ORANGE, BLACK AND HAVING EACH OTHER’S BACK

There are few moments more profound in a college student’s life than move-in week as a freshman. That theory held true for the two Cowgirl softball stars, but not everything went according to plan for Montgomery that first week.

Shortly after unpacking and beginning to settle into a new room, a new town and a new state, Montgomery was called home to Texas after her grandfather passed away. Suddenly, her first week of life as a college student was thrust into chaos, but fortunately she still had her close friend to rely on throughout.

“I had all of this excitement of moving into the dorms and all that and then I had to go home, but the entire time I was texting Taylor asking how things were,” Montgomery said.

That bond that the two had built over years of time together both on and off the field would help carry them through their successful freshman seasons in Stillwater.

“You see so many kids come in and struggle because typically you don’t know anybody there that you’re playing with or you’re not that close with them yet,” Lynch said. “But with us knowing each other and being in each other’s lives for forever and then coming to the same school, it was easy for us because we knew we always had at least one person that we could go to.”

With both Cowgirls now living more than 275 miles away from home, their families, and coaches, they were thankful to know that they still had someone to lean on in tough times.

“It’s really cool to know that she has a teammate like Taylor that just knows what she’s all about and helps her continue to be that way,” Monty Montgomery said.

“I think the comfort of having people that you know is a big deal,” OSU softball head coach Kenny Gajewski reaffirmed. “They don’t hang out a ton off the field here, but they’re really good friends and they may be best friends. They have found their own paths but are still obviously great friends and just knowing that you have someone you can always call is a great thing.”

Together, Lynch and Montgomery pushed each other to new heights as players and became stalwarts of Coach Gajewski’s lineup almost immediately, with Montgomery beginning her collegiate career as an outfielder and Lynch at third base. But their early success didn’t come without effort and hard work.

The pair lived in Bennett Hall as freshmen, a hop, skip and a jump away from Cowgirl Stadium and a place they would become very familiar with — the batting cages.

“We were in the cages almost every single night,” Lynch said. “There were nights where maybe I didn’t want to go to the cages, and she would tell me that we had to go. I think that’s us. We’ve always been strong when the other is weak, and weak when the other is strong. We’re definitely a little bit on the opposite side of each other as people, but it balances out and it has helped us tremendously over the years.”

Lynch and Montgomery were in the cages so much in fact that OSU baseball coach Josh Holliday took notice one night and reached out to Gajewski to let him know what he was seeing.

“I remember getting a phone call from Coach Holliday one night,” Gajewski recalled. “He told me it was the first time in his five years that he had seen my team up there at night. He wanted me to know that because as coaches we don’t always see what they’re doing on their own time. They forced some of our older kids to wake up and see that they needed to get up there and work as well.”

Late nights spent at the corner of Duck and McElroy marked the beginning of a new era for Cowgirl softball, and the culture shift that occurred was spurred by players such as Lynch and Montgomery.

The new energy that surrounded the program sparked a Cowgirl squad that won 32 games in Gajewski’s first season despite facing a rash of injuries and having countless new faces in the program. At season’s end, Lynch, Montgomery and the rest of their team sat anxiously in hopes that their name would be called during the NCAA Tournament selection show.

At the watch party, Montgomery and Lynch stood side-byside, hand-in-hand, nervously staring at the television screen.

“Coach G was putting in our heads all day that we might not make it.” Lynch remembered from that day.

“I think we all kind of knew why he was saying that, but we didn’t know for sure. It was our first year so we didn’t know if our record was going to be good enough to get in,” Montgomery added. “Taylor was just holding my hand, and I could feel her shaking. We saw our name pop up, she looked at me and goes ‘Oh my God!’”

“That first selection show is probably my favorite memory, and if it’s not, it’s in my top three,” Lynch said. “It was so surreal. We were actually making this program better, and we were going to regionals as proof of that.”

With the selection show behind them, the duo that had shattered OSU records as freshman — Lynch compiling a program-best 23-game hitting streak and Montgomery’s 57 RBI the most ever by a Cowgirl freshman — went back to work, preparing for a regional trip to Athens, Georgia. There the Cowgirls staved off elimination three-straight times before falling to No. 16 Georgia in the regional championship game.

The loss marked the end of a wildly successful freshman year for both Lynch and Montgomery, but the two stuck together through it all and their success as teammates only grew in the years that followed.

Three years into their collegiate careers, both Lynch and Montgomery have scattered their names throughout