Tennessee softball’s 2026 season is right around the corner. With the season kicking off on Thursday in Clearwater, Fla., against BYU, Lady Vols head coach Karen Weekly met with the media to preview the year.
She was asked about star pitcher Karlyn Pickens, the team’s Women’s College World Series run a year ago and more.
Here’s what she said.
More From RTI: Full Tennessee Softball 2026 Schedule Officially Announced
Opening statement
“Well, we’re very excited to hit the field down in Clearwater. It’s not gonna be the warmest Clearwater, but it’s gonna be warmer than it is here in Knoxville. Spend our first two weekends down there, back-to-back tournaments with some of the best competition in the country, and I think at this point in time in our preparation, every team is just excited to see somebody else. It’s been a good January, but by this time it’s kind of long, and I know our girls are fired up to get out there and compete and see what we’re made of.”
On the impact of a WCWS run
“You know, I think what’s really cool about this team is we’re young, but we have some players who got some really, really great experience last year. So when I say young, you think of some of our sophomores and juniors that the opportunity to play in the postseason and to get to Oklahoma City and be on that stage and have success on that stage, and have success getting there, I think that’s gonna bode really well for us. I think this team is not satisfied at all. Sometimes you can come off a World Series trip, and there’s a sense of, ‘Oh, this is gonna happen again.’ But I don’t sense that at all with these guys. They’re pretty hungry, and a lot of that hunger starts with our seniors and especially Karlyn Pickens.”
On what she wants to see from Karlyn Pickens in her senior year
“Well, what I want for Karlyn in this senior year is to enjoy the experience, and if you start to think about, ‘My last opportunity to do XYZ, to check these boxes in terms of outcomes and successes,’ that’s when you start to feel the pressure, and you don’t perform to the best of your ability. So my hope for Karlyn, and Karlyn understands this, she’s mastered this throughout her career, is just to compete with joy and really just cherish every minute she has in a Lady Vol uniform with her teammates.
“What Karlyn has already done for us is really stepped up as a leader. She’s got all the tools to be a leader. We didn’t really ask that of her her first couple of years. But now as a senior, it’s the perfect time, and she’s doing that really, really well.”
On the benefits of the early-season tournaments
“I told them yesterday, the one thing that I want to be able to say after the weekend or during the weekend, is that I have to say, ‘Whoa, not go.’ I just want us to get out there and get after it. You can say, ‘No fear.’ Everybody’s gonna have a little bit of fear and nervousness, but how do you manage it? Do you manage that by getting on your heels, or do you manage that by staying on your toes and attacking? And I want us to be in an attack mode where maybe I have to rein something in, but certainly not light a fire under, under somebody.”
On Karlyn Pickens playing for the USA National Team in Australia
“An athlete can only benefit from something like that. I mean, first of all, it gave her a chance to compete during a time when we’re usually off. Off in a sense that they’re doing individual workouts, but it’s never the same as the practices we have or, in that case, actually going and getting to compete. And then I think when you can be in an environment surrounded by greatness, and everybody on that team is a very, very accomplished, outstanding, one of the best-in-the-world players, you can only gain from that.
“And watching how people go about their business, watching how they prepare, watching how they handle adversity. And the cool thing about national team or professional softball is there’s an independence for each person in terms of how they prepare. And so it’s not quite as structured, if you will, like a college team is with a coaching staff kind of directing that, and I think that’s good for her to see because she’s gonna move into that space here pretty soon and have to take what she’s learned here and what works best for Karlyn and prepare herself to be the best.”
On the pitching staff outside of Karlyn Pickens
“Feel great. I think that is the part of our team that has the most experience and depth combined. We have a lot of depth in a lot of other places. Probably not experience in terms of you can look and see that they’ve got X number of at-bats in a college uniform in the SEC and a list of honors behind their name. But that pitching circle, Sage Mardjetko is phenomenal. Sage has been pitching with really an injury since about her junior year in high school, and finally got it fixed this last summer. So she’s coming off of that, throwing the ball better than she ever has, but we’re still gonna need to manage her workload out the gate to make sure we don’t have any setbacks.
“Erin Nuwer is somebody who none of us saw the real Erin Nuwer last year. Well, until the Florida game at the World Series, then we saw the real Erin Nuwer. But I believe in those guys a ton, and I think we have, in those three pitchers, who I think would be the ace on any team that they were a part of.
“And then the depth behind that. You know, Maddi Rutan comes in. She’s a two-way player. She’s gonna play third, she’s gonna hit, she’s gonna get some time in the circle. And then we have two freshmen, who both are dealing with some injuries from high school that they’re still working on getting themselves to a hundred percent. The nice thing for them is the depth we have in the upper class is gonna give them some time to develop.”
On the theme of ‘Dominate’
“It’s not a word that speaks to the outcome, but it’s a word to me that speaks to how you go about your business. You go about it to win, but what if the circumstances that day you fall a little bit short, or you don’t really compete at your highest level? If you’re just competing to win, you’re always just competing to be a little bit better than somebody, and so you give yourself a chance to lose ’cause you’re too close. If you go into everything trying to dominate what you’re doing, to me, it’s like I’m not only trying to beat this drill, beat my performance yesterday, maybe beat what my teammate’s doing.
“If you ask yourself to dominate it, it’s like you’re gonna create this gap between where I am and where I was yesterday, or where I am and where you are. And so then, there’s a wiggle room there, you know? I think if you practice at that level, then when you get in the game, in just the environment of the game, the pressure, the adrenaline, causes you to falter a little bit, you’re still gonna win. So I think it’s a mindset that I want them to adopt, and if we can go into everything with that, ‘We’re gonna dominate this’ mindset chances of winning increase a lot.”
On if they read a book as a team this fall
“We’re reading one right now called The Obstacle is the Way, and it’s kind of based in history, and there’s a lot of lessons from people throughout history, but it’s really about a stoic approach to things. And understanding your perception drives a lot of things, and how can you almost detach yourself from the emotion of a situation and look at it a little bit more logically, more practically, a little more clarity, and then create your action plan from that?
“But the whole premise is we as human beings, we want to avoid obstacles, and a lot of times the obstacle is the way, and we need to lean into what the obstacle is, see it for what it is, don’t over-dramatize it, remove ourselves emotionally and then have a good plan for continuing to attack.”
On taking the team to Tyson Park (where the program used to play)
“Well, something I should have done a long time ago, and probably should do every year with teams, because it provides a link to the past. Our alumni events, they get to meet a lot of those players, but just to really see where they played and where they built this tradition. But what prompted it was we are having our clubhouse completely renovated, and it’s gonna take the better part of the next year. So we’re gonna live this spring out of a portable locker room, portable offices in buildings in between the soccer and softball stadiums.
“So we’re displaced from our comfortable surroundings, and I wanted them to understand it’s not about the place. It’s not about the comforts and the frills. It’s about the people in the building. It doesn’t matter where you dress. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It doesn’t matter where you play. It’s about how you play between those white lines. And so I wanted them to see this is where Lady Vol Softball was built, and we talked about some of those players who are on the wall. I said, ‘They didn’t need a fancy locker room to become an All-American. They didn’t need a fancy locker room to go to the World Series and compete for a national championship, and we don’t either.'”
On who she hopes will take a step as a leader this year
“Our leadership council is comprised of Karlyn (Pickens), Amayah Doyle, Emma Clarke and Ella Dodge. And all four have done a tremendous job stepping up with their voices. First of all, holding themselves accountable, and then holding their teammates accountable. But another one we lean on a lot is Cam Sarvis. She’s a senior who I just have such admiration for because she does a tremendous job of leading while not being on the field, and I think that’s a really hard thing to do. But I think it’s super impactful when someone who’s not playing every day is completely bought in to the program’s standards and expectations.”
On Boise State transfers, Makenzie Butt and Sophia Knight
“Sophia is gonna remind people of some of those Tyson Park days of Tennessee softball with Sarah Fekete and India Chiles and Lindsay Schutzler. She’s a classic slapper, triple threat. She can drop a bunt. She can slap it on the ground to find a defensive weakness. She can drive a ball in the gap, and she’s got blazing speed. So, I think that’s going to be really exciting.
“Makenzie Butt is a power hitter, and she’s proven herself at the D1 level. Hit a lot of home runs last year and has really, really come on this January. She broke her finger in the fall and had to miss a significant amount of fall ball. But it was pretty cool watching her when she was injured, doing everything she possibly could. So she didn’t let the finger hinder her from doing things with her other arm and doing all the leg stuff and getting one-arm swings in and really just being engaged in everything we were teaching in practice. She really hasn’t missed a beat from that standpoint.”
