With teammates to her left and head coach Melyssa Lombardi to her right, Oregon softball’s freshman first baseman Rylee McCoy took to the podium of Jane Sanders Stadium’s media room on Saturday, May 24 with a bandage across her nose and a hat reading “Champs” on her head.

McCoy sat quietly for much of the interview.

Just six days earlier, on Sunday, May 18, in a win-or-go-home game, the Ducks slugger was playing the field when she took a line-drive off the bat of Stanford’s Tayrn Kern to her face. Oregon’s all-white uniform that day didn’t do much in the way of hiding how badly McCoy had been hit, but she was able to walk off the field to a standing ovation.

The nature of McCoy’s injury wasn’t confirmed. But six days later and there she was, batting sixth for the Ducks as they stood one win over Liberty from their first Women’s College World Series berth since 2018 and first-ever under Lombardi. Oregon routed the Flames 13-1, with McCoy putting together a 2-for-4 day at the plate. In an effort to prevent further injury, the freshman served as the Ducks’ designated-player and was pinch-ran for both times she reached base.

She didn’t care.

“I don’t ever want to take a game off,” McCoy said of her quick return. “Being back, standing in the box and getting a standing ovation, I got chills.”

McCoy’s desire to return was microcosmic of Lombardi’s own postgame comments, who said that Oregon had been “punched in the face” a handful of times throughout the year. As Lombardi said it, McCoy and junior pitcher Lyndsey Grein glanced at each other, with both looking as though they had to hold back a laugh or joke about the bandage across the freshman’s nose.

Joking aside, there’s plenty of truth to Lombardi’s own comments. Her Ducks had skated through the regular season, racking up a 47-6 record and earning the Big Ten’s top-overall seed heading into the conference tournament. A 5-0 loss to Michigan in their first game of the tournament was the first punch, sending the Ducks home early. Tumbling from their No. 5 ranking in the top-25 polls to the No. 16 national-seed for regionals was the second, before Stanford delivered a 14-1 six-inning thumping in the second game of the Eugene regional for the third punch.

The same way McCoy stood up after that line-drive connected, so too did the Ducks.

And after seven years of trying and fighting and getting up, Lombardi’s 2025 Oregon Ducks — aptly nicknamed by members of the program as ‘Version Seven’ — are going to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series.

According to Lombardi, this was the team to do it.

“Every version I have been part of, every one of them has been so special,” Lombardi told media members in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, May 28. “Watching each version layer on to the next version and get them ready for what’s next — sometimes you just want something and you want it right now, but you need to nurture it a little bit, put it together… And you could just see that with (Version Seven). They want in.

“They want our culture to be unbelievable, which is great. They want to be able to compete and love competing with each other, and they do. This group is such a hardworking team, and I don’t think this group would be here without the foundation (we laid with) Version One. So it was tough, but it was absolutely 100% worth this ride.”

During her postgame remarks from the sweep of Liberty, Lombardi said that “the hardest part about the WCWS is getting there,” adding that the statement wasn’t from a place of complacency about being one of the last-eight standing, but that the pressures of missing out on the trip to Oklahoma City fade away once you’re there.

“You get to exhale and play,” Lombardi said in Eugene.

The WCWS’ double-elimination bracket will, for obvious reasons, be no cake walk. All eight teams — No. 2 national-seed Oklahoma, No. 3 Florida, No. 6 Texas, No. 7 Tennessee, No. 9 UCLA, No. 12 Texas Tech, the No. 16 Ducks and unseeded Ole Miss — had to rattle off at least five postseason wins to get there, with five more standing between each and hoisting a National Championship trophy.

Oregon has played two squads in the eight-team field a total of four times this season, beating No. 7 Tennessee on Feb. 20 and taking two-of-three from No. 9 UCLA in April.

In their lone matchup against the Vols, Oregon’s right-handed juniors Elise Sokolsky and Lyndsey Grein allowed just three hits in a complete-game shutout. In the opposing dugout, Tennessee’s first-team All-American starter Karlyn Pickens allowed just one hit and no earned runs, but an eighth-inning passed ball led to Oregon’s walk-off, 1-0 win at the Littlewood Classic in Arizona.

Oregon took the series-opener over the Bruins with a 3-1 win before the two squads traded run-rule victories (8-0 in six innings by UCLA in game two, 9-0 rubber-match win in five frames by the Ducks) in Eugene during their three-game conference series.

Oregon’s most familiar foe in the WCWS, the Bruins themselves, will be first on the docket for Lombardi’s squad. First pitch between No. 9 UCLA and No. 16 Oregon is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 29 at Oklahoma City’s Devon Park. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2.

The winner will advance to play the winner of Ole Miss and Texas Tech’s first-round matchup on Saturday, while the losers of the two games will play an elimination game against one another on Friday. First-pitch times for Friday and Saturday’s matchups have yet to be officially announced, but are tentatively scheduled for 6:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., respectively.