'I’m so glad that I’m here': Why Virginia transfer Hayley Busby wanted 'to be in that dugout' at OSU
STILLWATER — A couple of weeks before the Atlantic Coast Conference softball tournament in the spring of 2019, Hayley Busby came to a painful but necessary conclusion.
At the time, Busby was a sophomore infielder at Virginia, nearing the end of a season in which she batted .388 with 11 home runs and 27 runs batted in.
But she was no longer enjoying the game.
“I needed to be somewhere else,” said Busby, now a super-senior for seventh-ranked Oklahoma State, which opens the Big 12 portion of its schedule with a three-game series against Texas Tech, starting at 6 p.m. Friday at Cowgirl Stadium.
Busby has become a veteran leader and a big bat in the OSU lineup over the past two-plus seasons, hitting 19 home runs last year in helping the team to the Women’s College World Series.
But Busby was on the brink of ending her career in May of 2019.
Life lessons from her father — Mike Busby, who played pro baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1996-99 — had always driven home the point that the Busbys weren’t quitters, and he didn’t like the idea of his daughter quitting on Virginia.
So father and daughter dove into a deep conversation.
“I’m not the same person that I was in high school playing here,” Hayley told him. “It just wasn’t the right fit for me.
“I think I need to transfer or I need to quit. I don’t think I can play anymore. I’m not having fun.”
So her dad relented, and Hayley entered the transfer portal shortly after Virginia’s first-round loss in the ACC Tournament.
When her name came across the portal, OSU coach Kenny Gajewski’s interest was immediate. He had seen Busby play several times when she was younger, while Gajewski was an assistant coach at Florida.
A Phoenix native, Busby played on the same travel team as current OU player Grace Lyons, who Gajewski was trying to recruit to Florida.
“I had seen Hayley play a bunch,” Gajewski said. “We had looked at her numbers, and I received a phone call from her old travel coach.”
At the time, OSU was set to lose a pair of potent hitters from the heart of the lineup in second baseman Madi Sue Montgomery and pitcher Sam Show, so adding an infielder with a big bat was attractive.
The Cowgirls were in between the Big 12 Tournament and an NCAA Regional they were preparing to host when Gajewski reached out to Busby.
“When you get phone calls, you gotta act on ‘em,” Gajewski said. “You can’t say, well, when the postseason’s done, I’ll start making calls.”
And that decision was one of the most impactful moves Gajewski made in Busby’s recruitment.
“I was open to listen to anyone and hear their pitch on why I should go there, but as soon as Coach G. reached out to me — what stood out to me was that he reached out to me while they were still playing,” Busby said. “He reached out during their regionals and was like, ‘I want you to come out here on a visit right now.’
“I hadn’t even packed up my stuff at Virginia. I had to pack up my entire room and bring it to Oklahoma, because I had to get out of my apartment, otherwise I would have to pay another month of rent.”
Busby was a hot item on the transfer market, but she attended every game of the OSU regional, and had seen all she needed to see.
“That trip out here during their regionals, seeing how excited and energized and how much fun everybody was having at that regional, it was like, I want to be in that dugout,” Busby said.
“I took one visit, and that was here, and I knew I didn’t need to take any more.”
The Cowgirls went on to make the WCWS, and shortly after their elimination, Busby announced her decision on Twitter.
She joined the Cowgirls for the 2020 season that was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic, but really settled in last year. She became a fixture in the middle of the lineup while posting the best single-season slugging percentage in OSU softball history (.794).
This season, Busby got off to a slow start. She homered in the first game of the season, and didn’t hit another for a month, with her batting average hovering just above the .200 mark.
However, she’s beginning to look like herself again. In the last seven games, she’s 7-for-15 with three home runs, six RBIs and five runs scored.
And if the Cowgirls are going to make another WCWS run, they’ll need Busby hitting like she’s capable of.
“I knew I wanted to go to a program that had an opportunity to make it to the World Series,” Busby said. “I’m so glad that I’m here.”
OSU vs. Texas Tech
Three-game series at Cowgirl Stadium in Stillwater (6 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday, noon Sunday)
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How Hayley Busby's visit to Oklahoma State altered her softball career
