
“I know I slumped a little bit before I tied it,” Chamberlain said Tuesday on a Zoom call with media as Alo turns her focus to this weekend’s five-game event in Palm Springs, CA. “And slumping meaning, I didn't hit a home run in like, three games. So when you get to that point, you're slumping if you don't hit a bomb, right? Like, that's your slump.”
Lauren Chamberlain and Jocelyn Alo
OU Athletics
Alo tied Chamberlain’s NCAA career record of 95 homers last weekend in Houston in the first inning of the fifth of five games. Her next two at-bats were absolutely radioactive — and both line drives were caught on the infield.
What a disappointment, right?
Drama is great and all, but record chases are always best for those involved when they end quickly. Alo was so hot last weekend she nearly exploded right past the record. OU coach Patty Gasso said it happened with such suddenness, she and her staff were unprepared — which is why the career-tying home run ball apparently still sits in a Houston storm drain.
Chamberlain will be in Palm Springs this weekend to watch history.
But what if it doesn’t happen? The chase continues, naturally. There’s a long way to go. But what if Alo succumbs to the constant pressure of putting No. 96 over the fence? What if she bats .650 and drives in 18 runs and hits a couple of game-winning doubles — and somehow doesn’t hit anything over the fence?
She’ll get there, of course. Her pursuit is inevitable. She may set the record so high this year that no one ever touches it.
But each at-bat, that pressure to achieve something unparalleled will continue to mount.
“When you start to get that outside pressure,” Chamberlain said, “and you start to see the media follow it and the attention — and I know back when it happened to me, you know, ESPN crews with their cameras were like, on the field, following me to the plate — like, ticket prices are going up, you're starting to see more and more people standing; they're not sitting. There's just like a hum. Now, when you come to the plate, it's like, ‘Ooh, she could do it this time. She could do it this time.’ Like, you're just starting to feel a little bit more hype around everything.
"So that pressure starts to load because you're like, ‘OK, if I don't do it, it's like, ugh! That wasn't the one!’ Right? And it even gets to the point where if you hit a line drive, you know, (through the) 5-6-hole, that scores a run and you win the game — ‘She still didn’t hit the home run!’ Right? ‘I still didn't see her make history.’ ”
Gasso recalls Chamberlain’s own 2015 pursuit of the record — held previously by Stacie Nuveman of UCLA, who set the mark of 90 in 2002 — as “similar but different,” Gasso said.
“The similarity is the pressure that they put on themselves,” Gasso said. “Where it became a little bit different, Jocy’s road doesn't have a timeline on it. You know, she needed so many this season and we knew she was gonna get it. Lauren was running out of time.
“And she also had (teammate) Shelby Pendley chasing the same record (Pendley finished with 84). So it's like you've got a Babe Ruth and whoever you want, (Roger) Maris or whoever, chasing — they're chasing each other for the same home run record on the same team.”
The Chamberlain-Pendley saga added an entirely different dynamic to the pressure Chamberlain faced in pursuit of the record.
“You would think (it) would be glorious, glorious fun,” Gasso said. “Oh, it was awful. It was absolutely awful. Because they're trying to outdo each other a little bit, parents are involved, and it was almost like you had to take sides of who you were rooting for to get it. It was really interesting. I'll never forget that. It was very intense.”
Like Chamberlain said, her home run pace slowed down at the end.
“It was a tough road for Lauren,” Gasso said. “It took a longer time than I anticipated for her to reach that space.
“I just think Jocy’s setup was a little bit easier for her because she has the entire year to pull it off.”
Alo said she’s spoken with Chamberlain “a few times” about how she handled things, but mostly the advice she received as the home run total grew has come from Gasso.
“Coach has really been keeping me sane kind of through this and keeping me calm,” Alo said. “I asked her, I was like, ‘Did Lauren go through this same thing?’ And she was like, ‘Exactly the same thing.’ And I was like, ‘OK, so I'm not the only one that has felt this before.”
During last year’s College World Series march to the Sooners’ fifth national championship, Chamberlain wore a custom-made OU jersey with Alo’s name on the back and between innings was on the concourse pumping her fist. She has vocally supported Alo’s chase every step of the way, and has embraced the idea that soon, a record she once almost put out of sight will belong to someone else.
Best of all, Chamberlain and Alo have become friends and confidants.
Because, really, only they know what this is like.
“Lauren's kind of been in my ear, in and out, about it,” Alo said, “but more so just really positive things she's been telling me, not really like calm, just just telling me to do my thing.”
“My biggest piece of advice to her,” Chamberlain said, “has been just keep swinging. Just keep swinging.”