For 20 consecutive seasons, Tennessee has hosted an NCAA softball tourney regional as one of the top seeds in the country. The Lady Vols will do so in 2025 starting today, May 16, in the opening game of the Knoxville Regional.

“It’s pretty crazy,” coach Karen Weekly said. “I don’t think about it that often, but Kinsey Fiedler, one of our newest players here just this year, she’s like, ‘Karen, 20 years?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, there’s a long tradition and history of excellence and excellent student-athletes.’

“Ralph (Weekly) said many, many times over the course of the 20 years he and I coached together, you don’t win the Kentucky Derby with a plow horse. You’ve got to have the athletes, and we’ve got great athletes and great student-athletes.”

Karen Weekly’s husband retired as a co-head coach after the 2021 season, and she has been at the helm solo for four years. Teams that earn a top 16 seed are guaranteed to host a regional. The top eight seeds also are in position to host a Super Regional – the last step before reaching the Women’s College World Series (WCWS) – if they advance in the tournament.

Tennessee, 40-14, will play Miami (Ohio), 35-24, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern (TV: SEC Network) on Friday. The second matchup at 4 p.m. (TV: ESPNU) will feature North Carolina, 40-15, and Ohio State, 43-12-1. The winners of both games will meet Saturday at 12 pm.; the losers meet at 2:30 p.m. in an elimination game.

For the last three seasons in 2023, 2024 and 2025, Tennessee has earned a top eight seed with the Lady Vols landing at No. 7 this year. Prior to that run, the last time Tennessee had been in the top eight was 2017.

“I’m not good at reflecting,” Weekly said of the accomplishment. “I’m so in the moment right now. It just speaks to what those young women do, and I’m really, really proud of them. I think some people probably wrote us off this year.

“Just the last couple weeks, maybe we haven’t played our best softball, but we’ve had some really, really good moments this year, and they’ve worked really hard. I’m excited to go into postseason with them and just really proud of them for earning a seed that high.”

Playing in the SEC can cause that – SEC teams earned seven of the eight top seeds, including No. 1 Texas A&M, No. 2 Oklahoma, No. 3 Florida, No. 4 Arkansas, No. 6 Texas and No. 8 South Carolina. The No. 5 seed went to Florida State of the ACC.

“When we popped up at seven, it was just excitement again, joy for those guys, because it’s pretty special to see your name pop up that high when you’ve worked as hard as they have,” Weekly said. “But really just trying to play the math game as you go, there’s a lot of relief once you see your name and you know where you are.

“I can’t stand uncertainty, so (the selection show) is like the worst day ever for me. I just want to know who we’re playing, when we’re playing and what we’re going to do.”

In addition to dominating the top seeds, 14 of the 15 SEC teams got in the NCAA tourney – a record for one conference – with the exception being Missouri, the only conference team with a sub .500 overall record. Vanderbilt doesn’t field a softball team, thus the total of 15 teams.

Since the tourney is a double-elimination format, the regional takes place over three days. Game times for Saturday, May 17, are set for noon, 2:30 and 5 p.m. Sunday’s game times are noon with the if-necessary game at 2:30 p.m. The weather forecast for the weekend shows minimal chances of rain – at least during the day – with temperatures in the 80s and a high of 86 on Saturday.

It would behoove Tennessee to stay in the winner’s bracket starting with the opener.

“The worst thing you can do is start looking ahead,” Weekly said. “As soon as our name pops up, we just see who that first opponent is. If we’re home, great. If we’re not, hey, we’ll tackle that one, too. It’s all about getting ready for Miami of Ohio.

“I’ve been in situations where we dropped that Friday game, and it was a long, long, long road back.”

Tennessee reached the WCWS in 2023 and came up short in 2024 in the Super Regional. Only three current starters are on the roster from 2023 – pitcher Karlyn Pickens and infielders Taylor Pannell and McKenna Gibson. The Lady Vols have seven freshmen and six sophomores with two first-year players, Ella Dodge and Saviya Morgan, in the starting lineup.

Taylor Pannell launches a softball for Tennessee. (Ryan Beatty/Tennessee Athletics)

“Our freshmen have been so good mentally,” Weekly said. “They don’t dwell on mistakes. They’re such a move forward kind of group, and they’re always in go, go, go mode, and that’s why they’re so fun to coach.

“What I expect every year this time of year is for the upperclassmen to really set the example for the freshmen, and that’s where I think the leadership is going to come from that’s going to keep them in a pretty good place.”

Additional experience has come the transfer portal, including Fiedler and Sophia Nugent.

The Lady Vols have lost the opening game for three weeks in a row – twice to start three-game series and the first game of the SEC tourney. That’s not how Tennessee wants to open its regional.

“I think they’re well aware and we have a lot of veterans, people who’ve been here, but even the people who transferred in have come from outstanding programs where they understand what regionals is like, so I don’t think we’ll have any problem getting them ready to play on Friday,” Weekly said.

For a senior like Gibson, it’s another chance to put on a Lady Vols uniform.

“Postseason comes with a lot of fear of failure, because it’s your last moments of playing, but I think at the end of the day, these are the best moments that you can have with your team,” Gibson said. I’m kind of embracing those fears and knowing this is the last moment you have to play with those girls, so, you want to give your all for them.”

The Lady Vols typically get a stout regional because of where Knoxville falls on the map as a host site.

“We always expect a tough regional here,” Weekly said. “One of the NCAA’s driving factors, once they see the top 16, is minimized flights, and there are so many good teams within the geographic proximity to drive here.

“I think we always get one of the toughest regionals. And if you want to progress in this tournament, get to supers and then get on to the World Series, it’s going to be hard. It doesn’t matter who you are. So, hard right away, that’s fine, because we know it’s going to be hard the whole way.”

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.