In the 2025 Women’s College World Series, Patty Gasso’s Oklahoma Sooners are looking to join some of the most rarified air in collegiate team sports.
If Oklahoma manages to win the WCWS, which it enters as the top seed remaining (No. 1 overall Texas A&M was knocked out in the regional round), it would join UCLA men’s basketball in John Wooden’s heyday and USC baseball in the 1970s to become the only programs to win five or more straight national titles in one of the major team sports (football, men’s/women’s basketball, men’s/women’s ice hockey, baseball/softball).
While dominance of this magnitude has appeared in track & field and swimming, among other sum-of-their-parts sports, something about it feels different when it comes to team sports themselves. What the Sooners are doing also comes in the midst of a transitionary time for college athletics, which has also foisted some parity into NCAA competition.
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Here is what to know as the Sooners chase their prestigious fifth straight national title, and who they would be joining at the pinnacle of college dynasties.
How many national championships has Oklahoma softball won?
In total, Oklahoma softball has won eight national titles, all under Gasso.
Half of those have come in the past four years, with Oklahoma winning in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. 2025, if Oklahoma is able to win yet again, would mark the fifth straight year Oklahoma manages to win the Women’s College World Series. At this point, the Sooners are racing themselves. The previous record for consecutive national champions was three (UCLA, 1988-90) before Oklahoma became the first four-time winners by defeating Texas last season.
5-time repeat champions in college team sports
Patty Gasso is already the greatest softball coach of all time, but a fifth straight win would catapult her to a name nearly unrivaled in college athletics: The great John Wooden.
Wooden’s UCLA men’s basketball team won a staggering seven straight national titles from 1967-73, the only program in football, men’s/women’s basketball, men’s/women’s ice hockey, and baseball/softball to win more than four national titles in a row.
USC baseball under Rod Dedeaux is the other program to win five straight titles, when the Trojans took every national championship between 1970 and 1974. Dedeaux had 10 national titles during his USC tenure, and the Trojans now play at Dedeaux Field.
There have been more five-time champions in meet and heat sports, along with individual champions. But in the major team sports it’s an exceptionally rare achievement.
Pro sports teams to win five straight championships
Only two pro sports teams have won five straight titles, and both of those titles came in ages past.
The New York Yankees won five straight World Series from 1949-53, marking the only time this has happened in MLB history.
In the NHL, the Montreal Canadiens won five straight titles from 1956-60.
The Boston Celtics stand kings of the streak, with eight straight championships from 1959-66.
No NFL team has made the Super Bowl five times in a row, let alone won it. Nine teams have gone back-to-back, but no team has ever three-peated.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oklahoma softball seeks 5-peat in Women’s College World Series
