POSSE Magazine Winter 2024 by Oklahoma State

A NEW ERA

DAVID TAYLOR TAKES THE REINS OF COWBOY WRESTLING

SOME TRAVEL AND WEEKEND DUTIES

REQUIRED

BY K E V I N K

When you are sitting behind the steering wheel of a semitruck full of football equipment, it is easy to pinpoint the good old days of the Big 12 Conference. It was the ﬁrst ones, back when the long hauls were to Ames, Iowa (544 miles), and Austin, Texas (451 miles), with Lubbock a close third (412 miles).

It was a simpler time. Today, that road trip to Ames is only the ninth longest in the Big 12, well behind the eight conference destinations that are more than 1,000 miles from Stillwater. For the equipment sta living in the new Big 12, the job remains the same. The blueprint, however, is di erent.

“We have had to make some adjustments,” said Justin Williams, who has run the football equipment room at Oklahoma State since 2017 and been part of the operation for much longer.

“In the original Big 12 we were the most centrally located school. Things have changed dramatically.”

One of those changes includes shipping the dirty uniforms back on the team plane instead of the equipment truck. Waiting on those uniforms back on campus is an expanded student sta , which will start the uniform process for the next week immediately instead of waiting for the truck’s arrival back home, many times on Sunday.

Another change is departure time. The truck now often is locked and loaded for its next trip earlier than ever, putting a little extra stress on the equipment sta to have things ready to roll.

“Last season we left for UCF on Wednesday,” Williams said. “That’s one day earlier than usual. That will happen more often, obviously.”

WO R T H

The longer trips also mean more bodies on the truck. What was once a twoman driving crew now can include a third person to help the rig stay on the road non-stop from Stillwater to its ﬁnal destination. The crew includes a driver, a navigator who is constantly on apps to assure that weather and heavy tra c delays are avoided, and a third member sleeping so he can be prepared to move into the front seats at the appropriate time.

Only once, when the Cowboys opened the 2019 season at Oregon State, did the truck crew elect to take a timeout, spending a few hours in a motel on the Oregon border before completing the trip to Corvallis.

The longest trek for the truck came in 2008 when the Cowboys opened the season by playing Washington State in Seattle. It was a 2,000-mile drive, one-way of course. The truck didn’t arrive back in Stillwater until Monday. Luckily, that trip was followed by four straight home games.

As for the longest season behind the wheel, that came in 2017 when 11,300 miles were traveled in order to service OSU games at South Alabama, Pittsburgh, Texas Tech, West Virgina, Iowa State and the bowl win over Virginia Tech in Orlando.

Je Baker, of Kremlin, Okla., has been driving the big rig since there has been an OSU equipment truck. Other drivers currently or have included Tory Crouse and Bill Spears. In the past, OSU equipment sta ers Williams and Matt Davis have been along for the ride, so to speak.

As much as the world has changed for Oklahoma State’s sta , things could always be worse. Out in the Bay Area sits the University of California, Berkeley, newly minted member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. With road trips to Auburn, Florida State, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest and SMU during the 2024 regular season, the equipment truck for the Bears was on the hook for more than 24,000 miles!

In the new era of college athletics, being centrally located is no longer a thing for anyone.

THE 1974 COWBOYS BUILD A FOUNDATION FOR OKLAHOMA STATE FOOTBALL Underclassmen Undertaking COWBOY GOLF’S YOUTH MOVEMENT IS AN INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE

Starting

KARLI GODWIN AND ROSIE DAVIS LEAD COWGIRL SOFTBALL INTO 2025

THE STUDENT-DRIVEN BRAND SQUAD TAKES A LEADING ROLE IN OSU NIL

FAMILY HELPS LOREN AND ELAINE COOK FIND THEIR PASSION FOR OSU ATHLETICS

The Oklahoma State equipment sta unloads the truck after arriving in Corvallis, Ore., for the Cowboys’ 2019 season opener at Oregon State.

The Cowboys' striking Homecoming uniforms were a nod to the OAMC Tigers, commemorating the 125th season of OSU Football.

POSSE MAGAZINE WINTER 2024

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF / SENIOR ASSOCIATE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR KEVIN KLINTWORTH

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99 REASONS

Cowboy great Leslie O'Neal led the crowd in the "Orange Power" chant prior to kicko versus Arkansas on Sept. 7.

The two-time All-American and College Football Hall of Famer was enshrined in the Boone Pickens Stadium Ring of Honor at halftime. O'Neal anchored two of the best defenses in school history. His 16 sacks in 1984 and 34 career sacks are school records that stand to this day. A ﬁrst-round draft choice of the San Diego Chargers in 1986, O'Neal was a six-time Pro Bowl selection. He retired following the 1999 season.

BEST fOR FIRST

Cowgirl freshmen Bella Pierotti (16) and Reganne Morris celebrate Pierotti's decisive goal in a 1-0 Bedlam victory this fall. Pierotti's ﬁrst collegiate score couldn't have been bigger, as the shot turned out to be the game-winner over the Sooners. Oklahoma State is now 32-10-5 all time against their in-state rival. The Cowgirls ﬁnished the 2024 campaign with an overall 14-5-3 record — OSU's most wins since 2019 — culminating in a return to the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship.

Underclassmen Undertaking An

story by photos by Ryan Cameron Ethan Scott and Colin Peters

The process of constructing a college roster has transformed drastically in recent years.

In an era of teams currently ﬁlled with ﬁfth-, sixth- and even seventh-year seniors, Oklahoma State’s men’s golf team has bucked the trend and taken the alternate route.

The Cowboys are in the midst of a significant youth movement with five freshmen and five sophomores dotting their 11-man roster. Additionally, seven of those players are in their first year with the program, presenting a stark contrast to last year’s squad which featured three fifth-year players and two seniors.

The building blocks for the future of the program were put into place last season with the addition of decorated freshmen Johnnie Clark, Gaven Lane and Preston Stout

As part of that veteran-laden squad, it was Stout who was the ﬁrst to come to the forefront and ﬁnd his footing during the closing stretch of the year. A talented multi-sport athlete growing up in Texas, Stout showed his decision to pursue golf was the right one, earning all-league status

The Richardson native showcased a flair for the dramatic as well, making a 30-foot birdie putt on the final hole at the Big 12 Championship to earn his first career victory — a win that was immediately followed by a 22nd-place finish at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Veritex Bank Championship where he fired scores of 67, 64, 68 and 67 to finish at 18-under 266.

“It definitely gave me a lot of confidence. To be able to win and show myself that I could win at this level and compete with these guys was huge for me,” Stout said. “Confidence is a big thing in golf and to know that I don’t have to do anything special or have to play absolutely out of my mind to be able to go and win was really big.”

When the results began to turn favorably for Stout, the transition to college life was complete for somebody who has a love for all things outdoors and spends spare time hunting and ﬁshing.

“Stillwater itself, I love it. Being from Dallas, I did not really like it growing up, a lot of people and a lot of tra c. I deﬁnitely like being in more of a rural town, not as many people and everything is pretty close.”

“I love it here and loved it when I came on my visits. I just knew immediately where I wanted to be.”

Far from the ﬁnished product, Stout has just scratched the surface of his potential and has continued to grow into his leadership role during year two.

“Preston’s built o the success he had last year and that he has really had for a number of years. His progression has been really, really good. He is a good ball hitter and coming into his own as a leader,” said Cowboy head coach Alan Bratton

Like Stout, Lane grew up in the metroplex area and set his sights on becoming a Cowboy at an early age. After a visit to

OSU’s home course and seeing the signiﬁcance of the program, it was game over

“I was taking visits when I was in seventh and eighth grade, and I went to all the schools around me like TCU, OU, A&M and Texas,” Lane said. “Once I came up here and saw Karsten Creek and saw it was the team’s place, that was my biggest selling point.”

It was at an early age that the Argyle native began turning heads, becoming the third-youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Amateur, doing so as a 14-year-old in 2018. Ironically, he made history at Pebble Beach the same year former Cowboy All-American Viktor Hovland was on his way to becoming the ﬁfth Cowboy to hoist the Havemeyer Trophy

Lane was a mainstay in the Cowboy lineup as a freshman, competing in 13 events and posting a top 10 in his collegiate debut. However, he admits his rookie campaign was an eye-opening experience.

“I probably thought I was a little better than I was. These courses we play are not set up like junior golf or high school golf. It is a whole di erent game,” Lane said. “The courses are tougher. You can’t just ﬁre at every pin. It takes more self-control on the course. You have to play smarter golf, and you cannot fall asleep out there.

“I have to keep working hard, and those small mistakes from being a freshman and not always knowing what I was doing last year should be gone.”

Bratton ventured away from the Lone Star State and went west for the third member of his class with Clark, who hails from Mesa, Arizona. An AJGA second-team All-America selection in 2022, Clark was also a member of the U.S. Junior Presidents Cup Team and reached the round of 16 at the 2022 U.S. Junior Championship, making him a highly sought prospect as well.

Despite arriving on the scene with an impressive junior résumé of his own, Clark also had his eyes opened to a new level of golf when he arrived on campus.

“Going into last year, I was not really sure what to expect tournament-wise, practice-wise or how the coaches were going to operate,” Clark said. “Coming into this year, it has been so much easier — school especially — knowing expectations and knowing where I need to be at what time and knowing what performance is.”

After navigating a spring in which he earned two top-20 ﬁnishes in seven starts, Clark had a potential breakthrough performance this summer in his home state, winning the Arizona Stroke Play Championship. Like the conference title for Stout, Clark hopes bringing home a trophy this summer is a sign of things to come.

“It was very big for my confidence. My game was not in a great spot last spring, and coming into the summer it still wasn’t. So finishing the summer with that kind of performance was definitely very good to get some momentum going,” Clark said.

With a victory under his belt and his game trending in the right direction, Clark is drawing on his initial college experiences to help solidify his place in the Cowboys’ foundation.

“The biggest thing I have learned is game management, knowing when you are not hitting it your best and how to manage it around the course and getting control of the mental game. That’s something I am still working on, but have deﬁnitely improved on since last year,” Clark said.

Bratton knew he would begin his 12th season at the helm with the promising trio of sophomores to build upon. He would soon be pleasantly surprised to ﬁnd two familiar names, Ethan Fang and Eric Lee, in the transfer portal, giving him the opportunity to expand his foundation from three to ﬁve.

Fang was ﬁrst in making the decision to transfer, and Lee soon followed. Growing up in Dallas, he competed with Lane and Stout, giving OSU the inside track to landing their fourth talented sophomore.

“I grew up playing junior golf with both of them. I have known Ethan for a while. We lived in Dallas together and played against each other since we were 13,” Stout said. “I got to know Eric a lot better in high school. We played on the Junior Presidents Cup team together. Traveling and playing all our invitational stu in junior golf kind of helped me get closer with Eric too.”

A native of Plano, Fang enjoyed a successful freshman season that saw him earn All-Pac-12 honors as well as Pac-12 all-freshman team status. Like Clark, he was tabbed as an AJGA All-American and reached the round of 16 at the U.S. Junior Championship in 2022. This past summer, he advanced to the quarterﬁnals at the U.S. Amateur just prior to setting foot on the OSU campus.

An attractive résumé meant suitors aplenty for Fang, but

“The best part is the competition among the group. You do not have to look very far to ﬁnd somebody that is out here working hard and pushing you.”

— Alan Bratton

“When you have that caliber player show up in the transfer portal, that is exciting,” Bratton said. “Those guys were familiar with Oklahoma State coming out of high school. They were both kids that we had planned to recruit on the front end, and they committed real early in the process to Cal.”

When Fang and Lee became available, Bratton was ready and held zero hesitation in opting for more youth instead of seasoned veterans to ﬁll out his roster. In fact, the duo enabled the Cowboy head coach to play the long game and gain immediate depth, giving his squad the best of both worlds

“You go with the best ﬁt, and to have two guys that have three years of eligibility left is big. Then you look around and we had three really good sophomores and some good freshmen coming in already. Going forward, we could put something together that can be a good nucleus for several years.”

the opportunity to reunite with his fellow Texas natives and the lure of the program’s history made the choice an easy one.

“When I entered the portal, I had a few options, but OSU was my number one, obviously, because of everything about the school, the history, everyone knows all the hardware we have here, the pro golfers we have and just the program itself,” Fang said.

“Being from Dallas, you hear a lot about Oklahoma State, especially when that 2018 team kind of dominated everything, so I grew up hearing about them, and it was meant to be.”

It was also in the cards that the Cowboys would lure a second talented sophomore from Berkeley.

Lee got out of the gate quickly to start his collegiate career, winning his Cal debut at the at the Marquette Intercollegiate.

Initially, Lee was set to return to Cal, but Fang’s decision to continue his career closer to home had the Fullerton, Calif., native reconsidering his future.

“I made the decision to stay at Cal for at least another year, but as soon as Ethan entered the portal it got me thinking maybe I should make the move, too,” Lee said.

That decision pointed Lee to Stillwater as well, a place that had always been in the back of his mind with Bratton recruiting him during a prep career that saw him earn ﬁrst-team AJGA All-America status and Rolex Player of the Year honors in 2022. Like Clark, Fang and Stout, Lee made a deep run at the U.S. Junior in 2022, advancing to the semiﬁnals.

The second time through the recruiting process, Lee was intrigued by the prospect of joining a young, talented core of players.

“I knew that with Ethan, Preston and Gavin there I felt like if I joined, we could make a strong team. That is basically what the decision came down to, knowing we were going to have a young team and that we would be able to all grow together.”

While there has been an adjustment to life in a true college town, a California transplant and Lee’s teammates have helped him settle in nicely.

“The guys have made it pretty easy for me to adjust pretty fast, and I’m still adjusting to some things, but I think overall the transition has been pretty smooth,” Lee said.

“(Former Cowboy All-American) Chris Tidland is from Placentia, which is like 10 minutes away from me, so that was pretty cool to have that connection. He told me at the beginning of the year that I would really like it here and that this is the place to be.”

That place is currently home to a team with rock solid chemistry and a competitive environment. While golf is often viewed as an individual sport, the collegiate level maintains the team aspect. Those aforementioned qualities and the opportunity to develop together remain critical on all fronts.

“I think we are all pretty close game-wise — anyone can win a qualiﬁer on any given day,” Lane said. “Just being around competition like that every single day is going to improve your game.”

That “iron sharpens iron” mentality is a recipe for success in Bratton’s eyes.

“The best part is the competition among the group. You do not have to look very far to ﬁnd somebody that is out here working hard and pushing you.” Bratton said.

Fang Lane Stout Lee Clark

“You want to recruit kids that are like-minded and have similar goals . I think we have done that.”

— Alan Bratton

“You want to recruit kids that are like-minded and have similar goals. I think we have done that. We have a bunch of guys that understand team and recognize how that will help them. You don’t have to sacriﬁce one for the other,”

As a leader who has been a part of NCAA-winning teams as a player, assistant coach and head coach at OSU, Bratton knows ﬁrsthand the formula to helping a team reach the pinnacle.

“Our best teams have been the ones that are a group of guys trying to get better in their own game, but they recognize if they lift their buddy up, it ends up helping them. We have a group of guys that get that, and they want that.

“Hopefully, that will keep attracting other like-minded players in the future.”

While the future is bright, do not mistake youth for inexperience as the current crop has plenty of seasoning. Because of that, the present is promising as well.

Whether it be the multitude of successful performances in high-level USGA, AJGA or even professional events, Bratton is optimistic about the prospects of his crew being able to write the next successful chapter for a program steeped in tradition.

“That is exciting as a coach, to think that they are only sophomores. It is kind of a unique combination because they are young, but they do have a lot of experience. How valuable is that?”

Adding to the positive outlook is the implementation of PGA Tour University in recent years.

Since the system was introduced in 2020, the incentive for a player to stay in school through his ﬁnal year has been increased signiﬁcantly.

The program identiﬁes the best seniors and elevates their path to the PGA Tour. Using a ranking system based on the last two years of their collegiate careers, the top 20 ﬁnishers in PGA Tour University earn access to the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Canada or PGA Tour Latinoamérica.

Simply put, PGA Tour University is music to the ears for a program that has seen as much, if not more, talent than any other school in the country make an early exit for the professional ranks.

For a program repeatedly tasked with replacing the likes of early departures such as Charles Howell, Hunter Mahan, Rickie Fowler, Peter Uihlein, Morgan Ho mann and Eugenio Chacarra, there is a real possibility Bratton’s nucleus stays together for the duration.

“That is a nice program the PGA Tour started. The guys going out on Tour now are more seasoned and that lends itself to more success out there,” Bratton said.

“The guys we have now have a ways to go, but that is an incentive, and hopefully these guys are more driven to be here, earn their degrees, do some things we are used to — be in in the mix with a chance to win conference championships and national championships.”

The young Cowboys closed out the 2024 fall campaign by capturing the team championship at the Jackson T. Stephens Cup in Oklahoma City.

A FORCE IN THE AIR

OSU's Wyatt Hendrickson goes airborne after winning his ﬁrst match as a Cowboy. In dual action to open the season against the University of Wyoming, Hendrickson pinned his opponent in the second period before treating the Gallagher-Iba Arena crowd to some heavyweight acrobatics. The two-time All-American from Newton, Kan., transferred to OSU after four years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

PHOTOBRUCEWATERFIELD

Fıe sta Fırst The

PHOTOS BY Habbie Colen, OSU Athletics Archives and Associated Press

Kenny Walker’s seven-yard touchdown carry put the Cowboys ahead of BYU in the 1974 Fiesta Bowl.

POSSE

Tom Wolf has a clear and concise memory of the status of Oklahoma State football when he arrived on campus in 1971.

“Dismal,” he said.

Hard to argue that.

It had been more than a decade since the program had a season with a winning record. It had been even longer since the Cowboys had been to a bowl. Seemed ﬁtting that OSU’s last postseason appearance, the Bluegrass Bowl in 1958, had come in a one-and-done bowl.

But when Wolf got on the practice ﬁeld with his fellow freshmen that fall, the o ensive lineman felt like their class might be something special. Maybe it could have a hand in breaking that bowl drought. Perhaps it might help turn around the program.

Wolf’s premonition took time, but when he was a senior, the 1974 Cowboys ushered in what could be considered the start of the modern era of OSU football.

“I think we were there during the beginning of the transition,” Wolf surmised. “It picked up steam after we left.”

But the train wouldn’t have even left the station without them.

On the 50th anniversary of that important season, the members of the 1974 OSU football team are rightfully being celebrated. During the annual Cowboy Football reunion in November, it was honored as the team of special recognition.

Cowboys everywhere should continue the celebration; if you like how far OSU football has come in recent decades, you can trace the start of that rise to 1974.

Jesse Hudson, a team captain like Wolf, sees a throughline from 1974 to 1976 when OSU won a share of the Big Eight title, its ﬁrst as a member of the conference. He recalled something that Jim Stanley, the Cowboy coach back then, once said.

There is no 1976 Big Eight champion without the 1974 football team.

And then there’s a throughline from 1976 to the Jimmy Johnson era, then to the Pat Jones era, and on and on until today. It had to start somewhere for Cowboy football, and the genesis was the year Watergate roiled and leisure suits ruled.

“That’s where it started,” Hudson said of 1974, “and every year after that … it’s just gotten better and better.”

Of course, some might say there was only one way for OSU football to go in the early 1970s. After the Bluegrass Bowl team in 1958, the Cowboys had more head coaches (Cli Speegle, Phil Cutchin and Floyd Gass) than winning seasons (1959) over the next decade.

The crowds were atrocious.

The stadium wasn’t any better.

“It was still the old high school type cinder track around the football ﬁeld,” Wolf said of what was then Lewis Field. “I think there were double-armed goalposts when I got up there as a freshman. “It looked like a high school stadium.”

While upgrades came before the 1972 season — out went the track and double-armed goalposts, in came more seats and astroturf — the biggest improvement was on the ﬁeld. Dave Smith took over as head coach, replacing Gass, and led the Cowboys to a 6-5 record. They were in the running for a Sun Bowl bid, but instead, three Big Eight teams that OSU had beaten (Colorado, Missouri and Iowa State) were invited to bowls instead.

Smith left OSU after the season, taking over at SMU, but he left behind the seeds of change.

The Cowboys had scrapped the I-formation, moving instead to the wishbone o ense. With Oklahoma and Texas already running it, more recruits in the region were coming out of high school ready and able to play in the wishbone. OSU used that to its advantage.

On defense, Stanley had been the coordinator under Smith and had changed the vibe. Stanley had played at Alabama under Bear Bryant, and as one of the famed Junction Boys, Stanley had a no-nonsense edge about him.

“Coach Jim Stanley was a tough man,” said Hudson, who played defensive end. “A great man, but he was a tough man.”

There was no complaining about being tired or sore or even hurt. And if anyone said something wasn’t fair?

“The fair,” Stanley would say, “is what you go to in the fall.”

That mentality spread beyond the defense to the entire team after Stanley was named the head coach, replacing Smith in 1972. Stanley reinforced it by hiring Bum Phillips and his son, Wade, to join the defensive coaching sta . At the time, Wade was young and just climbing the coaching ranks, having only been a full-time assistant at the high school level. But Bum already had ﬁve seasons as defensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers on his résumé.

“You don’t bring in a coach like that if you’re insecure in who you are,” Wolf said.

Stanley carried himself with that kind of conﬁdence, and it bled into the team. In his ﬁrst season as head coach, the Cowboys tied mighty Nebraska after 11 consecutive losses to the Cornhuskers.

OSU ﬁnished that season 5-4-2.

Momentum was building.

Heading into the 1974 season, Cowboy players and coaches had a good feeling about their team. They didn’t just have veteran talent from the likes of Hudson and Wolf, Mike Terry and Tony Buck. They had young standouts such as Terry Miller and Derrel Gofourth, Phillip Dokes and James “Duck” White

“We thought we were going to be pretty good,” said Charlie Weatherbie, then the Cowboys’ sophomore starting quarterback and another one of those young standouts.

Two weeks into the season, the Cowboys got conﬁrmation of what they sensed about their squad. OSU went to Little Rock to face 10th-ranked Arkansas at their home away from home, War Memorial Stadium. It wasn’t a place the Razorbacks often lost in those days.

But the Cowboys skewered the Hogs, 26-7.

“We beat them pretty good,” said Terry, a safety on that team, “and when we did, coming o that win, I thought, ‘Man, we’ve got a chance to really get things going if we stay together and not have a lot of injuries.’”

But on the heels of that win, OSU lost 31-14 at Baylor, then 14-13 at Texas Tech.

“They won by a two-point conversion that literally bounced a yard in front of the receiver,” Ward said of Texas Tech.

His voice rose.

“The Southwest Conference ref ruled it a two-point conversion,” he said. “If they had any kind of instant replay or review, we would have won the game.”

Video review, of course, was decades away, but OSU bounced back with a convincing win against Missouri, then su ered a close 7-3 loss to Nebraska. The Cowboys had the ball at the Huskers’ 5-yard line with a chance to take the lead in the game’s ﬁnal minutes. But a fumble ended OSU’s drive and its chances of victory.

“Coach Jim Stanley was a tough man. A great man, but he was a tough man.”

— Jesse Hud son

Again, though, the Cowboys rallied, winning three of their next four games, and during that stretch, the Fiesta Bowl extended an invite to OSU. Early bowl invitations weren’t the norm, but a month before the end of the regular season, the Orange Bowl extended an early invitation to Alabama, and Bear Bryant accepted it. That set o a cascade of other early invites.

OSU was among them.

The Fiesta fulﬁlled the Cowboys’ bowl goal.

“That was kind of the talk of that year,” Terry said. “That’s what we wanted to do.”

“In those days, there weren’t that many bowls, “Wade Phillips said. “The Fiesta Bowl was a big bowl. We were really excited about it.”

So were Cowboy fans. Only a couple of weeks after the Fiesta Bowl invitation was announced — and still more than a month before the December 28 game against BYU — more than 7,000 tickets from OSU’s bowl allotment had been purchased.

“If you think about it, 16 years,” Hudson said of OSU’s bowl drought. “It’s like not taking your wife anywhere for your anniversary for 16 years. And after 16 years,

Cowboy quarterback Scott Burk takes on a stout BYU defense.

you planned this big, glorious thing. Everybody wants to go. Everybody wants to be there. Everybody wants to say, ‘I was there when that happened.’”

As excited as the fans were, the players were every bit as enthused.

“Everything at the Fiesta Bowl I could go to, I went to,” Hudson said.

Banquets. Excursions. Meals. Hudson, who traveled little growing up in Oklahoma in a family with 13 kids, soaked up every bowl-week experience that he could.

The one thing he missed: hearing Olympic legend Jesse Owens speak.

“That’s one regret I have,” Hudson said.

But then there are the little things he remembers to this day. Spending time with teammates. Getting to meet some of BYU’s players. Even going swimming in Phoenix.

“In December in a pool,” Hudson said, wonder still in his voice. “In Oklahoma, none of that was happening.”

For all the fun that those Cowboys had before the Fiesta Bowl, they knew why they were there and how big a challenge they faced. BYU entered the game ranked 17th in the nation and fresh o a Western Athletic Conference championship. As excited as the Cowboys were to break the program’s bowl drought, the Cougars were even more stoked: they were

making the program’s ﬁrst bowl appearance ever, led by third-year coach Lavell Edwards

He had just put in this new weird o ense,” Ward remembered with a chuckle.

The West Coast o ense isn’t so weird today, but back then in an era when the wishbone was seen as revolutionary, a team attempting nearly 30 passes and more than 200 yards passing a game was diabolical. Was this lunacy? Or sorcery?

Whatever it was, it was working in Provo. BYU quarterback Gary Sheide entered the Fiesta Bowl having thrown a nation’s-best 23 touchdown passes. Weatherbie, by comparison, threw two touchdown passes that season.

Still, OSU countered BYU’s high-ﬂying o ense with one of the best defenses in the country. In eight of the Cowboys’ 11 regular-season games, they had allowed two touchdowns or less, and in ﬁve games, the OSU defense held opponents to single digits.

OSU wanted a low-scoring a air.

A game in the 30s or even 40s would’ve been more to BYU’s liking.

But the likelihood of a high-scoring game went out the window in the ﬁrst quarter when Dokes bullied his way past a BYU o ensive lineman and drove Sheide into the ground.

1974 Fiesta Bowl defensive MVP Phillip Dokes, head coach Jim Stanley and o ensive MVP Kenny Walker.

“Just smashed him,” Wolf recalled. “A clean hit. (Sheide) fell right on his shoulder — not a cheap shot; a hard hit — and it put him out.”

Leading 6-0, BYU never scored again

OSU didn’t score much. Playing in a light rain, the Cowboy o ense actually fumbled six times but recovered every single one, while the Cowboy defense intercepted three passes and recovered one fumble.

Final score: OSU 16, BYU 6.

“We had a heck of a group,” Wade Phillips said. “And our o ense, they controlled the ball. They could run the football.”

Having a tailback like Miller, who went on to twice ﬁnish in the top ﬁve in the Heisman Trophy balloting, made the running attack di cult to contain.

“That always helps,” Phillips said of having a back that talented.

But Miller, who is now in the College Football Hall of Fame, credits Stanley, Phillips and the rest of the OSU defense for what the Cowboys did in 1974.

“That was really the cornerstone of the team,” Miller said. “Back then as far as Coach Stanley was concerned, I don’t think he paid much attention to o ense.”

He chuckled.

But whatever the equation, it worked for those Cowboys. They had the talent, the experience and the mentality to not only break OSU’s bowl drought but also open eyes to what was possible. Major stadium renovations were still decades away, as were millions for salaries and operations and Name, Image and Likeness deals. The 1974 team didn’t usher in that change.

Instead, it changed orange-and-black hopes and dreams.

“Just realizing that Oklahoma State can be a football power,” Phillips said. “Because it was the ﬁrst bowl game in a while, it kind of showed that we were on the map.”

Wolf, who started for three years on OSU’s o ensive line, returned to his hometown of Oklahoma City and became an ophthalmologist after his football days were done. He has been back to Stillwater regularly for games and alumni events, and he almost can’t believe what OSU football has become.

The dismal state it was in when he arrived on campus is long gone.

“It’s wonderful,” Wolf said. “I mean, God bless T. Boone Pickens. The man had a vision. He made a lifetime gift that totally transformed Oklahoma State University. Changed the entire trajectory.”

But so did Wolf and his Cowboy brethren in 1974, their contributions coming in success and promise and hope, currency that was once in short supply.

The ’74 Cowboys

Former OSU assistant Wade Phillips

The 1974 Fiesta Bowl Champions were welcomed back to Boone Pickens Stadium for a reunion and on-ﬁeld recognition during the 2024 game against Texas Tech.

WEATHER PROOF

A group of wet, but still enthusiastic, young fans awaits the restart of the Oklahoma StateArizona State game at Boone Pickens Stadium on Nov. 2. The Cowboys' Homecoming matchup with the Sun Devils took six hours to complete, as the second-half was delayed nearly three-hours due to lightning in the area.

PHOTOJERODHIILL

Right Side Starting on the

STORY BY

PHOTOS BY Andrea Hancock

Bruce Waterﬁeld, Landry Bledsoe and Andy Crown

Karli Godwin (left) and Rosie Davis (right) look to build on the success of their freshman seasons at OSU.

Like many freshmen, Karli Godwin and Rosie Davis faced a learning curve their ﬁrst year at college. Adjusting to harder classes and a new social scene is di cult enough for any student, but Godwin and Davis had an added task, too: learning to compete as Division I softball players.

A lot of it was little things, such as adjusting to new hitting routines, ﬁguring out how to take care of their bodies over the course of a long season or staying mentally tough through every slump.

“It was hard last year, just being two young, dumb freshmen,” Godwin said, earning a laugh from Davis. “But I mean, I know — I’m sure I can speak for her, too — coming in this year, we know so much more.”

Godwin may have described the duo as “two young, dumb freshmen,” but that might sell their accomplishments a little short.

Defensively, the pair locked down the right side of the inﬁeld together, with Godwin at ﬁrst and Davis at second.

At the plate, Godwin drove in 51 runners, more than any other Cowgirl, and had the team’s second highest tallies of home runs and hits at 15 and 61, respectively. She earned several conference and national honors, including being named to the all-Big 12 ﬁrst team.

Davis, too, put together an impressive resume at the plate, scoring 30 runs over the course of the season and securing her own laundry list of regional and national honors, including membership on the league’s all-freshman team. She earned a reputation for showing up in big moments, batting .511 when she had a teammate in scoring position. She hit her ﬁrst home run against UCLA, ranked No. 10 in the nation at the time, and hit her ﬁrst home run in Cowgirl Stadium against Arizona during the NCAA Super Regional.

I think what helps keep me so calm is the preparation that I take, before I even get in these big moments. And mentally, I will put myself in these situations in practice where I’m trying to do all these things that could happen in a game,” Davis said.

“When these big moments come, I can just go back and say, ‘You’ve done this a million times.’”

Godwin added it’s not just the preparation they put in, but the support players receive from the people around them that makes it possible to stay calm when the pressure’s on.

“Our coaches, our managers, our teammates, we’re all so close, and everybody supports everybody,” Godwin said.

“Everybody in that dugout believes in you so much, it’s kind of hard not to believe in yourself.”

Godwin credited her family — particularly her parents, Bruno and Natalie Godwin — with nurturing her into the player she’s become today, and said teammates and coaches have become as close as family along the way.

Davis agreed with that sentiment, going so far as to say she considers head coach Kenny Gajewski a second dad. That support makes the slog of a long season more bearable, which is a good thing, because Godwin played in every game last season, and Davis started in 60.

“I think the biggest challenge for me was like the length of the season,” Godwin said. “I don’t think anybody coming in knew how long of a stretch it was. And obviously every softball player goes through these slumps to a certain degree, and that was kind of the hardest thing for me to ﬁgure out, how to deal with that.”

Davis agreed it was di cult to adjust to an extended in-season calendar.

“I think it’s just really hard to stay consistent throughout the whole year. That’s super-duper long, and every single game is important,” she said. “Trying to stay consistent in your work and how you’re playing is pretty challenging.”

But that was just another learning experience for the duo, something that better prepared them for the next year. As was their ﬁrst trip to the College World Series The Cowgirls lost twice in a row in Oklahoma City, but Godwin and Davis look back at that heartbreak as a lesson, too. Godwin says it taught her to deal with hardships and remain calm in such a charged stadium atmosphere. Davis uses the experience as motivation.

“I think the learning experience I’m going to get from that — what I am still getting from that — is that pit in your stomach where it feels like, ‘Dang it.’ Every single day I try and do something so that I never have to have that feeling again,” Davis said.

Godwin and Davis noted the losses were particularly di cult because they wanted to give their teammates who were seniors a better sendo .

“But that’s just kind of the stu that happens with softball,” Godwin said. “It’s you against softball, and sometimes it’s gonna punch you in the face.”

Godwin learned that very literally when she was about five or six. Her father took her to a recreational field for the first time and began teaching her how to field the ball. Godwin asked her dad what position he had played, hoping to follow in his footsteps, but he had been a catcher, and perhaps fearing for his daughter’s knees in a couple decades, he suggested she head to third base instead.

On the ﬁrst ball Bruno hit, a young Godwin learned why it’s called the hot corner. The ball caught her square in the face.

“First one I hit her, I stuck her teeth through her lip,” Bruno recounts now.

Now, most kindergartners would probably put the glove down right then and there. Not Karli. The rec league ﬁeld didn’t have a water fountain, but they found a hose and used it to wash the blood out of her mouth, and then Karli was ready to get back on the ﬁeld.

“She said, ‘Daddy, if you’ll hit me another one, I promise I’ll catch this one,’” Bruno said. “So that’s how it started.”

It never ended.

“Once she took a hold to the ball, we never got to pry it out of her hand,” Bruno said.

Bruno recalls Karli begging him to take her to the ﬁeld every day as soon as he was home from work. She played other sports growing up — soccer, basketball, volleyball, even cheerleading — but by the time she was 13, Bruno said college scouts had taken an interest in the inﬁelder from Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina. In high school, with her heart set on softball, Godwin dropped her other sports to avoid additional injury risks.

In 2020, Godwin visited Oklahoma for tournaments in Oklahoma City and Mustang. She had already visited the University of Oklahoma’s campus (and was not much of a fan, according to Bruno), so she suggested they visit Oklahoma State while they were there instead.

The Godwins drove to Stillwater and scoped out Cowgirl Stadium. Bruno even got a few photos of Karli on the ﬁeld.

“She fell in love with Stillwater. And I remember the ride back to the airport after that, she said, ‘Daddy, if God makes it where I come to school here, this is where I want to come to school,’” Bruno recalled. “She never had any other place she wanted to go. She had a lot of o ers on September 1 and talked to a lot of schools, and Coach G was the ﬁrst one to call her.”

Godwin posted those photos she took on the ﬁeld to Twitter, now known as X. The post is still up.

“WOW, OSU campus is absolutely beautiful,” she captioned the post. “I could deﬁnitely see myself doing a few bat ﬂips in Cowgirl Stadium!”

Davis set her heart on becoming a Cowgirl even sooner than Godwin.

“My ﬁrst camp that I came here, I automatically knew that this is exactly where I wanted to be. It felt like home. The coaches were very welcoming, and automatically the homey feeling just made me want to be here,” she said.

Davis was only 11 at that ﬁrst softball camp, but she never changed her mind. She committed to play for Oklahoma State ﬁve years later.

Godwin received ﬁrst-team All-Big 12 honors and NFCA second team All-Region recognition.

“First time we ever went out there, she did fall in love with [Stillwater] pretty quick. And then I called my wife and told her this is where Rosie would probably end up, like 90 percent sure,” Davis’ father, Richie, said. “I loved it. I mean, it was a small, hometown feeling. It was safe feeling. It was good.”

Readyville, Tennessee, the small town where Davis lived in her early childhood, didn’t have softball, so she started with baseball. When she turned eight, she had her ﬁrst opportunity to join a travel softball team.

“My parents were like, ‘Well, do you want to do travel softball, or do you want to do travel basketball?’ I was like, ‘100 percent softball,’” Davis said. “So I think that’s when it all just started. And I think ever since that moment I made that decision, me and my dad — he was always my coach — we just hit the pedal and never stopped.”

Richie said by the time she joined the travel team, coaches had started approaching him and saying they thought Rosie had a shot at playing softball in college. But even though she chose softball over the travel basketball team and was beginning to have aspirations of playing for an NCAA program, she kept playing other sports.

“We did encourage her to be a multi-sport athlete all the way up,” Richie said. “Basketball and volleyball, they were the sports that she played for just pure fun, you know, just to go out there and be a good teammate.”

Both Bruno Godwin and Richie Davis attribute their daughters’ success to their work ethic. Karli doesn’t remember the incident where she took a ball to the face, but to Bruno, it was an early indicator of her tenacity; Richie said Rosie’s conﬁdence comes from a mentality inherited from her mother, Megan

“If you believe it hard enough, and you practice and you work hard enough, you’ve already won,” Richie said. “My wife preached that to her all the time. ‘If you believe it, you can just go do it.’”

That conﬁdence — which is to say, that trust in their preparation — lends Davis and Godwin a conviction the Cowgirls will have an even better season than they did last year. And when they talk about the College World Series, it’s in terms of “when,” not “if,” they return this year.

“I cannot wait for spring. I don’t know, last year’s team was fun, and I don’t think I could even imagine how we could have a team that’s closer and more fun than

Davis collected All-Big 12 Freshman team honors and was named to the NFCA All-Region third team.

than last year’s team was, but this one is — we’re crazy,” Godwin said. “I’m just ready to get started and just take o from there, because I think we’re in a really good spot now compared to what we were last year.”

Davis concurred.

“I definitely feel closer to every single one of those girls more than I ever have with anybody in my life. And I think that’s really exciting, because when you step on the field, it’s like you’re all best friends. You’re all there rooting for each other every single day,” she said. “I think it’s definitely going to show in how many wins we get.”

Godwin and Davis think the team’s chemistry will propel them far past just making the College World Series. In fact, when asked if they think they can win the whole thing, they answered immediately, in unison: “Yes.”

Godwin began to elaborate, “If there’s any team that can, it’s —”

“This team,” Davis ﬁnished for her. “A hundred percent.”

“Everybody in that dugout believes in you so much, it’s kind of hard not to believe in yourself.”

— KARLI GODWIN

The Cowgirl Basketball team honored the memory of "The Four" on November 16 against Fairﬁeld at Gallagher-Iba Arena. The annual #RememberThe4 game pays tribute to former head coach Kurt Budke, assistant coach Miranda Serna and supporters Olin and Paula Branstetter, who perished in a plane crash in Arkansas on Nov. 17, 2011. Coach Jacie Hoyt's resilient OSU squad came away with a 64-62 win over a determined Fairﬁeld team that won 32 games a year ago.

ALL 4 ONE PHOTOBROOKEHODGES

THE NCAA’S FIRST BRAND BUILDERS

OSU’S BRAND SQUAD BREAKS NEW GROUND IN NIL ERA

STORY BY

PHOTOS BY Dr. Maribeth Kuzmeski

BRUCE WATERFIELD and OSU BRAND SQUAD

There is no instruction guide to help universities navigate the new guidance from the NCAA on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL). From my perspective as a marketing professor who teaches many student-athletes, I began to consider what we could do from the academic side of campus.

What transpired was the formation of an organization called The Brand Squad, which is a group of top students at Oklahoma State University who have been trained and certiﬁed to assist OSU student-athletes with their NIL e orts. It operates essentially as a marketing and media agency run by passionate students who do not make or collect any money for their services. Since its inception, The Brand Squad has received national attention as a ﬁrst-of-its-kind organization where students are making a di erence in NIL.

The organization, comprising 150 members, focuses on supporting OSU student-athletes. Our members are involved in various initiatives aimed at addressing di erent aspects of this new era. They work on connecting student-athletes to deals and sponsorships with businesses, creating merchandise, improving their social media presence and follower counts in preparation for business opportunities, and assisting them in creating content and activating deals through photo and video production. Additionally, members run a podcast to help gain exposure for student-athletes, manage athlete clinics and accompany athletes to events and appearances.

“Brand Squad helped me develop a passion for sponsorship marketing and gave me experience that I hope to turn into a career.”

— Owen Ashmore Buffalo, Okla.

Sports Marketing & Sports Management, Spring 2025

The first — and perhaps most important — activity is helping student-athletes find, coordinate and activate NIL endorsement deals with businesses. Our Deals and Sponsorships initiative reaches out both locally and nationally to find opportunities for our student-athletes. Members begin by learning about the student-athletes and identifying potential business connections. A successful business deal must benefit both the business and the student-athlete, so members proactively locate what they believe may be good opportunities and then email, call, or visit businesses to pitch their case. The Brand Squad has successfully secured deals from $250 to $10,000 and more for both female and male student-athletes across all sports.

Another initiative is our Media team, specializing in photo and video. Media members assist student-athletes in capturing photos for their social media and for business deal activations. While some members come to the organization with experience in photo and video, others receive training from their peers.

For instance, some members arrive with their own cameras and video equipment, while others have none. The initiative fosters a collaborative learning environment where members train one another on skills necessary to capture compelling stories through photo and video, as well as use editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere.

“This is such an impactful organization on campus. So many of the public-facing NIL deals have been facilitated through our student organization.”

— Brighton Snow Washington, Okla. Marketing, 2026

Media also has a production team responsible for creating videos, commercials and photo shoots for studentathletes' business deals. These members are granted media passes and access to the ﬁeld during games to take specialized photos for use by our student-athletes and the Brand Squad.

The Brand Squad also has a social media initiative that works directly with student-athletes interested in enhancing their social media presence, increasing their following and developing engaging content. Members meet one-on-one with student-athletes to help them prepare content calendars ﬁlled with ideas and strategies for producing engaging stories and growing their follower base. All of these e orts are critically important for presenting student-athletes as ready to assist businesses through endorsement deals.

Another signiﬁcant initiative is the Brand Squad Podcast, designed to gain exposure for our student-athletes and their stories. The host, Les Thomas (OSU hype man), has done a remarkable job helping our student-athletes tell their stories, all pro bono. We have recently engaged advertisers like Strive Wellness in Stillwater to help cover the costs of production, hosting and equipment.

Members also manage Brand Squad social media accounts, website, newsletter and public relations e orts. Students have participated in webinars that received national coverage, spoken at events and regularly share ideas with students at other universities interested in starting their own Brand Squad. Additionally, Brand Squad members have the

The Brand Squad Executive Leadership Front row: Megan Mraz, Dr. Maribeth Kuzmeski, Ava Hardin and Lauren Duncan. Back row: Keaton Haney, Isaac Wagner and Clay Hatﬁeld.

opportunity to serve as o cial football ambassadors on game days, welcoming suiteholders and providing them with an insider newsletter, From The West End Zone, featuring quotes from the coach, game insights, updated rosters and information about upcoming events.

Over the past year, the Brand Squad been raising funds through PhilanthroPete (run by the OSU Foundation) to beneﬁt our students and cover some of the costs associated with classes they are taking to gain essential experience in social media, graphic design, editing, content marketing and NIL certiﬁcations. In 2024, we gave $3,000 to our members to support their education.

While NIL is dramatically changing college athletics, the Brand Squad is also yielding signiﬁcant, positive and unforeseen beneﬁts for our students. Remarkably, 100 percent of students who have been active members of the Brand Squad have secured internships and jobs in sports marketing. These positions are highly competitive, and the experience students gain from participating in this organization serves as invaluable on-the-job training for their careers.

FROM THE BEGINNING

In July of 2021, with NIL in its embryonic stages, senior associate athleticdirector Kevin Klintworth reached out to me after receiving a recommendation from the Spears School of Business Dean’s o ce. He wanted to know if I could o er a class to help educate our student-athletes on marketing, entrepreneurship, personal branding and more. Although I had no particular qualiﬁcations for this ask — aside from being a marketing professor and having many student-athletes in my family — I happily accepted the challenge. I proceeded to create a series of classes at OSU and wrote a textbook that is now sold throughout the United States titled Name, Image & Likeness: Personal Branding for Student-Athletes

However, instead of merely preparing for a class, I began to panic. This session wouldn't be enough! I knew the student-athletes in my family were often pulled in numerous directions. I didn't believe that most student-athletes would have the time and focus to prepare their social media accounts for business opportunities, navigate contracts and pitch themselves to businesses. We needed more.

“The Brand Squad has been like a family to me. Together, we love to see each other achieve and hit our goals and forward the success of NIL at OSU.”

— Elisabeth Adams Davis, Okla. Sports Marketing/Minor in Sports Management, 2027

Why not engage our OSU students to help our student-athletes? We have so many smart, motivated students at Oklahoma State — what if they could learn while assisting our student-athletes?

As I drove to a lunch meeting at Hideaway with Klintworth and Stephen Howard (at the time the director of creative services for OSU Athletics and now communications manager at Spears) to discuss NIL and my class, I called Tom Brown, the head of the marketing department. I proposed starting a new club on campus to help our student-athletes with their NIL e orts. I asked Brown if this was feasible.

He quickly responded that this sounded like a promising idea with potential for valuable experiences for our marketing students, but he wanted to ensure I had approval from the athletic department. With their knowledge and sign-o , he believed the club would be more successful.

Now, I just needed Athletics to agree. Thankfully, I received approval from Klintworth and Howard during our lunch meeting. Whew! And now the real work began.

How do I recruit students whom I had already promised would be ready to work on a challenge they may not even know about yet? NIL was so new. That week, I went to the marketing club, where I was the faculty advisor, and asked if students wanted to help me create a new club to support our student-athletes. Fifty hands went up, and thus, The Brand Squad was formed

THE BUSINESS SCHOOL PERSPECTIVE

I often joke that we are tricking the students into learning. The Brand Squad operates experientially, so students don’t perceive it as traditional classroom learning. Yet what I have found is that in this volunteer club on campus, students learn as much, if not more, than they would from a formal class, all while gaining experience that helps them secure jobs.

“The benefit of an organization like this is twofold,” noted James Payne, the Dean of the Spears School of Business. “The Brand Squad clearly benefits our students by providing experiential learning and job readiness skills, while also benefiting our university through the support of our athletic department and student-athletes.”

The moment I realized that what the Brand Squad was accomplishing was something larger than just a club on campus was in the fall of 2022. The ﬁrst president of the Brand Squad, Haneen Rashwan, was searching for

jobs in sports as she approached graduation. Shortly after, she received 18 job o ers from collegiate programs across the United States!

Today, she serves as the Director of NIL Administration at Baylor University. The second president of the Brand Squad, Mackenzie Janish, is now employed by OSU Athletics as the assistant director of NIL.

As the landscape of college athletics continues to evolve, the Brand Squad stands as a testament to the innovative spirit and collaborative e orts of our students at Oklahoma State University. As we move forward, the Brand Squad will continue to adapt and grow, ensuring that OSU student-athletes are not only prepared for the challenges of NIL but also positioned to thrive in their future endeavors.

Dr. Maribeth Kuzmeski is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Spears School of Business.

BIG EAST FEAST

OSU's Jamyron Keller drives past a pair of Seton Hall defenders at the annual Big East-Big 12 Battle on December 8. Coach Steve Lutz's squad jumped out to an early lead in the contest, and the Cowboys kept the Pirates at bay for the entire game. The Pokes rattled the host team with defensive pressure and a fast-paced o ense to secure an 85-76 road win at the Prudential Center. Keller, along with teammate Robert Jennings II, ﬁnished with a team-high 14 points.

PHOTOCOOPERPEACOCK

Not all fans are created equal.

That truism not only applies to the sports world, but also to the manufacturing industry. The Cook family is deeply rooted in both.

As Oklahoma State parents and fans for about the last decade, Loren Cook II and his wife, Elaine, are relatively new to the OSU family. But boy, have they made up for lost time!

FRESH AIR

Both Loren and Elaine (Baron) were born and raised in Springﬁeld, Mo. They met while students at Southwest Missouri State — now Missouri State — and raised two daughters in their hometown. But as for their children, the parents encouraged them to spread their wings beyond the Ozarks.

“We really wanted them to get out on their own,” Loren said.

The oldest, Hannah, pursued her passions at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles. Younger sister Jacqueline wanted a more traditional college experience.

“It was the summer before Jacqueline’s senior year, and we were going to take college tours,” Elaine recalls. “She never really wanted to go to the University of Missouri or Arkansas because all of her friends from school were going there, and she wanted to go someplace di erent.”

In 2012, the Cook family travelogue included stops at a number of Big 12 campuses.

“We visited Texas A&M, Baylor, TCU and OU — Loren was an OU fan,” Elaine admits. “He loved the history.”

“Looking back, I really did not like OU,” Jacqueline recalls. “And I thought I would because we kind of grew up liking the Sooners. After touring the campus, I was like, ‘Oh, I could never go here.’

“I really fell in love with Texas A&M,” she adds, “but I was open to looking at other schools.”

As a long-time attendee at Kanakuk Kamps — a Christian summer camp based in nearby Branson — Jacqueline looked up to several counselors with OSU ties. Ally Wagner and her boyfriend (and future husband) Connor Baxter worked at Kanukuk while in college, and according to Jacqueline, took every opportunity to rep the Pokes. A former state runner-up at Tulsa Union High School, Connor was a freshman on the Cowboy wrestling squad in 2012-13.

“They encouraged Jacqueline to visit Oklahoma State,” Elaine said. “It really wasn’t even on our radar.”

OSU was a deﬁnite dark horse in the race, but the Kanakuk contingent wouldn’t give up.

“Connor was always saying, ‘OSU is such a great school. You should just go there.’ I told my parents we should check out Stillwater so we put it on the list.”

Stillwater was the Cooks last college visit.

“It went great,” Jacqueline said. “I think I really knew when we ﬁrst stepped on campus and went on the tour. I had obviously gone to a lot of tours already, but the town, the culture, meeting people … Everyone was so friendly, and I just saw myself here and thought, ‘This is somewhere I could call home for four years.’

“We met up with Connor and had lunch with him at Eskimo Joe’s after the tour. Everyone was so down to earth, and they really made you feel like they cared about visitors touring the school. Everybody had pride in it, and they all loved it.”

The parents were equally impressed, but they wanted it to be Jacqueline’s decision.

“We spent that night in Stillwater, and I had told Loren, ‘Don’t say anything. We just need to let her make that decision.’ But we both thought it’s a great school, and we would love for her to go here. Out of all those schools, it really felt at home. We loved it.”

Oklahoma State was moving up to the top of the list, but it was an unknown Cowboy that sealed the deal for Elaine.

“I remember one student who held the door open for us. He said, ‘Are you guys here on a tour?’ and Jacqueline was like, ‘Yeah, I think I might be coming here,’ and he goes, ‘Welcome home!’

“Well, that did it for me.”

“That’s Oklahoma State,” adds Loren. “The people you meet are very genuine and normal and not pretentious. You just feel welcome … The culture is night and day from other places we visited.”

A year later, they were moving Jacqueline into Drummond Hall. Meanwhile, in Springﬁeld, Loren was immediately redecorating his garage.

“Jacqueline’s ﬁrst semester at OSU, Loren calls the school to get the o cial Pantone orange color. And I go, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m going to get the right orange so we can paint the wall.’ So he had an entire wall in our garage painted orange and had someone come and paint a Pistol Pete on there. This is her ﬁrst semester, and I said, ‘What if she doesn’t like the school? What if she comes home?’ And he goes, ‘She’s gonna love it!’”

Dad was right.

“ They are great, great people. We’re lucky to know them . ”

— BRAD SCHULTZ on LOREN and ELAINE COOK

FANS, FRIENDS & FAMILY

With a daughter on campus, the Cooks quickly became die-hard Cowboy and Cowgirl fans. Season tickets for football, soccer and baseball soon followed … with basketball games when time would allow.

Their involvement in OSU athletics led to new friendships with other POSSE members, as well as reconnections with extended family.

Elaine’s second cousin, Doug Talley, and his wife Debbie, are OSU alumni from Tulsa.

“I wasn’t really close with some of my cousins,” Elaine admits. “My mom was the youngest of 11 and Doug was the youngest of 10. We saw him at weddings and funerals and that kind of thing. But then when Jacqueline started going to school at OSU, we connected again.

“I told Loren that has been the biggest blessing for us. I feel like it was sort of God leading us that direction.”

Loren was also able to reconnect with his great aunt, Lois McElraft, the longtime bookkeeper for what was then called Campus Hideaway. She lived later in life at Westhaven Nursing Home.

“Jacqueline would go visit Aunt Lois at the nursing home with her sorority sisters,” Elaine said. “It was just beautiful.”

The Oklahoma-Cook connection goes back to Loren I, who graduated from Yale High School and was a family friend of the legendary Jim Thorpe

“My great grandmother knew Jim Thorpe,” Loren said. “I can remember some of the stories they would tell about the Olympics and how he was such a phenomenal athlete.

“It’s really wild how it kind of comes full circle. My grandfather was born in Spokane, Missouri, halfway between Springﬁeld and Branson, but he moved to Yale, Oklahoma, and then he goes o and goes to a trade school and starts a company up in Ohio … and then my Aunt Lois and my great grandmother Weltha Cook were down in Stillwater all those years. I remember going to see them in the seventies. I had a great uncle (Wayne Cook) who had a pipe company for the oil industry up in Pawnee. So a lot of my family has Oklahoma roots. Elaine’s family has Oklahoma roots. And then here’s our daughter who attended Oklahoma State.”

“It’s been a blessing for us to meet new people through OSU,” Elaine says, “and now we have lifelong friends.”

Those friends include longtime POSSE members Brad and Margie Schultz of Booker, Texas, whom they met before Jacqueline’s freshman year. Jacqueline’s best friend, Chandler Craven (who ended up attending OSU as well), and her family knew the Schultzes from Table Rock Lake, a popular Ozarks recreation destination.

Loren and Cowboy legend Thurman Thomas.

Loren and Elaine with daughters Jacqueline (right) and Hannah Jimenez (center), Hannah’s husband Omar and son Henry.

“Brad and Margie have a houseboat on the lake,” Loren said. “They were friends of friends of ours here in town, and somehow Oklahoma State came up in conversation. So they introduced us, and we got to spend some time with them. Before football games we’d go over and see them in the State Rangers RV lot.”

“He’s just so easy to get to know,” Brad said. “Loren never met a stranger. He’s got a booming personality that impresses people. He’s not trying to be the smartest guy in the room. He’s just being the friendliest guy in the room and makes everybody else at ease. I just can’t hardly say enough good things about Loren.

“And Elaine — they just don’t make ladies any ﬁner than that woman,” he adds. “She’s always smiling. She just wants to make sure that you’re having a good time at anything she’s involved with. She’s the mother hen. If there’s anything that you want, she is going to try to accommodate you.

“They are great, great people. We’re lucky to know them.”

Schultz says the Cook’s interest in sports and spirit for helping others has led them to contribute in a big way to OSU Athletics and the university.

“Loren is a huge sports bu ,” Brad said. “He invited us to their house and down in his basement is what I would call the

ultimate man cave. He has sports memorabilia from damn near when they started baseball. He’s a huge sports fan, and in fact, had a sports talk radio show in Springﬁeld for a while.

“He sees things from a di erent level because I think he’s been so involved in sports for so much of his lifetime. He sees things that need to be improved or can be improved — or have shown success — and he’s willing to help.”

PHILANTHROPHY WITHOUT FANFARE

Early on, the Schultzes introduced the Cooks to Shawn Taylor, OSU Associate Athletic Director for Development. One of the ﬁrst needs they addressed was a video board for soccer, several years prior to the construction of Neal Patterson Stadium

“Jacqueline played soccer in high school and played club soccer as well and really enjoyed it,” Loren said. “So Elaine and I started developing an appreciation for soccer, and that’s how we initially got involved with OSU soccer. We like helping the Olympic sports per se — some of the programs that don’t really get a lot of attention. You can make a big impact with those programs.

The Cooks hosted the Cowgirl Soccer team prior to its game at Missouri State in 2023.

“We also love football. It’s probably my favorite sport, along with baseball.”

“They had season tickets at Boone Pickens Stadium,” Taylor recalls, “But after sitting through the 2013 Bedlam game with temperatures in the teens and snow on the bleachers, they had interest in the premium indoor areas. Loren told me, ‘I nearly froze to death. I don’t want to do that anymore.’

“They ended up buying a suite. They went all-in pretty quick.”

“Fortunately, we were able to get our hands on a suite that became available, and we went ahead and took the plunge,” Loren said. “And now that takes weather out of the equation. We use it as a nice tool for work, for family, for friends or to just share it with other people who don’t get that opportunity very often. That’s probably what’s been the most rewarding part of having a suite.”

“They’re just very good people who have high integrity, very down to earth,” Taylor said. “They’ve been wonderful about doing things without wanting to be known.”

“We’ve been very blessed and have worked hard to become successful. But with all that being said, we don’t like a lot of attention,” Loren said. “We don’t need the limelight. I guess it probably stems back to when I was an o ensive lineman. What do linemen do? They block. They protect. They do their job, and they let the QB and the skill position players get all the limelight. That’s just who we are.”

“Who they are” has also spurred a major gift to the newly named Boone Pickens Human Performance Innovation Complex

“Lance Walker (Rick and Gail Muncrief Executive Director of the Human Performance & Nutrition Research Institute) was up in our suite,” Loren explains. “We had a nice conversation with him and were just talking about everything that’s challenging for a person with their health. What’s nice about it is that it’s going to serve the student-athletes, obviously, but the entire university and everyone who lives in all 77 counties in Oklahoma. The whole state is going to beneﬁt from it … It’s very unique. I don’t think anyone in the country has anything like this.”

“I feel the same way,” adds Elaine. “Oklahoma reminds me a lot of Missouri. There are a lot of poorer counties and people that need health care and direction. I feel like Oklahoma State has taken this concept, and they’re going in a direction that Missouri may want to emulate. I’m hoping that happens with a lot of di erent states because I think it’ll be a wonderful thing.

“At the end of the day, we just want to help make a di erence for people.”

That di erence-maker spirit is evident in a number of areas. Elaine says the Cook Family Foundation supports various causes near and dear to their hearts.

“We’re really passionate about veterans, children and law enforcement.”

The foundation has also donated to Kanakuk and Camp Barnabas, a special needs camp in southwest Missouri. They’ve even sponsored and served as guardians on Honor Flights for veterans to visit Washington, D.C. and celebrate their sacriﬁce and service.

“It really is life changing,” Elaine said.

BLOWIN’ & GOIN’

In 1941, Loren’s grandfather and namesake founded the Loren Cook Company, with the goal of selling an industrial fan in a market with vast potential.

“My grandfather started his company out of a garage in Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He was a true entrepreneur and risk taker and had a phenomenal work ethic — like o the charts.

“To give you a little back history, my grandfather went to a trade school in Chicago and worked for a guy by the name of Bill Grainger, founder of the W.W. Grainger Company. His roommate was a guy by the name of Lou Jenn, who founded Jenn-Air products. They worked for Bill Grainger to pay for their schooling and their room and board at the YMCA. My grandfather got an o er to work for Bill in Ohio, and that’s where he met my grandmother.”

Loren Cook I was enamored with fans, says his grandson.

“He did some side business for a defunct fan company in Chicago, and that’s when he got this idea to supply fans that ventilate or exhaust air out of buildings. In his mind, he thought if he could just scratch the surface of that industry — because you can’t have a building with no air movement at all — just think about how many buildings there are around the world. It’s inﬁnite.

“So he came out with the very ﬁrst fan that didn’t have any moving parts. We call it a power roof vent, like the kind you see on homes to let the air out of the attic when it gets hot.”

Back then there were about 50 or 60 fan companies in the industry, he says, and his grandfather worked tirelessly to compete for sales reps.

“We grew very slowly through the forties, the ﬁfties, and the sixties, until we got a little bit more of a fan o ering to attract better reps,” Loren said. “Over time, those other companies either sold out or consolidated or went out of business. Today you have a handful of competitors. Now we’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in every market in North America.”

The Loren Cook Company moved its main operation to Springﬁeld in 1964.

“When my dad got out of college, he came to Springfield to be a big fish in a small pond. He loved my grandfather but wanted to be his own guy down here. My dad had a phenomenal work ethic, too. Hours and hours and hours of work. He did that through the sixties and seventies and eighties. We really started to grow, and as we got a little bit bigger, we were able to diversify some of our products and reinvest with better equipment, hire more people and engineers and the whole nine yards. Now we’ve got a huge, diversified product line that’s very appealing.”

The founder’s son, Jerry Cook, took the reins in 1972. Today, the Loren Cook Company employs over 600 people with additional plants added in Co eyville, Kan., (2014) and McAlester, Okla. (2023).

“We prefer to keep our manufacturing here in the United States,” Loren said. “My dad feels very strongly about being American-made, and I do, too. And it’s worked well for what we do.

“If you count the mothership and add those other plants, we have about 1.2 million square feet under roof. We moved some production to Kansas and Oklahoma where we could ﬁnd a large labor pool, and that’s gone very well for us. With these small towns, you get this work ethic and a rural mentality. A lot of them maybe grew up on a farm, and they know what hard work is.”

The Cooks were “Dave Ramsey before Dave Ramsey,” he jokes, citing the popular personal ﬁnance guru.

“My dad and my grandfather preached, ‘If you can’t a ord it, don’t buy it.’ We’re proﬁtable, and we don’t have any debt in our company. We have been around for 83 years, and one thing we’re proud of is that we’ve never had a layo in our company history. I’m not saying that from a boastful standpoint — we’ve just tried to be a very e cient company. We’re lean. We’re a humble company. We try to stay focused and be a good steward of our people and what we have here.

“We think it’s important to take care of our people because they’ve gotten us to where we are today. We also provide free healthcare for every employee and their family.”

Loren II, formerly the VP of marketing and customer experience, became company president in 2020. Jerry remains chairman and CEO.

“I’m a marketing guy through and through,” Loren said. “Sales and marketing are my forte. That’s what I like the best, and my o ce is still next to the sales team. I never moved it back to the corner o ce where our former president was … I want to be among the people and have an open door. I’ve just got a job to do like everyone else.”

That hard-working mindset was ingrained at a young age, he says.

“My dad put me to work in seventh grade, you know, cleaning toilets and sweeping ﬂoors, doing all that grunt work. I’d go into work when he went in at 6 a.m. in the summers. I was not happy about it at the time, but you realize the value of it as you get older. That humble work ethic he instilled in me is what my grandfather instilled in him.”

That’s also what the Cooks ﬁrst saw in Oklahoma State, and it’s what has kept them connected after Jacqueline (now a self-employed party planner in Frisco, Texas) joined the alumni ranks.

“It’s fun for my parents because they have a school that is wanting to grow and wanting to get better,” Jacqueline said. “You know, people can donate money anywhere, but when you see where your money is going and see the beneﬁts, it makes a world of a di erence.”

“I guess it really boils down to the culture and the people because OSU ﬁts who Elaine and I are,” Loren said. “That’s really the charm of the place. It’s that Cowboy Culture (OSU President) Kayse Shrum talks about. It’s just a unique, special place.”

GUESTS OF HONOR

OSU Athletics celebrated the Hall of Honor Class of 2024 during the weekend of Sept. 20-21. Inducted into this elite club are Lauren Bay (softball), David Edwards (golf), Ross Flood (wrestling), Charles Howell III (golf), James Wadley (tennis), Brandon Weeden (football) and the 1965 men's track and ﬁeld relay team of Dave Perry, John Perry, Jim Metcalf and Tom Von Ruden. The special ceremony was held Friday, Sept. 20, at Gallagher-Iba Arena, with the inductees and their families recognized on the ﬁeld at halftime of the OSU-Utah football game the following day.

PHOTOSNIKOLASMARZULLO/BRUCEWATERFIELD

When OSU announced its scholarship endowment initiative, the athletic program was last in the Big 12. Now, more than halfway through the 10-year program, OSU leads the conference.

But we’re not ﬁnished yet.

OSU awards 229 full scholarships to student-athletes each year at a cost of $4.5 million. Each dollar freed up through endowed scholarships goes back into our programs. Better equipment. Better facilities. Better support. Each dollar has a direct impact on the lives of our student-athletes.

This is the list of all the generous supporters who have helped to provide a bright Orange future.

They are our Honor Roll.

Baseball 10.25

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Dennis and Karen Wing (2) | Hal Tompkins

Sandy Lee | Jennifer and Steven Grigsby

Mike Bode and Preston Carrier (2)

David and Julie Ronck

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Sally Graham Skaggs

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Bryant and Carla Co man

David and Grace Helmer | Jill Rooker

Martha Seabolt | Dr. Scott Anthony

John and Beverly Williams

Richard and Lawana Kunze

Equestrian 1.25

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Baloo and Maribeth Subramaniam

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

David and Gina Dabney

Football 33.0

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Bob and Kay Norris

Bryant and Carla Co man /

The Merkel Foundation

David LeNorman | Dennis and Karen Wing (2)

Dr. Mark and Beth Brewer

Ike and Marybeth Glass

Jack and Carol Corgan

Jim Click | John and Gail Shaw

Ken and Jimi Davidson | Leslie Dunavant

Mike and Kristen Gundy

Mike and Robbie Holder

Ron Stewart | Ross and Billie McKnight

Sandy Lee | Tom and Sandra Wilson

Wray and Julie Valentine

James and Mary Barnes

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Cindy Hughes | Donald Coplin

Doug Thompson | Ed and Helen Wallace

R. Kirk Whitman | Greg Casillas

Jim and Lynne Williams / John and Patti Brett

Mike and Judy Johnson | Sally Graham Skaggs

State Rangers | Tom Naugle | Nate Watson

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Al and Martha Strecker

Arthur “Andy” Johnson, Jr.

Arthur Couch | Barry and Roxanne Pollard

Bill and Ruth Starr | Brad and Leah Gungoll

Brian K. Pauling

Bridgecreek Investment Management LLC

Junior Tristan Bagby (riding Bueno) put together her best ride of the season, earning an event-high 74.5 in reining, as the Cowgirls topped SMU 13-5 at the Pedigo-Hull Equestrian Center. Headed into the spring semester, the Cowgirls are ranked in the Top 5 by the National Collegiate Equestrian Association.

Bryan Close | David and Cindy Waits

David and Gina Dabney | Dr. Berno Ebbesson

Dr. Ron and Marilynn McAfee

Eddy and Deniece Ditzler | Flintco

Fred and Janice Gibson | Fred and Karen Hall

Howard Thill | James and LaVerna Cobb

Jerry and Lynda Baker | John P. Melot

Jerry and Rae Winchester

John S. Clark | Ken and Leitner Greiner

Kent and Margo Dunbar | Paul and Mona Pitts

Randall and Carol White | Shelli Osborn

Roger and Laura Demaree

Steve and Diane Tuttle

Tony and Finetta Banﬁeld

General 1.25

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Terry and Martha Barker

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

David and Judy Powell

Kenneth and Susan Crouch

Sally Graham Skaggs

Graduate Athlete 0.75

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Bob and Joan Hert | Neal Seidle

Tom and Cheryl Hamilton

Men's Basketball 23.5

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Baloo and Maribeth Subramaniam

A.J. and Susan Jacques

Bill and Marsha Barnes

Brett and Amy Jameson

Calvin and Linda Anthony

Chuck and Kim Watson

David and Julie Ronck (1.25)

Dennis and Karen Wing (2)

Douglas and Nickie Burns

Gri and Mindi Jones

James and Mary Barnes | Jim Vallion

Ken and Jimi Davidson

Kent and Margo Dunbar | KimRay Inc.

Sandy Lee | Mitch Jones Memorial

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

David and Julie Ronck

Dr. Mark and Susan Morrow

Jay and Connie Wiese | Sally Graham Skaggs

Stan Clark | Billy Wayne Travis

Holloman Family

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Dr. Scott and Lynne Anthony

Gary and Sue Homsey

Michael and Heather Grismore

Rick and Suzanne Maxwell

Robert and Sharon Keating

Steve and Suzie Crowder

Terry and Donna Tippens

Men's Golf 7.0

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

David and Julie Ronck

Dennis and Karen Wing

Jack and Carol Corgan

Bob and Elizabeth Nickles

Genevieve A. Robinson

Baloo and Maribeth Subramaniam

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Simmons Bank

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Garland and Penny Cupp

Richard and Joan Welborn

Men's Tennis 0.75

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Tom and Cheryl Hamilton

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Jim McDowell Men's

Men's Track 0.75

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Dr. Mark and Susan Morrow

Susan Anderson | Ken and Leitner Greiner

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Mary Jane and Brent Wooten Soccer 1.0

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

James and Mary Barnes

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Tom and Cheryl Hamilton

Richard Melot

Ann Dyer

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Brad and Margie Schultz

Ken and Jimi Davidson

Mike Bode and Preston Carrier

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Baloo and Maribeth Subramaniam

Don and Mary McCall

John and Caroline Linehan

Calvin and Linda Anthony

Mike Bode and Preston Carrier

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Bill and Roberta Armstrong

Bill and Sally Cunningham

Donald Coplin | Jill Rooker

Richard and Linda Rodgers

Jo Hughes and Deborah J. Ernst

Richard Melot

Women’s Golf 3.0

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

Baloo and Maribeth Subramaniam

Genevieve A. Robinson

Louise Solheim

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

David and Julie Ronck | Dena Dills Nowotny

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Amy Weeks | Kent and Margo Dunbar

Women’s Tennis 0.5

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Jamie Maher

Richard Melot

FULL SCHOLARSHIP

A.J. and Susan Jacques

Bruce and Nancy Smith

Chuck and Kim Watson

Lon and Jane Winton

OSU Wrestling – White Jacket Club / Gallagher Endowed Wrestling Scholarship

OSU Wrestling – White Jacket Club / Myron Roderick Endowed Wrestling Scholarship

OSU Wrestling – White Jacket Club / Ray Murphy Endowed Wrestling Scholarship

OSU Wrestling – White Jacket Club / Tommy Chesbro Endowed Wrestling Scholarship

The Cobb Family

HALF SCHOLARSHIP

Mike and Glynda Pollard

Mark and Lisa Snell

Bobby and Michelle Marandi

QUARTER SCHOLARSHIP

Danny and Dana Baze / Cory and Mindy Baze

Kyle and Debbie Hadwiger

John and Beverly Williams | R.K. Winters

To learn more about scholarship opportunities and how you may contribute, please contact:

Larry Reece (405-744-2824)

Matt Grantham (405-744-5938)

Daniel Heﬂ in (405-744-7301)

Shawn Taylor (405-744-3002)

NAME RECOGNITION

OSU's planned Human Performance Innovation Complex will be named in honor of the late philanthropist and businessman T. Boone Pickens. The complex, which will be located near the Sherman E. Smith Training Center, will house OSU's Human Performance and Nutrition Research Institute along with Cowboy Football training areas, locker room and o ces.

Pictured at the Nov. 19 naming announcement are: OSU Director of Athletics Chad Weiberg, Pickens' longtime head of a airs Jay Rosser, HPNRI Rick and Gail Muncrief Executive Director Lance Walker, OSU President Kayse Shrum, OSU Innovation Foundation CEO Elizabeth Pollard and OSU Foundation Trustee Gail Muncrief

PHOTOBRUCEWATERFIELD

Award-winners John and Cheryl Clerico are joined on stage by Jamyron Keller, Davonte Davis and Patrick Suemnick from Cowboy Basketball, along with Maddie Meiner (track), Cadence Kueker (equestrian) and Pistol Pete

Clockwise from left: Johnna Orange (track), host Baillie Burmaster (soccer alum and current sports director at Atlanta News First) and Ollie Gordon II (football), Jeremy Manibog (wrestling) and Jordan Johnson (football GA).

ORANGE CARPET

The stars were out at the 2024 Cowboy Choice Awards, OSU Athletics' annual awards ceremony put on by the student-athletes themselves. This year's event included a talent showcase as well as special awards for outstanding team and individual performances over the past year. Cowboy VIPs John and Cheryl Clerico were recognized with the "T. Boone Pickens Di erence Maker Award" for their loyal support throughout the years.

PHOTOSNIKOLASMARZULLO

Track and Field's Fouad Messaoudi, Mehdi Yanouri and Hafez Mahadi show o their style in the CCA photo booth.

the constAnt puRsuitof GreatnEss

story by

photos by jenni carlson

bruce waterﬁeld and landry bledsoe

Trophies and awards ﬁll the shelves behind Dave Smith’s desk.

Hardware that is identical, except for the year, is grouped together and spaced so closely that if one were knocked down, the whole lot would fall like dominos.

It’s an impressive display.

But none of the hardware is the Oklahoma State cross country and track coach’s favorite piece.

“I probably like that poster the best,” he said, pointing to the one thing on his wall. It’s a collection of photos taken by Track and Field News during the 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s Cross Country Championship. They show the leaders and the chase group at every split. Plus, there are photos of Cowboy runners along the way as well as at the ﬁnish line.

It’s visual evidence of OSU’s ﬁrst cross country championship since 1954 and Smith’s ﬁrst as a head coach, too.

“Something that I always wanted,” he said.

He chuckled.

“But you think it’s not really ever going to happen.”

That a cross country national title happened at OSU? Then happened again? And again? And again? What has happened with Cowboy cross country might not be the most

unlikely rise in college athletics in the 2000s, but Smith and OSU didn’t just break into cross country’s elite.

They reconﬁgured the sport.

“It’s a dynasty,” said David Jankowski, one of Smith’s ﬁrst recruits to Stillwater. “When you sit down to play the NCAA football or basketball (video) games and you do the dynasty mode, what you’re planning to build is what Dave’s done.”

How Smith turned Oklahoma State into a distancerunning powerhouse is a journey that took much more stamina than any cross country race. It started in his childhood in the Paciﬁc Northwest, wound to the West Texas plains and ultimately brought him to Payne County in the before times — before the time T. Boone Pickens donated $165 million to the athletic department and sparked a transformation.

“I think the state of the program was probably similar to the state of the athletic department,” Smith said of when he arrived as an assistant in 2002. “We didn’t have Boone Pickens Stadium. We didn’t have Neal Patterson Stadium. We didn’t have the Greenwood Tennis Center or O’Brate Stadium. It was a di erent world.”

Dave Smith captured his ﬁrst NCAA Cross Country national championship trophy in 2009 ...

But Smith could see what was possible. He might not have envisioned that he would one day oversee a strong women’s cross country team and a full-fledged track and field program in addition to the flagship men’s program. Then again, he has never shied away from audacious aspirations. He often quizzes recruits about theirs.

“What do you dream about?” he’ll ask. Some will say, “Well, I just want a good team where I like my teammates, and I improve.”

Those are perfectly ﬁne expectations, but is that a dream?

“I want someone who’s not afraid to say, ‘I want to be an Olympian. Screw that: I want to be a medalist Or wait, why not gold?’” Smith said. “I like that kind of vision.”

It’s the kind of vision Dave Smith had to have.

Dave Smith grew up a high school coach’s kid in Tumwater, Washington, next door to Olympia, an hour south of Seattle. Even though he went to lots of his dad’s games and events, that isn’t what he remembers most about his dad being a coach.

“We had high school kids at our house all the time,” Smith said. “We would go on backpacking trips in the summers, and there’d be a group of high school kids that would come.”

Smith remembers hiking through the Olympic National Forest when he wasn’t even old enough to go to school. He’d get tired, and his dad’s athletes would hoist Dave, backpack and all, on their shoulders. Those moments shaped how Smith thought about coaching.

“I saw coaching as this kind of family experience,” he said.

Not that he wanted to make a career of it.

Even though Smith became a successful distance runner in high school and landed a scholarship at Michigan State, he had no plans to coach after college. He got his degree in ﬁsheries and wildlife and hoped to work in the woods and mountains of the Paciﬁc Northwest.

But he quickly realized his early days would be spent behind a desk, not in the great outdoors. Smith decided to go to grad school back home at the University of Washington and eventually got his doctorate in pharmacology with a neurobiology emphasis.

“I didn’t like that either,” he said.

The hours spent in the lab, often alone and rarely interacting with others, weren’t for him. Smith scratched his itch for human interaction and time outdoors by volunteering as a coach at Washington and coaching a women’s club team.

Still, when he got a call from Texas Tech, which was looking for a distance coach, Smith wasn’t all that interested. He also wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

So when the head coach at Texas Tech said he only needed someone to ﬁll the assistant job for a year, Smith decided Lubbock might be the perfect place to get away from everything, clear his head and ﬁgure out what he was going to do next.

A month in, he knew the answer.

“I’m never going back,” he said. “I’m going to coach.”

Smith spent four years at Texas Tech, but after a head coaching change, he decided to move back to Washington. Since the salary for distance coaches in those days wasn’t great, he considered trying to get a job at Microsoft where his sister worked. But he just couldn’t bring himself to work a desk job.

During his time at Texas Tech, Smith had gotten to know Oklahoma State head coach Dick Weis and heard he might have an opening for an assistant coach. Smith called Weis. He moved to Stillwater in 2002 and never left

ﬁndiNg the sTillWater ﬁt

Dave Smith was in no position to go after bluechip recruits.

Four stars? No way.

Three stars? Nuh-uh.

“Then you’re moving back into the unranked athletes you’re recruiting, and there’s a lot of those guys,” Smith said. “So the nice thing about that is, you get to be really choosy about which ones you bring.”

Of course, they had to want to come to Stillwater. At the time, OSU had a cross country course on the north side of campus with good bones but limited beauty, no indoor track and an outdoor track beyond repair.

Smith had a strategy: “Never show a recruit the track.”

They might drive by it, and even from the street, you could see its predominant feature was rust. Rusty fence. Rusty bleachers. Smith would point in the general direction, make a vague promise that might or might not be upheld to see it later, then hit the accelerator.

But he started to realize something.

“The kind of athletes that were going to come here weren’t going to be impressed by shiny objects and ﬂashy stu ,” he said. “It’s going to have to be more substantive and a deeper connection. We say recruiting is relationship based. It’s not always that way, but it was going to have to be here.”

Jankowski remembers feeling that familial atmosphere during his recruiting trip. Being from Idaho, he knew he would be a thousand miles from home if he chose OSU.

That quickly became a non-factor.

“You have an immediate friend group,” Jankowski said. “I think Dave did a really good job of building that kind of environment.”

The team would play disc golf at Boomer Lake or have board game nights at the track. That was their entertainment, and Smith didn’t try to trick runners about any of that.

Stillwater wasn’t Los Angeles.

“There’s no beaches or palm trees or snow-capped mountains, and it’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and too windy all the damn time,” Smith would tell recruits. “I’ll give you a thousand reasons not to come here. Because all my competitors are gonna tell you these same things.”

But Smith also told recruits that the Cowboys could win a national championship.

“I SAW COACHING AS THIS KIND OF FAMILY EXPERIENCE.”

— DAVE SMITH

“As an 18-year-old, I had no idea what it actually took to win a national title,” said Ryan Vail, who became Smith’s ﬁrst three-time cross country All-American, “so I just kind of took his word for it because a lot of other coaches just weren’t talking that big.”

In 2007, a year after Smith was elevated to head cross country coach, the Cowboys finished third at nationals. The podium finish left everyone in high spirits, celebrating and smiling, hugging and high-fiving.

Vail remembers a runner from Colorado approaching the group.

“You can be excited when you win a few national titles,” he said.

The condescension raised everyone’s eyebrows.

“There was still a big ﬁre under our butts at that point … because we were kind of looked down upon in the cross country world,” Vail said.

Two years later, the cross country world could only look up at the Cowboys. They toppled two-time defending champ Oregon and favorite Stanford to win the 2009 national title.

OSU won two more in the next three seasons.

From 2007-13, the Cowboys had a top-three ﬁnish every season but one. No other program was more dominant during that stretch.

Smith remembers thinking, “We’re going to ﬁnish top four the rest of my career.”

And in 2013 when Smith thought he had a team good enough to win another title but ﬁnished third instead, he was incensed. He told his runners and his assistants that they were leaving the trophy. Don’t put it on the bus. Don’t take it home.

An assistant smuggled it on the bus.

Soon enough, Smith became grateful for that.

“There was about six or seven years,” he said, “where I’d think, ‘God, I’d kill for a third-place trophy.”

Seven years of feast were followed by nearly seven years of famine.

oTher dUties as asSigneD

Smith created Oklahoma State’s success, and that success created opportunity for him. He had gradually expanded the men’s roster. He had taken over the track and ﬁeld program, adding athletes and assistants bit by bit. He had assumed control of women’s cross country, starting to rebuild it the same way he’d done with the men.

He was also president of the cross country coaches’ association and a member of the NCAA’s cross country committee. And six years after wanting to ditch that third-place trophy, Smith and the Cowboys failed to make NCAAs.

Smith admits he might’ve been spread too thin. Or been blinded by big-time recruits who weren’t good ﬁts. Or strayed from his belief that it was best to ﬁnd kids who weren’t the fastest but always found a way to win.

But however the drink was mixed, it was sour.

“We just weren’t very good, and we got a little bit worse every year,” Smith said. “As a program, we had some highlights. We had some great athletes that did some amazing things, but as a program, we weren’t very good.”

When Chad Weiberg returned to OSU as deputy athletic director in 2017, one of his duties was overseeing cross country and track. He quickly realized how desperately Smith wanted to turn things around.

“He’s an extreme competitor,” Weiberg says.

“Everything he does, he competes.”

Weiberg saw Smith dig in and seek ways to be better. Were there people who might better help the athletes? What about options to improve nutrition or recovery or practice?

Figuring out a way to shave a tenth o a time, after all, might be the di erence between winning and losing.

Weiberg thinks of it as being entrepreneurial.

“It’s not entrepreneurial from a business standpoint,” he said, “but it’s the same thing about building their programs.”

Even as the Cowboys were struggling, Smith was still dreaming big. He decided to put in a bid to host the NCAA championships in Stillwater. He made OSU’s cross country course his main selling point.

“And I described our course in ways I envisioned it and not the way it existed,” he said.

Smith confessed to then-athletic director Mike Holder that if OSU got the bid for nationals, improvements to the course would be necessary.

In April 2017, Smith called Holder.

“You’re not going to believe this: we got the bid,” Smith said. “We’re hosting in 2020.”

Holder asked Smith to draw up a plan for course renovations, and he ultimately put a proposal on Holder’s desk that would cost between half a million and a million dollars.

“That’s not improvements,” Smith remembers Holder saying. “You’ve got to dream big. You talk about dreaming; that’s not dreaming big. Is that the best course in the country?”

“Well, no,” Smith said.

“You’ve got to make it the best.”

Holder calls what they were able to do with the cross country course serendipitous.

“Because you have a former golf coach that had actually been involved in building a golf course,” Holder said, referring to Karsten Creek, “and there’s a lot of similarities between what it takes to build a golf course and what it takes to have what we have in the way of a cross country course.

“It’s like a golf course in that you still have an irrigation system, and you have the fairways. You don’t have putting greens, but you’ve got irrigated fairways, then it’s surrounded by native grass.”

Holder called on many of the same experts who helped build Karsten Creek, and then, Holder and Smith got ﬁnancial assistance from Don and Shellie Greiner, whose family name now adorns the course. All told, more than $3 million was spent.

“He was such an outstanding coach,” Holder said of Smith, “he deserved a facility that made a statement about how committed he was to cross country and his athletes.”

But after the Cowboys missed the NCAAs in 2019, a question loomed: would they be at nationals on their own course in 2020?

Then, COVID hit.

lookiNg at tHe Bright Side

Pandemic restrictions forced Smith to get creative in late 2020. Runners would practice in pods of four or ﬁve to limit contact.

But after Smith ﬁnished putting all the pods through their workouts, he’d return to the track to ﬁnd 20 or 30 runners sitting around talking.

“I think we might be really good this year,” Smith told Justin Duncan, then an OSU assistant, now the head coach at Tennessee

“Why?” Duncan asked. “Because we’re running fast?”

“No, the work is not very good,” Smith said, “but this is the ﬁrst time in six or seven years where the end of practice didn’t look like a bomb went o . Everybody’s hanging out, sometimes two or three hours while their other teammates are running and waiting for them. They’re hanging out and spending time together.”

The pandemic, it turns out, provided the Cowboys a reset.

When the 2020 NCAA championships were run in Stillwater, not only were the Cowboys there but they also returned to the podium, ﬁnishing third.

The Cowgirls were there, too, making a return after missing nationals in 2019.

Both programs have had phenomenal runs since. The women have improved their national ﬁnish each year, placing a program-best third in 2023 and making the podium in back-to-back years for the ﬁrst time under Smith. And the men were in the top three each year, culminating with another national title in 2023.

Additionally, the men have had back-to-back top 10 finishes at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships while the women had their first top 10 finish this past spring, a year after winning the Big 12 Indoor title by upsetting top-ranked Texas.

A program without an indoor track wins an indoor track title.

“That sums up Dave right there,” Weiberg said. “I think that’s a perfect summation of the job that he’s done and just who he is.

“He’s not going to let those things stand in the way.” Challenges?

Sure, Smith has overcome a lot of them, and he knows more are on the way with the ongoing changes in college athletics. Not knowing what will happen with revenue sharing, roster limits and Name, Image and Likeness makes planning di cult, and that is di cult on Smith.

OSU is hosting the NCAA cross country national championships again in 2027, for instance, and Smith would really like to have a team then that can win on its home course.

“Because I’m not losing on a tiebreaker again,” he said, alluding to the 2022 NCAAs in Stillwater when OSU tied Northern Arizona in points but lost on head-to-head criteria.

But Smith has slowly come to grips with the fact that there are unknowns about the future beyond his control. Yes, change is coming, and he could worry about it. Instead, he has decided to take a di erent approach.

He thinks of himself as a polar bear on a melting iceberg in the North Atlantic.

“It’s shrinking, and yeah, that’s bad,” he said, “but nothing I can do about it. So I’m going to live in the moment. For today, I’ve got an iceberg. I’m going to live on this iceberg, eat what I can o this iceberg and ﬁgure it out later.

“When I’ve got to swim, I’ll swim, but for now, I’m staying on the iceberg.”

Dave Smith shows no sign of slowing down or backing o . He has worked too hard to get to this point, and so many people have joined in his e orts along the way. Athletes. Assistants. Administrators.

This distance-running dynasty was a group e ort.

“I came to Oklahoma State and Stillwater as it was just about to take o ,” he said. “I bought cheap. Now, the stock is through the roof.

“It was fun to be a part of that.”

SAVE THE DATE

Don't miss Oklahoma State's single largest fundraising event for Athletics. The 2025 POSSE Auction is set for Saturday, April 26th, at Gallagher-Iba Arena. Whether it's as a table sponsor and attendee — or if you have access to unique and sought-after auction items to donate (including goods, services and experiences) — we encourage you to get involved. Item donors will receive gift-in-kind credit and POSSE Priority Points, while winning bids and table/ ticket purchases will earn POSSE Points and applicable tax deduction. Stay tuned for details this spring ...

Wide receiver Brennan Presley ended his illustrious OSU career as the Cowboys' all-time leader in receptions with 315 (second in Big 12 history and Top 15 in college football history).

Last year, Presley tied Alex Lloyd for the single-game school record of 16 catches. He is one of only a handful of players in NCAA history with four seasons of 1,000-plus all-purpose yards, but Presley will be remembered for his toughness and clutch playmaking ability.

Thanks for the memories, BP!

PHOTO LANDRY BLEDSOE

PHOTO BRUCE WATERFIELD