OXFORD | Lynnette Johnson has been waiting on this weekend for years.

Each summer since the Ole Miss Softball Complex has been structurally qualified to host an NCAA Regional, the executive associate athletics director and senior woman administrator has directed her staff to secure local hotel rooms and complete other advance planning necessities in case the softball team had enough success to warrant it the following season.

That had been busy work without even the hope of pay off for most of Johnson’s 14 years in the position, but head coach Mike Smith’s ground-up build has reached the impressive step in his third season.

A season after making an NCAA Regional for the first time in school history and three seasons after a 3-21 SEC record ended Windy Thees’ tenure as head coach, the Rebels (40-18) are the No. 12 seed and will host the Oxford Regional starting Friday. Ole Miss, which went 4-0 to win the SEC Tournament last weekend, opens with four-seed Southern Illinois. North Carolina and Arizona State are also in the field.

Johnson, who was appointed to the NCAA Softball Committee in 2015, had been tracking the RPI for several weeks and had many emotions as Ole Miss’ run in Knoxville secured a conference championship and made postseason softball at home a reality.

“I was hoping for a while if we could get above 20 in RPI we’d get in the conversation,” Johnson said. “Then the girls just went and won a championship. All the credit is to the kids for believing and the hard work. They’ve put together so many quality wins, and I knew last week we better be prepared for this event.”

The current record crowd for the complex is 1,410, but there will be seating added to the outfield area. Ole Miss hosted the Southeastern Conference Softball Tournament in 2011, but some of those additional amenities won’t be available this weekend because of lack of notice to prepare. The focus is on concessions and restrooms for the overflow crowd.

Also the Gillom Center, adjacent to the softball complex, is in the final weeks of a renovation. That building houses the Rebels’ locker rooms, so the softball team has been using Tad Smith Coliseum this season.

“The team has had a historic run and the locker room is in the Tad Pad,” Johnson said. “They’ve ridden carts to practice. They won an SEC title without any semblance of a normal environment.”

There were 1,306 tickets sold as of late Tuesday with another 300 allotted for the other regional participants. For comparison, Florida, which was the defending national champion, had 1,532 at its regional opener last season. Social media has erupted with many more interactions dealing with the Oxford Regional compared to the other 15 host sites.

The NCAA host bids were due in April, and Travis Wells, the Ole Miss game operations head for softball, completed the process, sending in the packet that includes proof of hotel availability, a facility evaluation and more. Since regular season games are free attendance, Ole Miss has to show how it would sell tickets.

Johnson’s experience overseeing Ole Miss baseball regional bids for the past 14 years paid off this week. The forethought to book the necessary hotel rooms a year early made the bid situation much less stressful. Oxford, which has a growing but still limited amount of hotel availability, is hosting the Mississippi Soccer Association Presidents Cup. The three-day event involves male and female soccer teams from 9 to 17 years old.

“Many years ago when I started doing baseball I learned the hard way,” Johnson said. “In 2003 in February I was trying to get hotel rooms, and that was tight. I learned my lesson and we go get hotel rooms in June. If we can host an event at Ole Miss then we’re talking hotel rooms with partners in town and holding spaces. Then, as the season gets close to over and if we see we’re not hosting, then we’ll release the rooms. But we plan ahead. We are prepared.

“Travis Wells has put all this together and is on the front line. It’s his program, and he’s there everyday.”

And so will school record crowds this weekend, as the Rebels continue to set new program standards. Ole Miss had never scored a run in the conference tournament prior to Smith being named head coach, but now the Rebels are champions of a conference that got all 13 teams in postseason play.

“I was so proud (last weekend) and had thoughts of first program and sometimes everybody talks about process,” Johnson said. I’m so proud of this senior core group and how we made progress last season. It’s a really surreal moment and unbelievable. I keep watching the moment of the last out on Twitter and seeing the team run out of the dugout.

“Now the next step is to keep it going.”