During the players’ lunch break on day two of “Hell Week,” Auburn softball’s annual training camp in January, Kasey Cooper sat in the team room refreshing her phone continuously.
She was waiting on the email she knew was coming but seemed to never arrive.
Finally, at 12:08 p.m., the email arrived, and it made one of Cooper’s biggest dreams a reality.
The message was from Ken Eriksen, head coach of the USA softball women’s national team, and it contained the roster for the 2016 national team, for which Cooper had attended tryouts in Irvine, California, days earlier.
When she scanned the list and spotted her name, Cooper struggled to contain her emotions.
“I was shocked, because I wasn’t expecting it,” Cooper said. “The coaches just told me to go out there and play my game, don’t try to compete against anyone. Just be yourself and play your game and play what we’ve taught you. That’s what I did. I went out there to have fun and went out there just to be me.”
While making the national team has been a dream of Cooper’s for as long as she can remember, it’s far from the first success the third baseman has experienced.
In high school, she led Dothan High School to the 6A state title in 2011 and was named the Alabama Gatorade Player of the Year in 2013.
She immediately became a team leader upon her arrival at Auburn in 2014, batting .418 with 18 home runs and 77 RBIs and earning freshman All-American honors.
Cooper followed up her freshman campaign with another strong season, as she led Auburn to the Women’s College World Series for the first time in program history and was once again tabbed as an All-American.
Even considering all of her prior success, making the national team was a different kind of accomplishment for Cooper. She tried to play it down when telling her teammates the news, but they knew how much it truly meant to her.
“I tried casually to tell everybody in the team room, like, ‘Hey guys, I made the team,’” Cooper said. “They started freaking out. They were like, ‘Yeah, no big deal. You just made Team USA.’”
As excited as Cooper and her teammates were, it may have been the man who watches all of Cooper’s at-bats from the third-base coaching box who was most overjoyed.
“It was an awesome feeling because of the fact that I was so proud of her,” said Auburn head coach Clint Myers. “I’m extremely proud of what she represents, who she is. She has impeccable character and work ethic. She’s just a phenomenal lady. She makes the world a better place just because she’s in it.”
Cooper is now a part of the team she has looked up to for the entirety of her childhood. To this day, she vividly recalls the day her parents drove her to Montgomery to see Team USA, which included legends such as Leah O’Brien-Amico, Jennie Finch and Cat Osterman.
In a meeting with Myers before the 2015 season, Cooper included making the national team, something that no Auburn player had ever done, as one of her goals for the season. Nearly a year later, she has accomplished it, but she’s not stopping there.
“She’s never satisfied," Myers said. "She truly wants to be the leader of the U.S. team. “She wants to be the standard in which other people are measured.”
Playing for Team USA will allow Cooper an opportunity to play against, and with, many of the world’s top players. She has been across the diamond from many of her teammates already, as 10 of the team’s 18 players compete in the SEC.
Cooper especially looks forward to playing with Haylie McCleney, an All-American outfielder at Alabama, and working with Howard Dobson, assistant coach at LSU who is known as one of the country’s best hitting instructors.
While being named to the national team is an accomplishment of itself, the work for Team USA only begins with roster selection. No country has higher standards than the United States, which has won eight gold medals and two silvers in the World Cup of Softball, the premier international competition since softball was removed as an Olympic sport in 2012 and 2016.
Cooper and Myers believe playing in the SEC has prepared the rising junior to compete on the international stage.
Team USA will hold its training camp in Oklahoma City, which is also where the World Cup will be played. The team will also travel to Canada and Japan, places where Cooper has never gotten the opportunity to play.
“I like to learn, and every day’s a learning opportunity,” Cooper said. “Being able to learn about the game in a different perspective and also play with the best, it’s going to be awesome.”
By the time the national team wraps up its schedule on Sept. 5, Cooper will have played with the world’s best in places she never imagined possible, all for a team and country she’s always dreamed of representing.
“I want her to bring back great stories. … When she starts taking about it, I want to see a smile on her face because it was the most awesome experience of her life,” Myers said. “She’s a young one, so she’s got many of these great experiences still yet to happen because of the player that she is. What the future holds for her is unlimited.”
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