OKLAHOMA CITY — For the Glasco family, softball is the lingua franca, the language that connects them.
It anchors Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco to his daughter Tara Archibald, who is also the program’s associate head coach. And it connects both of them — even now — to Geri Ann, Gerry’s daughter and Tara’s youngest sister, who was killed in a car crash in 2019 at just 24 years old.
“For us, it’s like you can’t go anywhere in the softball community without some sort of tie to Geri Ann.” Tara said.
“Any park I go recruiting at, there’s always some kind of memory that involves G. Then the people, even here.”
Even here, at Devon Park — where Texas Tech will face Texas in the Women’s College World Series finals beginning Wednesday — Tara can still see a teenage Geri Ann running around in the outfield on Gerry’s under-18 squad, competing against the top teams in the nation.
All three of the Glasco girls played softball, and all three played or coached in the WCWS. Tara played at Southern Illinois and was a head coach at Eastern Illinois before joining her dad at Texas Tech this season. Erin played at Notre Dame and Texas A&M, reaching the championship series in 2008.
Geri Ann started her career at Georgia, where Gerry was an assistant coach and Tara was the pitching coach. Together, they took home the program’s first SEC tournament championship in 2014. When Gerry left for Texas A&M, Geri Ann departed for Oregon, where she played two more years.
She began a coaching career of her own as a student assistant at Oregon in 2017 before following Gerry to Louisiana as a volunteer assistant coach in 2018. She died two weeks before opening day in 2019.
“She was so loving, just loved to love on people, which I think is what you see through the softball community when you hear people talk about her. She just made everybody feel so good,” Tara said. “The ultimate teammate as a player. (She was) just a fun-loving, goofy, always singing — knew every word to every song — just a fun-loving personality. We loved to be around her.”
A memorial to Geri Ann Glasco was set up outside Lamson Park at Louisiana after she died in a car accident in 2019. (Photo: Scott Clause / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
Reminders of Geri Ann have been frequent throughout Texas Tech’s WCWS run. In the semifinals, the Red Raiders came up against Oklahoma pitcher Sam Landry, who played for Gerry for three seasons at Louisiana before they each moved to their current schools. In Geri Ann’s brief time as a volunteer assistant coach, Landry was still a budding high school ace, but said they met “a few times.” When Landry arrived on Louisiana’s campus in 2022, she grew “very close” with Gerry, and opted to wear Geri Ann’s number — No. 12 — as her own.
“Just seeing how he was dealing with it, wearing No. 12 was how I, in my opinion, helped keep him going, so that’s why it was so important to me — carrying on her legacy, she was an amazing person,” Landry said.
When Landry arrived at OU this season, her No. 12 was taken. She reversed numbers and went with No. 21. Still, Landry wanted to keep the memory of Geri Ann going. So she wore Geri Ann’s name on her glove.
To reach its first championship series, Texas Tech had to best Landry — the SEC Newcomer of the Year — in a 3-2 game Monday that ended on a walk-off sacrifice fly.
“I hated that we had to play today. I just hated it,” Glasco said of going against Landry. “I would have rather her finished her career against anybody besides me. And I would have rather played anybody than her to go to the championship. But we don’t control that.”
When Gerry met Landry on the field for a long postgame embrace, it was not only a reminder of what Gerry had won, but also what he had lost.
Texas Tech head coach Gerry Glasco hugs Oklahoma pitcher Sam Landry (21) after the Red Raiders defeated the Sooners to advance to the WCWS finals. “I hated that we had to play today,” Glasco later said. (Image: Brett Rojo / Imagn Images)
On May 11, the day of the NCAA tournament bracket reveal, Tara told Gerry that if the team drew the No. 12 seed, it would make it to the WCWS.
“Sure enough, it comes up on TV. She said, ‘I told you. We’re going to the World Series,’” Gerry said Monday. “We got the 12-seed, which was Geri Ann’s number.”
There was also a moment while traveling for softball and checking into a hotel this season that Gerry saw it — a sign from Geri Ann, that lingua franca. In a “huge hotel,” he said, he checked into one of the first rooms: No. 112.
“Things like that happen. She’s been with us on this journey,” he said. “And you know, (Monday) I thought to myself, like, if Sam goes and I don’t go, it’s still good. Geri Ann would have been thrilled with Sam going (to the championship series), and I’m sure she’s thrilled with me going.”
Though he’s not positive about that. Because there’s another connection in the final.
At Oregon, Geri Ann played for coach Mike White, reaching the WCWS with the Ducks in 2015. White is now the coach of Texas, the team standing in the Red Raiders’ way.
Gerry can’t say for sure who his daughter’s front-runner would’ve been.
Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco said that “if Geri Ann was here and she could talk, I don’t know if she’d root for me or (Texas coach Mike White), because she loved Whitey.” (Photo: Brett Rojo / Imagn Images)
“I don’t know if she’d root for me or Whitey, because she loved Whitey,” Gerry said Tuesday. “She used to compare us a lot. She’d say, ‘Daddy, coach is just like you, he just got more colorful of a vocabulary.’ She probably thought he was a little smarter than I am, but anyway, I’m really looking forward to compete.”
No. 12 Texas Tech will face No. 6 Texas for the national title — the first finals since 2018 that will not include Oklahoma — beginning with Game 1 on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. With the nation’s best pitcher, NiJaree Canady, in the circle, Tara will again aim to call the pitches that stifled the Sooners and so many others.
She’ll also focus on where it all started. Her first coaching gig came in college, as the leader of Geri Ann’s youth travel team. One of her very first players was her sister, and though 12 years younger, Geri Ann was also part teacher.
“No matter how intense the game was, or how big the moment was, she played like a 10-year-old who first fell in love with softball,” Tara said. “I think she always reminded me to let the game be a game and to enjoy the game.”
That’s a language the Glasco family — and Texas Tech — can surely understand.
(Top photo of Gerry Glasco: Brett Rojo / Imagn Images)
