Texas softball's journey from heartbreak to hoisting the national championship trophy

OKLAHOMA CITY -- On June 6, 2024, the Texas Longhorns wandered through the concrete hallways beneath Devon Park while their archrivals hoisted yet another national championship trophy on the softball diamond above them.

There, the Longhorns were left grappling with the reality of the program's latest gut-wrenching disappointment at the Women's College World Series. After reaching its second WCWS national championship series in three years, Texas fell abruptly and emphatically in a two-game sweep to Oklahoma, which celebrated the sport's unprecedented fourth consecutive national title. Swept by the Sooners in the 2022 championship series as well, the Longhorns walked out last June wincing from a familiar pain.

As they boarded the team bus outside the stadium, outgoing senior pitcher Estelle Czech turned to infielder Katie Cimusz and issued a challenge.

"'Go win it all next year,'" Cimusz recalled Czech saying. "'Do that for us.'"

The Longhorns turned that stinging defeat into a resilience that helped deliver the school's first national championship Friday night.

From a late-season swoon that included an April sweep by Oklahoma, Texas found its groove just in time for the WCWS. After an opening-round win over Florida, the Longhorns finally vanquished the Sooners on May 31, then overcame the million-dollar pitching arm of NiJaree Canady in the championship series, defeating the Red Raiders superstar twice in three days.

Texas chased Canady with a five-run first inning Friday night, and anchored by another impressive outing from ace Teagan Kavan, the Longhorns rolled to a 10-4 victory that sealed the program's long-awaited chase for a WCWS title under seventh-year coach Mike White.

Exactly one year after the Longhorns sulked off the same field last June, Texas finally got its storybook ending at Devon Park. To get over the hump, the Longhorns rode not only the most complete roster of White's tenure, but a transformed program mentality, too.

"We never give in," Kavan said. "If you have an out, you have a chance."

MONTHS AFTER THE Longhorns trudged out of Devon Park last June, they gathered in a house along a river outside of Austin for a fall retreat.

Paddleboard and pickleball comprised the majority of the weekend agenda. But in between the fun, the team's senior leaders -- including Vanessa Quiroga, Ashton Maloney, Mia Scott, Cimusz and Sophia Simpson, who'd gone 0-5 against Oklahoma in the WCWS -- hunkered down to figure out what their cultural foundation could be in 2025.

They conceived a fresh team motto, "Fuel the fire," and built a PowerPoint presentation to convey a meaning behind each letter of the mantra. They spoke about how they could better hone mental toughness and togetherness and about breaking down barriers between the program's upperclassmen and underclassmen with an eye on empowering their talented young teammates.

"The family atmosphere that we have this year, nobody's above each other," Cimusz said. "We're all on the same level, playing the same game. It has just changed so much."

Ranked atop the ESPN.com/USA Softball Collegiate Preseason Top 25 poll, the Longhorns cruised early, carrying a 26-1 record into SEC play in March. But Texas stumbled in mid-April in a series defeat to Tennessee. Oklahoma's three-game sweep of the Longhorns two weeks later seemingly reinforced the apparent gap between the Red River programs.

After Texas crashed out of the SEC tournament with a humbling 14-2 loss to rival Texas A&M, the Longhorns' path back to softball's mountaintop appeared tenuous. But their confidence in what they could accomplish and the culture the Longhorns had forged never wavered.

"We've just gotten better through adversity," Kavan said. "Just leaning into each other. From when I got here, the team was really close. But now, I think the team is even closer."

Amid their struggles, the Longhorns fell back on the foundation they established at the retreat. White reminded his team of its peer-led motto, using any adversity, past or present, to "Fuel the fire" and crystalize their resolve.

During the Austin Super Regional, the Longhorns were on the brink of elimination after losing Game 1 to Clemson. But in the 10th inning of Game 2, Kaydee Bennett connected on a sacrifice fly to score the go-ahead run. And in the bottom of the inning, with two runners on base, Kavan forced a groundout, giving Texas the 7-5 win. The Longhorns held on the following day 6-5 against the Tigers to return to the WCWS.

"I think that saying, that motto, us pulling together as a team was something that got us through it," Cimusz said.

TEXAS' VETERANS KNEW last fall that they'd need their youngest players to deliver in clutch moments for the Longhorns to finally get over the hump. Upon returning to Oklahoma City, that's exactly what happened.

A sixth-inning home run from sophomore left fielder Katie Stewart helped power Texas' WCWS opening win against Florida. Against Oklahoma two days later, sophomore center fielder Kayden Henry homered to right, giving the Longhorns a fifth-inning lead they wouldn't relinquish on the way to a program-defining victory.

Henry said those key plays culminated from "trusting each other," from the seniors on down.

"A lot of us have come back after we had adversity last year," she said. "It was just coming together, fighting for each other."

Kavan, another sophomore, spearheaded that fight.

Kavan held Texas Tech bats to four runs on eight hits over seven innings in Friday night's clincher. She also closed a masterful WCWS run with a school record, eclipsing Texas legend Cat Osterman's mark with her sixth career WCWS victory.

"She's always wanting to get better and that's what pushes the great ones," White said of Kavan before the championship series. "She's proven that she's got the mental toughness."

Alongside Kavan, no player on Texas' 2025 roster embodied the Longhorns' toughness better than catcher Reese Atwood, the central force at the heart of the Texas batting order.

In Game 1 of the WCWS finals, the Red Raiders opted to intentionally walk the All-American junior to load the bases and set up a forceout at any base. But as Canady attempted to toss ball four, Atwood surprised everyone, including White, by smacking a single to left field to score both runners, as the Longhorns rallied to stun the Red Raiders.

Atwood came up big again in Friday's first inning. It was her one-out RBI single that opened the floodgates on Canady and Texas Tech, setting Texas on course to claim its elusive national title, the ultimate reward for the fresh ambition that finally pulled it into reach.

"[We] built a culture of desire," as Atwood put it.