Megan Grant hit 42 home runs in her final season at UCLA — enough to break a Division I record that had stood since 1995. ESPN noticed. So did the voters who will decide the 2026 ESPYs.
Grant is one of four nominees for Best Record-Breaking Performance, alongside Myles Garrett (NFL single-season sack record), cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (six Winter Games golds), and marathoner Sabastian Sawe (first sub-two-hour marathon). The category has existed since 2001. No softball player has won it.
She is not waiting around for the ceremony to find out whether her name travels beyond the college game. The No. 4 pick in the 2026 AUSL draft is already slugging for the Portland Cascade — and I watched her do it at Dell Diamond the same week the nomination dropped.
The record
Grant’s 42 homers passed Laura Espinoza’s 37 from 1995, a mark that had held for 31 years, per UCLA Athletics and ESPN’s nominee release. She also finished as UCLA’s career leader with 91 home runs, passing Bruin Hall of Famer Stacey Nuveman in both single-season and career categories.
That career total should sound familiar. Lauren Chamberlain reached the same ESPY category in 2015 after her 91st homer broke Nuveman’s NCAA career record. Peyton Manning won instead. Jocelyn Alo was nominated in 2022 after closing with 122 career homers; Stephen Curry won for passing Ray Allen on the NBA’s all-time three-point list. Alo did take home Best College Athlete, Women’s Sports that year — the highest-profile ESPY win a softball player has earned in recent memory.
Grant’s nomination is for a different kind of number. Chamberlain and Alo rewrote career leaderboards. Grant broke the single-season standard — the one Espinoza set before Grant was born.
Caitlin Clark became the first woman to win Best Record-Breaking Performance in 2024, when she passed Pete Maravich’s NCAA career scoring mark. Before Clark, every winner in the category had been a man.
At Dell Diamond
Portland swept the Volts June 26–28 at Round Rock. The AUSL pregame notes for the series finale listed Grant as the league home run leader and flagged her NCAA record. On the field, the context landed harder.
On Friday, Grant went deep in a record five-run seventh inning — Portland’s third homer in a frame that turned a 1-0 deficit into a 5-1 win. Korbe Otis and rookie Kenleigh Cahalan homered in the same rally; Cahalan’s was her first as a pro. Full story →
Sunday was Grant’s loudest day of the series. She homered in the first for a 1-0 lead, watched Texas answer for a 2-1 edge, then hit a two-run shot in the fifth to help seal a 5-2 sweep-clincher. She finished 2-for-3 with two homers and three RBI — the ninth AUSL player with a two-homer game and, per the official box score and pregame packet, the league leader with six homers through that date. Box score and game story →
That is the player on the ballot: an active pro carrying a national record into her first AUSL summer, not a college reel waiting to be filed away.
Softball at the ESPYs
The Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards — the ESPYs — date to 1993, when ESPN held its first ceremony at Madison Square Garden. Jim Valvano’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award speech that night launched what became the V Foundation for Cancer Research, a partnership the broadcast still carries.
The 2026 ESPYS — the 34th edition — air Wednesday, July 15, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC (5 p.m. PT) from Lincoln Center, hosted by Marcello Hernández. Fan voting opened June 25 and runs through ceremony night at ESPYS.com.
College softball has won its share of hardware in the college-athlete categories. Cat Osterman took Best Female College Athlete in 2005 and 2006 at Texas. Taryne Mowatt won in 2007 after Arizona’s national title run. Alo added Oklahoma’s third softball ESPY in 2022.
Recent women’s sports winners at the pro level have come from the biggest stages in their sports — Simone Biles won Best Athlete, Women’s Sports at the 2025 ESPYS, topping A’ja Wilson, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, and Gabby Thomas, per ESPN’s 2025 winner release.
Softball’s footprint at the 2026 show runs wider than Grant alone. Lauren Betts — Grant’s UCLA teammate — is nominated for Best College Athlete, Women’s Sports after leading the Bruins to their first NCAA women’s basketball title. Teagan Kavan is up for Best Championship Performance after her WCWS work for Texas. The Longhorns are nominated for Best Team after back-to-back national championships. Grant’s nod is the one tied directly to a number in the record book — and to a category softball has never claimed.
The vote
Fans can cast one vote per day through July 15 at ESPYS.com — select Best Record-Breaking Performance and vote for Megan Grant. History says the softball nominee tends to finish second in this category. Chamberlain and Alo both lost to bigger-name pros.
If Grant wins, it would be a first — confirmation that 42 homers in one college season belongs on the same shelf as Garrett’s sacks and Klæbo’s golds. If she does not, the nomination still matters: a single-season record that outlasted three decades now has a name attached outside the college softball bubble, on a primetime ABC ballot three days from now.
The record is already in the books. Cast your vote →
Anthony Rivera, Dell Diamond press box. On-field details from Hookem Sports coverage of the Cascade–Volts series (June 26–28, 2026) and the AUSL pregame notes for June 28. ESPY history and nominee facts from ESPN Press Room, UCLA Athletics, and Oklahoma Athletics archives cited above.