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Texas Tech ace NiJaree Canady already understands spotlight trophy games can be salve for wounds carried into the Women’s College World Series.

Canady gets the ball Wednesday against Texas as the Red Raiders set out to claim the best-of-three championship series in Oklahoma City.

Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco has to like his chances in the team’s first-ever WCWS considering Canady is 33-5 with a miniscule 0.90 ERA.

“She is unbelievable. She’s really tough,” Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso said of facing Canady. “It was hard to square her up. It was hard to make solid contact.”

Canady has thrown every single pitch for Texas Tech in the WCWS, which last happened in 2019 (Rachel Garcia, 2019). She stands in the way of Texas’ bid for its first softball national championship.

It has been a painful season for her beyond the box score.

Glasco revealed Monday before the Red Raiders bounced the Sooners from the tournament that Canady pitched part of the season with a torn hamstring. He halted throwing sessions between starts and rarely went to the bullpen for anything other than a quick stretch after the injury in February. Three whole days later, she returned to start against — and beat — No. 5 Texas A&M.

“We actually were joking about it on the bus, if you would have asked us earlier in the year, earlier in the preseason if we would be two games away from hoisting a national championship trophy, we would probably laugh,” Canady said Tuesday, downplaying the severity of her hamstring injury. “We took some hard losses early on. Honestly, just feel like we’ve just grown as a team. Part of the road getting here is peaking at the right time. I feel like we’re finally just catching our step, and we’re getting to know each other on the field, and I feel like we’re just playing for each other right now.”

Texas Tech landed Canady in a transfer portal move from Stanford. She signed a $1 million NIL agreement to take her talents to Lubbock. Clearly, making starts while ailing was not a requirement.

But Canady said she kept pushing with one goal in mind: winning on this stage.

The road led back to the WCWS, where Texas and star sophomore pitcher Teagan Kavan sent Canady and the Cardinal packing in 2024. They were the pitchers of record in the Longhorns’ pair of wins over Stanford in Oklahoma City last year.

“Obviously she’s going to hold offenses off quite a bit, and so it’s always in the back of your mind,” Kavan said. “It’s a challenge, and I like when it’s a pitchers’ duel — it’s just to compete in this atmosphere and against the best.”

Kavan’s road to OKC’s spotlight circle was atypical. She came to Texas via Dowling Catholic in Iowa, where Kavan never played one inning of softball. She only put on her cleats for a summer travel team.

This season, she’s 26-5 with a 2.33 ERA and 224 strikeouts in 192 1/3 innings.

To get Texas to the title series, Kavan delivered a complete game victory over Oklahoma with eight strikeouts, hours after learning of the death of her grandmother.

“It’s not easy obviously, but I think what helped me is, at the end of the day, it’s just a game, and I think I put it into perspective, just chucking a yellow ball and people are running and turning left, and so I just wanted to have fun,” Kavan said.

–Field Level Media