Michele Smith

Smith set a career and school high with 17 strikeouts in a 2–0 regulation win vs. the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters on April 15. She led the Cowgirls to a No. 2 ranking at the 1989 Women's College World Series, where she opened with a 15-strikeout, three-hitter against the Toledo Rockets on May 25. Following a shutout of the Arizona Wildcats the team lost back-to-back games on May 27, with the Fresno State Bulldogs eliminating them from the series. Smith would earn All-Tournament honors for her performance.

In her final year, Smith achieved top honors from both the conference and the NFCA for a second straight year. She also attained a conference pitching Triple Crown for leading in wins, strikeouts and ERA, all being career bests. Her strikeouts, shutouts and strikeout ratio (8.5) totals were then new school records; the ratio was atop the NCAA list for that year. Smith added five more no-hitters, two of them perfect games; the total overall tied the second most for an NCAA season (now top-5) and gave her 9 overall to rank top-5 for an NCAA career. She is still tied for 10th most on the NCAA list.

On July 21, 1986, while Smith's father was driving her home from an oral surgeon's appointment, the sleeping Smith was thrown from the truck when her door opened on a turn. She was thrown into a roadside post, chopping off part of her elbow bone and tearing her triceps from her left arm, which severed the muscle and nerve endings in her golden pitching arm. The accident forced her to not only face the trauma of her injury, but also the end of her life as she had known it. "It was like losing my identity," she says. Her life was far from over: after nine intensive months of rehab she made her comeback as a pitcher at Oklahoma State University. She returned throwing 3 mph faster than before the accident.

Smith debuted in 1986 and led the team in wins and batting average to earn First-Team Big Eight Conference honors. For her sophomore year, she posted a top-5 school season ERA to lead the team.

Michele Mary Smith (born June 21, 1967) is an American, former collegiate All-American, two-time medal-winning Olympian, international pro left-handed hitting fastpitch softball pitcher and current sports commentator, originally from Califon, New Jersey. Smith played her college career for the Oklahoma State Cowgirls for the years 1986–89 where she set numerous records in the now defunct Big Eight Conference. She is also a double Olympic Softball gold medalist with the United States women's national softball team, having played in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics. She has been ESPN's lead college softball color analyst since 1998. In 2012, Smith became the first woman to serve as commentator for a nationally televised Major League Baseball game. Smith is a USA Softball Hall of Fame honoree.