NiJaree Canady injury update: Gerry Glasco confirms ‘soft tissue’ ailment ahead of WCWS final

Speaking on Big 12 Radio ahead of the Women’s College World Series matchup against Oklahoma, Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco revealed NiJaree Canady suffered an injury earlier in the year. The two-time reigning National Pitcher of the Year was apparently playing on a torn hamstring.

Glasco confirmed Canady has been dealing with a “really, really serious soft tissue injury” while speaking with reporters Tuesday ahead of the WCWS final against Texas. Doctors said her pitching motion didn’t impact the severity since she’s right-handed, and the staff would have had to shut her down if she threw left-handed.

Glasco said he spoke directly with the doctors about the ailment. He added it was a “major” issue throughout the year.

“I just know it was a really serious injury that was going to take eight or nine weeks to get over completely,” Glasco said. “I was actually told soft tissue injury, and I think I assumed it was the leg or the hamstring, but I really didn’t know other than the doctors said that … the pitching motion, because it was on her left leg, not her right leg, that it wouldn’t do further damage to go ahead and pitch. But if it had been on the right leg, he would have had to shut her down.

“So it was that close. … Yeah, it was a major, a really, really serious soft tissue injury, the way I understood it.”

Gerry Glasco: ‘We were walking on pins and needles for about a month’

Despite the injury, Canady led Texas Tech not only to its first-ever WCWS trip, but the first championship series in program history. She repeated as National Pitcher of the Year and enters Wednesday’s first game with a 33-5 record and a 0.90 ERA. She also has a .297 batting average, 11 home runs and 34 RBI at the plate as a hitter.

NiJaree Canady said the injury looked “worse than it was” on paper and downplayed the issue. But Glasco also said it impacted her production at the plate this year. She also hasn’t thrown a bullpen session in some time and took more than a month off batting practice.

“We were walking on pins and needles for about a month,” Glasco said. “There was about a month there where even like the South Carolina Friday night game, we thought she was going to start, and it didn’t feel right, and we had to not start on Friday. Then we eliminated all bullpens during the middle of the week and eliminated hitting, like actual batting practice. She was taking almost none for a little over a month period. We didn’t talk a lot about it, but it was a significant setback, I think, in her offensive part of her game.

“But then her pitching part, when you realize as a coach how effective she was every weekend and not going through the normal bullpen procedures or the really hard bullpens where you work on your spin, you work on your location that you normally would do, and to still have the results that she did just shows what a tremendous competitor and what a tremendous talent she was.”