How life on the ranch prepared Texas' Reese Atwood for the 2025 WCWS - ESPN

Editor's note: This story was originally posted on June 2, 2025. With Texas playing in the 2025 WCWS finals, we have updated it.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Texas' 2025 softball roster features seven All-SEC selections, three Collegiate Player of the Year top 25 finalists and three National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-Americans. But few, if any at all, of the No. 6-seed Longhorns grew up quite like junior catcher Reese Atwood, who spent her childhood on a South Texas ranch guiding hunting trips and breeding whitetail breeder bucks.

«I got to hang around the deer a lot — my job was to track the babies down and ear-tag them,» Atwood told ESPN this week. «I grew up with a lot of responsibility, always working from a young age. It gave me a work ethic and a knowledge that it takes hard work to do things right.»

Life on the ranch was just a part of a small-town upbringing in Sandia, Texas — population: 326 — that helped shape Atwood, the All-American slugger at the center of Texas' latest Women's College World Series run.

After a breakout sophomore season, Atwood is again pacing Texas. She leads the Longhorns in home runs (21), RBIs (86), walks (41) and total bases (153), and she earned All-SEC first-team honors this season. On May 2, Atwood became the first Texas player to eclipse 200 career RBIs with a two-run home run against Kentucky.

Hitless with a walk and a sacrifice fly RBI in eight at-bats across Texas' first three WCWS wins, the Longhorns are still waiting for Atwood to lift off. If anything, the sleeping giant in the heart of the lineup only makes the Texas offense scarier as the Longhorns make the program's third WCWS finals appearance since 2022 on Wednesday against Texas Tech (8 p.m. ET on ESPN).

«Reese has been the