'It just made my heart smile': Carie Dever Boaz reflects on Arkansas' first Women's College World Series berth

In its 30th season, the Arkansas softball team is headed to the Women’s College World Series for the first time.

The Razorbacks earned that trip with authority, posting run-rule victories in all five of their NCAA Tournament matchups thus far after coming up a game short of Oklahoma City twice in the past five seasons.

“We knew it was going to happen and it is a really great feeling to know it is going to happen,” Head Hog Courtney Deifel said with emotion during the postgame press conference following the Super Regional-clinching win over Duke Saturday. “This team was poised for it and they are ready.”

Deifel, who became Arkansas’ fourth softball coach following the 2015 season after one season at Maryland, led the Razorbacks to their first Super Regional in 2018 at Oklahoma and has hosted four Supers at Bogle Park since 2021, including this year.

From ‘Nothing’ To Some of the Nation’s Best Resources

To say the program has come a long way since calling Lady’Back Yard its first home would be a gross understatement. Native Californian Carie Dever Boaz accepted the challenge of starting from scratch in the summer of 1995 and spent the next two years on the recruiting trail to compile the inaugural Razorback team.

“When I first took the job, I had an office,” Dever Boaz told HawgBeat of her lone resource. “That’s all I had. I had no equipment, no players, no field, no nothing. I had nothing. I came on board and what I had was me, myself, and I. I worked on hiring my first assistant, which was Eileen Schmidt. She came on board and we took off from there.

“Like, we basically just recruited and worked on taking over the old baseball field because they had built Baum Stadium (now Baum-Walker Stadium) then. I put my four-month-old child on my back, hit the road and went and watched everybody play. And back then, that’s when all of the home visits were being done, too.”

Along with building the team, a suitable playing facility – what was George Cole Field for the baseball team that just moved over to Baum Stadium in 1996 – had to be renovated into what became Lady’Back Yard. Cole Field was lined with AstroTurf, something Dever Boaz wanted to change.

“I did not want turf, I wanted dirt, so we started to try to go through the asphalt,” Dever Boaz recalled. “We went down, like, eight inches and never hit dirt. They paved and paved, then ended up putting French drains through the asphalt for the outfield.”

Arkansas played its first season in 1997 and Dever Boaz fairly quickly took the Hogs to two Regional appearances, plus earned SEC Coach of the Year in 1999 before leaving the program in 2004. She posted a 244-274-1 record during her eight seasons in Fayetteville.

By her fourth year in 2000 with the Hogs, Dever Boaz got them to their first NCAA Tournament where they were sent to the Norman Regional and Arkansas earned a victory over Cal State Northridge in the first round. The Sooners won their home Regional and eventually went on to win their first of now eight national titles under the great Patty Gasso.

While it was a rewarding feat, Dever Boaz felt the first NCAA Tournament appearance should have been the previous year.

“To be honest with you, we really felt like we got shafted in ’99,” she said of her squad that finished with a 46-29 record, including 17-13 in the SEC and the first time the Razorbacks posted a winning mark both overall and in league play. “When we made it in 2000, that was really a pretty cool thing because it meant the the girls who kind of took a chance and came and built the program: Tammy Kincaid, Jennifer Cirigliano, Brett Erickson, that whole group their senior year, they got to take the program to to postseason play.”

Just over a quarter of a century later when Ella McDowell recorded the final out against Duke to give Arkansas the Fayetteville Super Regional, Dever Boaz felt immediate gratitude as the program she set the foundation for reached another milestone.

“It literally just made my heart smile,” Dever Boaz said. “What I always believed could happen there, Courtney finished. That is the easiest way for me to say it. I jokingly tell her all the time, I am a little jealous with the tools you have. I did not have the staff she has. Like, it was me and one full-time assistant.”

One Coincidence After Another

A native of Woodlake (Calif.), a town an hour southeast of Fresno, Dever Boaz compiled a Hall of Fame career at Fresno State where she was a three-time All-American and helped the Bulldogs to three consecutive runner-up finishes in the Women’s College World Series from 1988-1990. She was legend Margie Wright’s first softball recruit to Fresno State.

In a crazy coincidence, Dever Boaz first crossed paths with Deifel during the latter’s youth in California. Dever Boaz was the pitching coach for Deifel’s sister, Amanda Scott, who, like Dever Boaz, went on to star in the circle at Fresno State and helped the Bulldogs win the national championship in 1998.

Deifel, who later won a national championship herself at Cal in 2002, would catch Scott during those lessons conducted by Dever Boaz.

“Amanda and Courtney used to come to all of the college camps that my college coach and our team would put on,” Dever Boaz recalled. “There’s a lot of history to it.”

Along with building a reputation as a consistent winner, Deifel is also known as one of the more genuine people in college softball. Dever Boaz saw that in her long ago.

“I mean, how can you not be in love with who Courtney is,” Dever Boaz questioned. “She is just a great human being. Everything that you see is what you get and there is no pretending. She is also a competitor. You can see it in her players. Like, her players want to bleed for her. She bleeds for them. It is really cool.”

Nearly three decades later, all of the stars have aligned and Deifel will soon mentor Dever Boaz’s offspring.

Macie Dever Boaz, Carie’s youngest child, is one of the five signees for Arkansas’ 2026 recruiting class that is ranked 16th nationally according to Softball America.

“It is so full circle. I just I couldn’t ask for more and it’s not it’s not just Courtney,” Dever Boaz said. “It’s the entire staff. You could not ask for a better staff to put your kid under. Number one, they are all about family. You just start right there. To me, that was really a huge decision maker for my daughter. Our family is exceedingly tight and they bleed family.

“They (also) demand excellence and they demand hard work, but they still they have fun in all they do. So, it is not like all work and no play. I think that is the beauty of it is they bust their butt and work really hard, but they have fun with each other. That is not always common in the places that you go to work.”

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