The Oklahoma Sooners softball team capped off the winningest season in D1 history and won their third straight Women’s College World Series Title on Thursday night by taking down Florida State 3-1 to take the best of three series 2-0 at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City. It is the third national championship in a row for Oklahoma, becoming just the second Division I softball team to win three straight titles joining UCLA (1988-1990). They did so by winning their last 53 games, a streak that stretched for 109 days.
Florida State (58-11), who was blanked 5-0 in game one and needed a win force a decisive game three, would take their first lead of the series 1-0 on a one out solo homerun by Mack Leonard in the bottom of the fourth inning. It is one of the rare times that Oklahoma had trailed all year (8% of games). The Sooners took over and jumped ahead for good 2-1 on back to back homeruns by Cydney Sanders and Grace Lyons to start the fifth. The final scoring on the night was an infield RBI single by Alynah Torres in the sixth inning. The OU pitching settled in after the homer by Leonard and shut down the Seminoles, retiring the last 11 batters consecutively to finish the season with a record of 61-1 (.984 win percentage).
Oklahoma didn’t lose a game the rest of the way since their lone setback 4-3 to Baylor back on February 19. During this run in the NCAA Tournament, the Sooners outscored their opponents 78-15 including four shutouts. Overall for the season they had a +407 run differential. The top three pitchers in the rotation- Nicole May, Jordy Bahl, and Alex Storako combined to only allow 53 runs in 323 innings to go along with 392 strikeouts entering the tourney. Storako (18-0) earned the win Thursday night, while Bahl got her fourth save. The 53 game win streak is the third longest in NCAA D1 collegiate sports history behind the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team (111 straight, 2014-2017), and the UCLA men’s basketball team (88 in a row, 1971-1973). The Oklahoma title is their seventh all-time and their sixth in the last 10 years.
Story by Chris Lessner/Video highlights courtesy of the NCAA
