Lady Vols softball has started the season with a 5-0 record that includes two wins over ranked teams at the NFCA Leadoff Classic in Clearwater, Florida, with the fifth win coming last Saturday night. By Sunday morning, with the benefit of a time change, coach Karen Weekly was in California with her two sisters, the eldest Kristi and the youngest Kathy, to see their beloved Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. It was Kristi who submitted the name Seahawks when the franchise held a name-the-team contest in 1975.

Weekly, who is from Washington and grew up in Seattle, earned her juris doctor degree from the University of Washington’s School of Law in 1990 and worked at Williams, Kastner & Gibbs in Seattle for four years before becoming a college softball coach. She is now entering her 25th season at Tennessee. With Sunday a travel day for the team and Monday an off day – one off day a week is mandated in-season – Weekly was able to slip away for a detour to California for Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara before returning to Tennessee.

The Seahawks claimed the franchise’s second Super Bowl title in four appearances – the first win came in 2014 against the Denver Broncos – with a 29-13 defeat of the New England Patriots in what was a game of revenge after the last-second loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2015.

Weekly and the Lady Vols will be right back in Clearwater, which was rather chilly last week, for the Shriners Children’s Clearwater Invitational on Feb. 13-15 that will include matchups with No. 11 Nebraska, James Madison, No. 23 Florida Atlantic, No. 6 UCLA and No. 17 Florida State.

In the first Florida excursion, the Lady Vols defeated BYU, No. 21 Liberty, Rutgers, Boston College and No. 5 Oregon.

Wins in the circle came from Erin Nuwer, who threw a no-hitter against BYU – she also tossed a no-no a year ago in her freshman debut – Karlyn Pickens and Sage Mardjetko with effective innings also thrown by Maddi Rutan. Pickens capped the weekend with a 2-0 shutout of Oregon with nine strikeouts.

Pickens went the distance in both of her starts and struck out 13 Liberty batters in her first appearance of the 2026 season with new freshman catcher Elsa Morrison.

In the tourney opener against BYU, Morrison doubled down the left-field line to bring home the game’s first run in her first career at-bat and finished with five RBI, including a home run, in a 10-0 win.

“Getting the first one out of the way is a lot of relief,” Morrison said. “Everyone was so amped up to come and play. Everybody dreams of this moment of getting to play for the first time with your team.”

BASKETBALL

The Lady Vols have to hit reset (again) after a 43-point wipeout at South Carolina last Sunday. While the outcome understandably has generated plenty of backlash – it was the worst defeat in modern program history – Kim Caldwell also recognized that at 7-2 in the SEC, the Lady Vols need to look to the next game.

Missouri, led by former Tennessee player and head coach Kellie Harper, will be in Knoxville on Thursday, Feb. 12, for a 6:30 p.m. tipoff with a livestream on SECN+. Harper, who met with media in Missouri on Tuesday, was fired by Tennessee in 2024 and doesn’t want the game to be about her. She got back into coaching after serving for a year as a women’s basketball broadcaster for the SEC Network.

“For me, I’m just doing my job,” Harper said. “This is about our players. It really is. It’s about our team. I know there’s going to be so many people want to make it about me, and I get that. But it really isn’t. It’s about the game. The challenges that we have on Thursday are enormous.

“I am now almost two years removed. I do think time takes a lot of emotion out of it. I have always been the type of person is what is next on my agenda. I can lock in. I can compartmentalize pretty well as a coach.”

Caldwell will chat with media in Tennessee on Wednesday. She is likely to express a similar sentiment of putting the focus on the game, not the head coaches.

“Next game,” Caldwell said immediately after the South Carolina game. “That’s what the focus is going to be. Still in a decent spot. A loss is a loss. You don’t ever want to lose that way. Ever. Especially when you’re representing this program. But you’ve got to continue to see where you’re at in the standings and try to win your next game.”

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.