When Gabby Leach entered the batter’s box in the bottom of the seventh inning in a tie game against LSU in the series finale, two runners stood on base with two outs. Leach quickly faced an 0-2 count with a called and then swinging strike.

Leach looked to Tennessee head coach Karen Weekly and hitting coach Craig Snider and called timeout.

“You can see she took one and, and I don’t have a good look at it, but I’m guessing it was right down the pipe,” Weekly said. “And then, ‘Oh, shoot, I should have swung at that and then I’m just swinging at anything.’

“Usually when you see that, a hitter doesn’t claw their way back into it at bat, mentally and emotionally, especially in a moment like that. That was the reason for the timeout, is to settle her down, take a breath, get rid of any thinking, and just play with your eyes.’ ”

Leach worked the count to 3-2, including a sharp foul ball, and then sent the seventh pitch she saw over the right field wall for a walk-off 8-5 win Sunday against the Tigers.

“That’s the thing with this team is the adjustments they make,” Weekly said. “But to make it so quickly … for her to do it, I mean coaching, you can say that over and over again, but for a kid to actually do it, that’s what was so impressive, and I’m so proud of her.”

The Lady Vols shut out LSU last Friday at 4-0 and then spotted the Tigers 4-0 leads in both games Saturday and Sunday. In both cases, Tennessee came back to take the lead and win 11-6 and 8-5.

In Saturday’s game, Leach and twin sister Alannah Leach – both are juniors – hit back-to-back home runs to put the game out of reach. For the series, Gabby Leach batted .600 with four runs scored, three home runs and six RBI.

Gabby Leach’s final three RBI sealed the win and the sweep of LSU.

“We have so much fun on this team,” she said. “Coming home rounding third, just so much joy when I’m coming home.”

The Lady Vols swept the first SEC series of the season without All-American Karlyn Pickens, who sustained an arm strain last week against Belmont and has been listed as day-to-day.

“I think it’s big for our team, and they should take a whole lot of pride in sweeping an SEC series without Karlyn, and especially our pitching staff, I know takes pride in that,” Weekly said. “That’s a lot of the reason we trained them the way we did, so everybody would be ready.

“But, also, our offense needed to step up in a big way this weekend. What I’m proud of is we haven’t necessarily been put in some of these situations up to this point, and every situation that came at us, we responded. We answered the bell.”

The softball team celebrates the series sweep against LSU. (Tennessee Athletics)

No. 1 Tennessee is now 23-0 overall and 3-0 in the SEC. The Lady Vols have tied the 2007 team for the second-best start in program history. The record for the Tennessee program is 24-0 in 2006 and the first chance to tie it and set a new record comes this week.

The Lady Vols will be back on the field today, March 10, to play in the Midstate Classic in Columbia, Tennessee, against Austin Peay at 6:30 p.m. Eastern and then Lipscomb on March 11 at 6 p.m. Eastern in Nashville. The game against Austin Peay will be available on the radio with Lipscomb livestreamed on ESPN+.

Tennessee will be back in SEC play for a three-game series against Mississippi State on March 13-15 in Starkville.

The Lady Vols have won with complete games, run-rule matchups, blowouts, tight contests and comebacks.

“We don’t get down in our dugout,” Weekly said. “We look at things like, ‘OK, what’s happening here? We’re not doing our jobs. Let’s do our jobs and see what happens.’ ”

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press and a 10th anniversary edition will be released June 16, 2026.