What the Cool Girls are Wearing to Play NCAA Softball
Bubble braids, bows & a full beat
It’s been a running-heavy spring over here on The Sweat Lookbook, so this week we’re switching things up! I’ve been eager to take a closer look at softball style for a while, and the NCAA Women’s College World Series (WCWS) serves as the perfect entry point into the world of bubble braids, bows, and eye black.
If you’re curious about my rigorous research strategy, a lot of dedicated scrolling went into transforming my Instagram algorithm from runfluencers to Tennessee Vols videos. Nothing says “Circle Pit palette cleanser” quite like these dynamic softball dos. Did you know there’s a lot of dancing in the WCWS?
The History
Before we get into the bubble braid of it all, it’s time for a history lesson. Softball was never expressly intended as a sport for women. Invented on Thanksgiving Day in 1887 at the Farragut Boat House in Chicago, it served as an indoor alternative to baseball and was played by both men and women. In the same era, women joined baseball teams at women’s colleges or played on amateur teams like the trailblazing Philadelphia Dolly Vardens and the Boston Bloomer Girls. “A League of Their Own” famously chronicled the rise of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during WWII, including its rigid adherence to both femininity and segregation.
Ultimately, softball prevailed over women’s baseball in the ‘50s and ‘60s due to “Its smaller field, larger ball, and underhand pitching style—aspects deemed suitable for the supposedly weaker and more delicate female body,” writes Miami University professor Callie Maddox. Title IX cemented the split, and as money flowed into college softball programs, high school and little league teams followed suit.
Today, softball is especially popular in the SEC, where football-rich programs offset their spending by investing in women’s sports like softball and – believe it or not – rowing (two of the top teams in NCAA Rowing right now are Tennessee and Texas.) It helps that the South is a hotbed for softball, with states like Florida and Texas producing some of the nation’s top talent, thanks to year-round athlete development that Northern states can’t quite match.
The SEC’s commitment to softball is paying dividends. The sport has skyrocketed in popularity in the last decade as teams like Oklahoma build dynasties rivaling those of UCLA and Arizona. (Invest in women’s sports!) This year, five of the eight teams in the NCAA World Series hail from the SEC. Last year, the three-game WCWS Finals matchup between Texas and Texas Tech averaged 2.2 million viewers – the most-watched WCWS on record – and overall viewership of the women’s tournament trumped the men’s. As I write this on Friday, the 2026 tournament is doubling down on the sport’s momentum. The WCWS super-regional round was up 48% from last year.
It helps that softball culture is joyful and shenanigan-rich, with traditions like dance-offs and fans like Mississippi State’s Broccoli Guy seemingly tailor-made for social media fame.
The Look
On top of its exhilarating gameplay and zany spirit, softball has its own style. Big bows and bold makeup show up more regularly on the diamond than on the basketball courts or soccer fields. Perhaps no player embodied softball glam better than the legendary Jennie Finch, who revolutionized the game with her 72 mph fastball and unabashed love of pink.
“When I started playing sports, I always put ribbons in my braids or ponytails,” writes Finch in her memoir Play Like a Girl. “My father was the one who did my hair for me before games when I was little because my mom was often at work. He always said that just because a girl plays sports doesn’t mean she can’t be feminine. So that became my motto, too.”
Many players seem to echo Finch’s sentiments. Donna Leet, a former Amherst standout, explained to me over email that: “Hair in softball was always a thing for as long as I was in the sport.” Growing up in Seattle in the early 2000s, sparkly headbands were de regeuer on the diamond thanks to the influence of the University of Washington’s 2009 NCAA championship-winning team,
Today, the University of Oklahoma proudly carries lip gloss in their back pockets. (Sephora, sponsor these ladies!)
And you can find more 9.8K reels on Instagram about softball style. Plus a sea of Pinterest pins like this:
”It was always fun to pick out our ribbons and headbands before games,” says Leet. “It was something we bonded over and made trades with each other. I’m not sure why this trend developed in softball… perhaps because other sports involve more physical contact with other players and don’t have as many moments of no/low physical activity, it is less practical in other women’s sports.”
The SEC’s dominance in softball feels relevant to helping cement the prevailing style, but it’s not something I see being talked about widely. I found a great 2025 story from ESPN on Florida State player Michaela Edenfield’s makeup, which drew inspiration from contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, one from the Shreveport Times titled “Softball Divas: Makeup Rituals Help Athletes Play Well,” and a story on UCF’s Slick Backs and Superstitions. But no stories that examine any of the broader cultural context behind all this glam.
So let’s go a little deeper, shall we?
In the era of Alabama #RushTok, SEC schools have seen a surge of interest as Gen Z seeks a college experience that looks good on social media. In 2025, The Sunday Times reported that “universities belonging to the Southeastern Conference recorded a 91 per cent rise in undergraduate students from northeastern states in a decade from 2014 to 2023.” Since 2021, Bama #RushTok has helped advertise and reify a particular brand of Southern girlhood, one steeped in white femininity and the myth of the Southern Belle.
It’s hard not to see softball’s ultra-glam looks as an extension of all these traditions. Especially when videos like this, from the University of Missouri, go viral in their own right.
Which brings us to the bubble braid.
I admit, I had not clocked the rise of the hair-do, which involves sectioning a long ponytail into “bubbles” until this year. But once you go looking for it, you’ll see it all over the diamond. It’s the preferred pony of Tennessee star pitcher Karlyn Pickens and of many of the women at Texas Tech. “The trend is definitely to grow your hair LONG and wear it in a bubble ponytail using multiple hairbands, or a long braided ponytail,” says Leet.
The look, which like many braided styles originates in African culture, started bubbling up in the 2020s. Despite my best efforts, I can’t find the exact originator in women’s sports, though Angel City FC center back Sarah Gordon lays claim to its debut on the soccer pitch. She began playing in a bubble pony back in 2021.
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In 2022, Brian Haenchen of the Indy Star chronicled its growing popularity among high school players. Quoting then sophomore player Shelby Messer, "the bubbles are really where it's at.”
Of course, elaborate braids have long been a feature of women’s sports, a favorite way to pass the time on bus rides and in locker rooms. (I could do a solid French braid back in my JV soccer days.) Softball visors create a showcase for elaborate hair-dos and long pre-game rituals make for ideal braiding conditions. The sport’s mental game also plays a role in cementing signature styles.
“I’m very superstitious,” UCF player Samantha Delhoyo told her college newspaper. “One that I’ve been doing, I do like two French braids down into like bubbles and I did that I think 16U, which was one of my best seasons so I have been doing that, but I think I come up with a lot of crazy ones with just a bunch of braids on top of my head.”
In 2024, WCWS superstar Tiare Jennings of Oklahoma told The Athletic about her rituals, “She puts her uniform on the same way every game and wears her hair in one of two ways — braids or a bubble ponytail — but she doesn’t consider herself superstitious. Her biggest strength is staying calm.”
Softball’s other style signatures include bows (“There was an antiquated theory that your hairstyle/ribbons was a way to portray your sexual orientation, but I don’t think we thought about it that way,” says Leet), glitter eye black, TIY hair ties, and sparkly headbands.
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The Opportunity
Brands have yet to sink their claws fully into softball, but that’s likely to change – and quickly. With softball returning to the 2028 Olympics – with games in softball hotbed Oklahoma City, not LA – brands should be signing NCAA stars now.
On the NIL front, Nike, New Balance, and Adidas have launched softball rosters. Texas Tech star NiJaree Canady – the sport’s first $1 million pitcher – leads the pack, sporting her own signature Adidas cleats. New Balance has something of a penchant for striking blonde athletes (see also Parker Valby and Cameron Brink), and they continued their streak by adding Tennessee’s Karlyn Pickens to their team in 2025.
If legacy sports brands are staking a claim, beauty remains something of a blank slate. In 2025, Sephora signed on as the exclusive beauty sponsor of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (where many NCAA stars will land), but they’ve yet to step up to the plate at the college level – a missed opportunity given the WCWS’s tremendous social reach and influence on young players. I poked around to see if any other beauty brands were pursuing NIL deals in the sport, and could only find one program from Hally Hair launched back in 2023. TIY Hair Ties looks to be making an SEO and social play for softball players – but that leaves a whole lot of field left for investment.
A buzzy women’s sport with an organic culture around style and beauty, what more could a brand ask for? Time to step up to the plate.
(P.S. This ESPN story on “Patch Lady” Carolan Bledsoe, the 81-year old seamstress who sews WCWS patches onto all the players’ jerseys, is worth the read. I love details like this: "We'll be watching the game and go, 'Oh, yeah, there's that patch we had so much trouble with,' if we got it on crooked or whatever," Bledsoe says. "It's like, 'Oh dear, that's the one we had to take apart and redo.'")
