Meet softball pitcher Donnie Gobourne, South Carolina’s latest breakout star

Two days after the South Carolina women’s basketball team lost to Iowa in the Final Four, head coach Dawn Staley took a seat in the front row of Carolina Softball Stadium to watch the Gamecocks play a series-deciding game against No. 13 Florida.

By the top of the seventh inning, Staley was standing — and so was every other fan in the ballpark.

All eyes in the crowd locked on to the woman in the center of the circle, fifth-year pitcher Donnie Gobourne.

In all the hubbub of spring sports — Staley’s Final Four run, spring football practice, the baseball team’s best start since 1975 — it could be easy to miss one of USC’s breakout stars on campus.

Although, Staley certainly hasn’t. An avid supporter of USC softball, Staley has tweeted #InDonnyWeTrust throughout the season, going so far as to step in the locker room after a Gamecocks win and give the flamethrower a high-five.

On April 2, Staley and the home crowd were able to witness Gobourne throw a near-flawless gem.

The ballpark was buzzing as Gobourne stepped into the circle in the seventh inning. The 5-foot-8 righthander had 117 pitches to her name — and Florida didn’t have a single hit on the board. Even on the cusp of USC’s first no-hitter since 2017, Gobourne remained stoic and unflappable in the circle. She’s not the type to wear her emotions on the field.

Wielding an electric fastball, Gobourne slung strike after strike into the zone against Florida’s batters, just daring them to hit it. With every swing and miss, every strikeout, Gobourne walked quietly back to the circle. No strut. No fist pump. No yelling. The swings and misses don’t surprise her.

“I’m always looking for the next batter,” Gobourne said of her mindset. And, most of the time, that next batter goes down swinging. Gobourne averages 12 strikeouts per seven innings — the second-best rate in the country.

In that Sunday rubber match against the Gators, Gobourne needed just one more strike to make history. She struck out the first two batters of the seventh, then got ahead in the count 2-2 against Florida outfielder Katie Kistler before Kistler squared up Gobourne’s 135th pitch of the afternoon for a no-hitter-spoiling double.

Undeterred, Gobourne stepped back in the circle and struck out her 15th batter of the game to seal a one-hit shutout, and her Gamecocks teammates swarmed around her in front of home plate, placing an oversized USC necklace over her head.

That kind of sight has become a familiar one for USC (30-12, 7-8 SEC), which has consistently leaned on Gobourne throughout the season’s highest-pressure moments.

A week after the shutout, Gobourne threw an 11-strikeout, one-run complete game at No. 16 Alabama, striking out the last five batters she faced to seal the victory. Most recently, Gobourne helped the Gamecocks finish off a sweep of No. 23 Texas A&M by throwing six scoreless innings in the final game.

No other pitcher on USC’s staff comes close to Gobourne’s 128 strikeouts in 76.1 innings, and her 8-2 record and 2.48 ERA lead the team. On Monday night, Gobourne was selected as the 17th overall pick by the Oklahoma City Spark in the Women’s Professional Fastpitch Draft — the first Gamecock drafted into the pro ranks since 2013.

Determined to improve what she described as “deficiencies” in her roster, head coach Beverly Smith brought in Gobourne, along with three other players, from the transfer portal this offseason. Even before the season began, Gobourne — a former Florida Atlantic pitcher — caught Smith’s eye.

“A name you’re gonna be hearing a lot this year is Donnie Gobourne,” Smith said. “She throws heat. She’s a high-velocity pitcher. … I think in terms of impact, she’s going to have a great impact for us.”

Smith might’ve undersold just how much of an impact Gobourne would make.

Softball beginnings

Growing up in Lake Placid, Florida — the kind of quiet, scenic town that retirees flock to — Gobourne and her two older sisters didn’t have much to do with their time other than play sports.

Softball was the first love for all three sisters, inspired by their mother Shondra Crenshaw, who played in her younger days, though not at the college level like her children.

Softball served as a North Star of sorts for Gobourne, a platform to keep her on the right track and headed toward college. Some of her peers weren’t as fortunate. In her teenage years, she watched some of her male athlete friends fall in with the wrong crowd.

“A lot of my guy friends that I grew up with, they were really good at football,” Gobourne said. “They were talented. They went to camps and everything, and then just like one wrong move, and they were done.”

Gobourne stayed focus on softball, and the more she played, the more she saw a future in it.

Ironically, pitching is relatively new for Gobourne. She spent the majority of her high school and travel ball years playing shortstop or in the outfield, where her strong arm was an asset. Gobourne would pitch an inning here or there during travel ball, but she hadn’t learned proper mechanics or the art of pitching. She just threw hard, and batters couldn’t catch up.

Her journey as a pitcher truly began at her time at Santa Fe College, a junior college in Florida, where she played from 2018-2020 and and where she started to refine her craft. She made enough of a jump as a pitcher that she started drawing Division I interest, and she ended up pitching two years for the FAU Owls. She went 2-12 with a 5.40 ERA in her first season and 3-6 with a 4.33 her second season — a far cry from the kind of numbers she’s put up in the SEC.

Gobourne admits she was a bit nervous when she entered the transfer portal after last season, afraid she wouldn’t draw much interest. But USC saw star potential in her, even if she didn’t quite see it yet in herself.

“When I entered the portal, I was kind of concerned that maybe I wouldn’t get picked up,” Gobourne said. “But a lot of coaches offered me, so I think it was just really all about trusting the process.”

Gamecock legacy

Why South Carolina? Gobourne said she knew she wanted to play for the Gamecocks when she came to Columbia for her visit and saw Coach Smith in action. It was a small, subtle moment that caught Gobourne’s eye — a moment she hasn’t even told her head coach about. On her visit, Gobourne watched Smith hug one of the grounds crew staffers and hand him a gift, thanking him for all of his effort.

“It just showed how much heart she really has,” Gobourne said. “And it’s definitely good to come to a program with a coach that has as big of a heart as she does.”

Gobourne and her head coach are similar in that way — both with big hearts. Throughout her college career, Gobourne has kept her teenage years in mind, thinking about her friends who took the wrong paths in life. That’s why Gobourne studies criminal justice.

After her college career ends, she hopes to spend a couple of years coaching softball and perhaps play professionally. She was selected No. 17 overall Monday night in the 2023 Women’s Professional Fastpitch draft by the OKC Spark.

When the time comes to hang up her glove, her next life will be as a juvenile counselor.

“I came from a small town, and of course there was a lot of athletic people, people who could have gone far but of course they were steered in the wrong direction,” Gobourne said. “I want to stop them. I want to help them before they get into a part where they can’t get further. I’m just trying to help them before things get too bad.”

Gobourne has many more pitches to throw for the Gamecocks before that day comes, and she figures to remain a key arm for USC just as she has been all season.

She’ll never forget her first SEC win in the circle against then-No. 14 LSU on March 13. Gobourne entered the game in relief and struck out 10 Tigers to give USC its first conference victory. After the game, Smith found her in the locker room and said, “Donnie, this is what you came here for.”

Those words stuck with her. She texted her sisters and mom about it in the subsequent days.

“It’s definitely been a journey,” Gobourne said. “And I’m glad that I trusted the process, because I started out at JUCO. And now I’m at the highest level.

“It’s nice to finally get where I feel like I belong.”