Hailey Cripe grew up dreaming of playing professional softball, but it’s not a dream that all that many get the chance to attain.
That’s both because of the elite level one has to reach in the sport to receive consideration and because so many attempts at pro leagues in recent years have been ephemeral.
But Cripe had both the skill and the good timing to make her dream a reality. The former Kansas shortstop from Royal Center, Indiana, has signed with the KC Diamonds of the Professional Softball League.
“Just being able to have this opportunity, honestly, I don’t even know how to describe it in words,” Cripe told the Journal-World in a recent interview, “because I just feel so grateful that this is an opportunity that exists in today’s world for athletes in general, but also just myself.”
Cripe recently concluded a distinguished four-year career with the Jayhawks. As a senior, she helped lead KU to its first NCAA Tournament berth (and win) since 2015. She was named the Big 12’s co-defensive player of the year and hit 15 home runs with 47 RBIs.
That might have been it for her playing days, and she could have gone directly into what she plans to do anyway: pursuing a master’s degree while serving as a graduate assistant for a college softball team.
“I thought about doing like a training facility, something more along the (lines) of that,” Cripe said of her future plans, “before I realized that college coaching was the way that I could stay around the game, almost like the closest … It’s given me so many opportunities in my life that I just see it as a great opportunity to pass along to others and kind of just inspire them through the sport.”
But a few weeks before the end of her senior season, she learned she would have the chance to continue her on-field career.
While this summer’s season will be the first for the PSL as well as the first for the KC Diamonds as an actual team, the Diamonds did exist in some form last year. But rather than playing nearly 40 games between mid-June and early August as they will this year (with Legends Field in Kansas City, Kansas, as their home stadium), they took part in a brief exhibition series against other independent softball teams.
Cripe’s KU teammate Campbell Bagshaw was part of that experiment, so Cripe knew that a full-fledged Kansas City-based softball team was on the way. She and former teammate Olivia Bruno took part in a tryout over winter break. There was supposed to be a second follow-up tryout later on, but “I ended my Jayhawk career on a high note, so without having to try out again, they asked me if I wanted to be on the team,” Cripe said.
Now, with her formal signing announced on May 20, she has plans for the summer — beginning as soon as this Sunday, when the team reports for duty, and Monday, when practice begins ahead of the season opener in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on June 12. She will get the chance to meet and befriend an entirely new roster of players for whom she knows “the girls’ names and that’s pretty much it.”
“My perspective of it is just an attitude of gratitude, just because this is an opportunity that does exist now, I get to play at the next level and I didn’t have to be done when my season was over in Oklahoma,” Cripe said. “I actually get to play 40 more games guaranteed, and just (enjoy) meeting all these amazing players. We have such a great roster of young women on there, and it’s going to be really cool to just get to hear their experiences through softball.”
Along the way, she might get to encounter some familiar faces. An organization called the St. Louis Gatekeepers (with three former Cardinals as coaches) is trying to undertake its own test run for a future pro team in 2027: “They’re trying to do the exact same thing they did for the Diamonds,” Cripe said. And the Gatekeepers’ roster for this summer includes two current Jayhawks who were Cripe’s teammates: pitcher Chloe Barber and third baseman Kadence Stafford.
Indeed, after the Gatekeepers play four games in Kansas City from July 13-16, they’ll host the Diamonds on July 29 and 30 in O’Fallon, Missouri, and July 31 and Aug. 1 in Normal, Illinois. That’s the end of the regular season, before playoffs begin on Aug. 5 in Birmingham, Alabama. As Cripe puts it, “Who could complain about playing softball all summer?”
