Olivia Bruno needed a second opinion.
When the former two-way standout for Kansas softball got a message in February from an Italian club team asking if she wanted to play for them, she had to consult Morgan Zerkle, her boss at Marshall.
“I showed her the DM and I was like, ‘Is this fake?'” recalled Bruno, who works as a graduate assistant for the Thundering Herd. “I couldn’t really believe it at first. And she was like, ‘No, it’s real.'”
In the wake of Zerkle’s confirmation, Bruno and the club team, Thunders Castellana, got serious — they took their conversations from DMs to email. Three months later, after Marshall concluded its season in the Durham Regional of the NCAA softball tournament, Bruno was off to Castelfranco Veneto in the Italian province of Treviso.
By the end of May, the former two-time second-team All-Big 12 selection was hitting bombs and pitching complete games for the Thunders. In eight games through the end of June, she had gone 12-for-23 with a double, a triple and three homers and posted a 2.69 ERA in 26 innings as a pitcher.
When Bruno concluded her four-year career at KU, she wasn’t sure whether she intended on playing softball professionally.
“I just wanted to see how things were going to unfold, I guess,” she told the Journal-World in a recent interview. “And I got my GA position at Marshall, which helped a lot because I was still throwing (batting practice) and I was still around softball and all that stuff. It made me kind of miss the game and kind of fall in love with it again.
“And I was like, ‘Huh, maybe I want to play in one of the leagues in the States.’ Overseas didn’t really come to mind until they reached out and I was like, ‘This is great.'”
It also made it quite clear to Bruno that she needed to step up her preparation far beyond throwing BP to the Thundering Herd players. Fortunately, she had a couple of willing training partners in Zerkle, who plays for the Chicago Bandits in Athletes Unlimited, and assistant coach Riley Blampied, who is a member of the new KC Diamonds pro team in the Professional Softball League (along with Bruno’s former teammate Hailey Cripe).
“It helped a lot that they were also trying to train, so we all helped each other,” Bruno said.
That made getting back into playing the game less of an adjustment. More challenging was the actual process of getting acclimated to Italy. Bruno’s father Tom comes from an Italian family, and she had always wanted to go. But this would be her first trip to Europe, period, and that came with some inevitable consequences.
“My first week or two, I was very jet lagged,” she said. “So that was a slight adjustment. But overall, it’s been very smooth, honestly.”
In the span of just a month since her arrival, the Topeka native has encountered some ineffable cultural differences. As she tells her parents, “The time is different here.”
In some sense that is metaphorical — everything feels like moves more slowly. In some sense it is reflected in the attitudes of Bruno’s largely Italian comrades: “A few of my Italian teammates have been like, ‘Why are you stressing about time?’ And I’m like, ‘Why aren’t you stressing about time?'”
“I feel like being in the States, it’s always like, ‘Go go go,’ and here, everyone is just so chill,” she added. “It was such an adjustment, and I am still kind of adjusting to it because I’ve been brought up to be 30 minutes early to things and start 10 minutes before practice time. People are pulling up at practice time. I’m like, ‘Where is everyone?’ So I had to, like, chill out, I guess.”
Practice time is also a change of pace. The Thunders train from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. — extremely European, but also a reflection of the fact that some of them work during the day.
The softball is itself different, too. Bruno’s teammates range from 17 to 27 years old with wide-ranging levels of experience.
“It’s still competitive, but in the States it’s competitive to the max,” Bruno said. “Here it’s a few notches down, which is fun. Sometimes I do miss kind of more competitive pitching or teams I’m playing against, but there are some teams that are better than others, which is how every place is. It’s definitely a competitive change here.”
As Bruno puts it, she has her Google Translate at the ready quite a bit. Her coach speaks only Italian, but she has helpful teammates who are also willing to assist.
During the Thunders’ recent two-week break, Bruno had the chance to visit the Czech Republic (“really gorgeous and a great experience”), where some of her teammates were taking part in an international competition, and Venice (“probably my favorite place I’ve been so far”), not far from where her team is based. The food, she says, is “insane.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Bruno will be in Italy through late August, when she is set to play for a different team as part of a European cup competition. Then it’s back to Marshall for the second year of her role as a graduate manager, which has been a highly fulfilling experience.
“The team honestly made me really learn and love the sport again in a different light,” Bruno said. “They’ve shown me what true resilience is like.”
When the Thundering Herd players and staff were watching the NCAA selection show at the end of the season, Bruno couldn’t help but feel emotional when she saw KU pop up early in the broadcast.
“I immediately texted Hailey Cripe and I started tearing up,” she said. “I was just full of emotions because those girls deserve so much. I know KU deserved to be in a regional. And it was so exciting to see that. I just couldn’t believe it. I just remember texting Cripe and being like, ‘I’m crying.’ And I’m sitting with all the Marshall people and they’re like looking at me and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry.’
“I wasn’t expecting to feel that emotion but seeing a lot of my friends make it, it was insane and I was so happy for them.”
This photo shows the landscape of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, on Sunday, June 14, 2026.
This photo shows the landscape of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, on Sunday, June 14, 2026.
The Thunders Castellana take a group photo on Saturday, May 30, 2026, in Saronno, Italy. Former Jayhawk Olivia Bruno is second from the front, to the left of the photographer.
Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World
Olivia Bruno
Olivia Bruno
Courtesy of Olivia Bruno