By Blake Colston
Sports Editor
2025 Piedmont High School softball star Taybor Moss is the second Oklahoma High School athlete to take advantage of the state’s new NIL rules.
Moss is a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma and is the first high school athlete with Native American heritage in the United States to sign an NIL deal.
“I’m so excited about this. It’s been really hard to keep it a secret the last few weeks,” Moss said. “This product made an almost immediate impact on my swing and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.”
On Thursday morning, Moss announced her sponsorship with Moore Bats. The deal was finalized three weeks ago, but the Moss family was waiting for final approval from the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association before announcing the deal. That approval came earlier this week.
Moore Bats is a small business based in Wilton, Calif., and is owned by former Oakland Athletics minor league pitcher Darin Moore. He created the bat with a weighted handle and a uniquely shaped barrel that is specifically designed to improve softball players’ swings.
“I got in this for the kids. If I can help them, I will,” Moore said while noting that this is his company’s first NIL deal with an athlete.
The training bat is intended to improve bat speed and exit velocity. Moss said since using Moore’s product, her bat speed has increased five miles-per-hour and that her exit velocity continues to increase.
“The first couple of times I tried it, I noticed a big difference,” she said.
Moss, one of Oklahoma’s top softball prospects in the Class of 2025, batted .438 with three home runs and 48 RBI’s during Piedmont’s 2022 state championship season. Moss quickly capitalized on the state’s new rule change, which was adopted by the OSSAA in October of 2022.
“The OSSAA does not specifically prohibit students from engaging in certain commercial activities as an individual,” the statement said. “These activities, commonly referred to as name, image and likeness (NIL) will not put a student’s amateur status at risk provided the student meets all the requirements for maintaining amateur status in compliance with Rule 5, and there is no violation of rules prohibiting influencing a student to attend or remain at a member school (Rule 9).”
According to the OSSAA, students can get compensated for their NIL while following Rules 5 and 9 if they follow the following guidelines.
• “The compensation is not contingent on specific athletic performance or achievement.”
• “The compensation is not provided as an incentive to enroll or remain enrolled at a specific school.”
• “The compensation is not provided by the school or any person acting as an agent for the school.”
Moss joins Tulsa Bishop Kelley golfer Payton Coburn as the state’s only prep athletes with NIL deals. Now, Moss said, she hopes that her PHS teammates and fellow athletes can follow in her footsteps.
“This has been a really cool experience that I want all my teammates to be able to have, too,” she said. “I’m staying humble about all this, because if you let things go to your head you can become a different person.”
Because of OSSAA rules, Piedmont head coach Keith Coleman was not allowed to be part of the NIL process but was fully supportive of the deal once it was finalized.
Moss’s parents, Anthony and Lisa, are coaches at Piedmont High School. They met Moore at a coaching convention in San Antonio in December, and the deal sprouted from there.
“When my mom told me about it, I thought she was joking. I couldn’t believe it,” Moss said.
After talking with her parents, Moore viewed Moss’s swing on video and decided to offer her an NIL opportunity. Moss will promote Moore Bats on Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok, and in return will receive the company’s products at no cost. The deal does not include monetary payments.
“I wanted someone who had the same character as me and someone who was brought up like me, and when I met Taybor, I knew she was perfect,” Moore said.
The Moss family decided together that signing the deal was the right choice.
“We sat down to talk about the good and the bad of doing something like this,” Lisa Moss said. “In the end, it was a product we really loved and believed in, so it was an easy choice.”
