Teagan Kavan closed out back-to-back national championships in Oklahoma City and became the first player in Women’s College World Series history to win Most Outstanding Player in consecutive years. ESPN put her on the ballot for Best Championship Performance at the 2026 ESPYs.
The Texas softball team is nominated for Best Team in the same broadcast. Kavan’s individual nod is the one built on a full season in the circle — as a starter, as a closer, and as the pitcher Mike White kept handing the ball to when the schedule turned to elimination games.
The records
Kavan’s case starts with hardware no one else has touched. She was named WCWS Most Outstanding Player in 2025 and 2026 — the first back-to-back MOP in tournament history, per the NCAA and Texas Athletics. The NCAA also noted she closed out both title-clinching wins in those championship runs.
Her 2026 WCWS line backed it up: 4-1, 1.47 ERA, 30 strikeouts in 33⅓ innings, and two saves, per USA Today. ESPN reported she became the first pitcher with multiple shutouts and multiple saves in a single WCWS — a stat that reflects how Texas used her as both a distance starter and a late-inning finisher.
Inside that tournament, she kept rewriting the Texas record book. Texas Athletics credited her with a program-record ninth career WCWS win and a program-record fifth career WCWS shutout during the Tennessee semifinal round — surpassing Cat Osterman’s previous Longhorn standard of four shutouts in Oklahoma City. Her third career WCWS save in the 2026 title clincher tied her for the all-time WCWS saves mark, per USA Today.
The milestones stretch further back than June. As a freshman in 2024, Kavan became the first Texas pitcher to throw a complete-game shutout at the WCWS and the first Longhorn to toss a complete-game shutout in a WCWS debut, per her official Texas roster biography — a 124-pitch, one-hit effort against Stanford that helped send Texas to its first championship series under Mike White.
On April 10, 2026, against Oklahoma, she recorded her 500th career strikeout and became just the sixth Longhorn to reach the mark, joining Osterman (2,265), Blaire Luna (1,428), Meagan Denny (988), Christa Williams (678), and Tiarra Davis (508), per Texas Athletics. She struck out 13 that night — tied for the most any pitcher managed against the Sooners all season.
On May 29, facing elimination against Mississippi State, Kavan threw a four-hit shutout and punched out the final batter for her 600th career strikeout — the fifth Longhorn to reach 600 or more, per Texas Athletics. It was her seventh complete-game shutout of the 2026 season and her eighth in NCAA Tournament play.
By the end of the championship run, she was 28-6 in 2026, per Texas game notes from the WCWS semifinals — workload numbers that sit alongside the strikeout totals on the program’s all-time lists.
The championship performance ESPN is weighing
The Best Championship Performance category honors the athlete judged to have delivered the defining performance in a title setting. Kavan shares the 2026 ballot with Jalen Brunson (NBA Finals), Aerin Frankel (Olympic women’s hockey), and Connor Hellebuyck (Olympic men’s hockey), per ESPN Press Room.
Softball has been nominated here before. Oklahoma’s Shay Knighten earned a nod in 2017 after her WCWS championship-series hitting; Kevin Durant won that year. Kavan’s case is built differently — not one swing, but a full tournament body of work that included a complete game in the 2026 title series opener and five strikeouts over two perfect innings to close Game 2 against Texas Tech, per USA Today.
Texas lost its WCWS opener to Tennessee, then won six straight elimination games — only the fifth team in tournament history to drop Game 1 and still take the trophy, per Texas Athletics. That path is part of what the nomination is measuring: not a single clip, but a pitcher who kept answering when the season had no room left for a bad inning.
Osterman, Texas, and the lineage
The nomination lands differently at a program Osterman helped define.
Cat Osterman still holds most of Texas’ career pitching marks — wins (136), ERA (0.51), shutouts (85), no-hitters (20), and the NCAA career strikeout-ratio record. She led the Horns to three WCWS appearances (2003, 2005, 2006), won USA Softball National Player of the Year three times, and remains the only NCAA player to win that award more than twice. She put Texas softball on the national map from the circle at McCombs Field.
She also won at the ESPYs — twice. Osterman took home Best Female College Athlete in 2005 and 2006, per Texas Athletics. Vince Young won Best Championship Performance at that same 2006 show for the Rose Bowl. Texas has been on this stage before; Kavan’s nomination puts a current Longhorn back on it in a different category.
Osterman never won a college national championship. Kavan has two.
That is the thread Osterman pulled on when comparisons started circulating in June. Speaking to Longhorns Wire, she framed the debate the way basketball frames its eras: “In basketball, don’t we debate it all the time between Jordan and LeBron?”
“What I did when I played is completely different than what Teagan does when she plays,” Osterman said. “She’s got two national championships. I have no rings to show. I have a lot of records and stats, but no rings to show. But at the same time doesn’t diminish what I do and what I did doesn’t diminish what she did.”
The praise did not start in 2026. As a freshman at the 2024 WCWS, Kavan drew public encouragement from Osterman — then broadcasting for ESPN — about her composure and mental game, per the American-Statesman. Osterman told her there would be bumps in the road; Kavan, she said, had handled them “very well.”
When Kavan sought advice on pitching at Texas, Osterman’s message was direct: “Don’t try to be me … you go be Teagan,” per SEC Network. After the 2026 title-clincher, Osterman posted a goat emoji beside Kavan’s name on social media, per USA Today — a public stamp from the pitcher whose No. 8 jersey hangs at McCombs Field.
Mike White arrived in 2018 and delivered Texas its first national championship in 2025, then repeated in 2026 — the first non-Oklahoma program to go back-to-back since Florida in 2014 and 2015. Osterman’s Texas teams reached Oklahoma City without finishing the climb. Kavan’s teams did — twice.
The vote
The 2026 ESPYS — the 34th edition — air Wednesday, July 15, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC (5 p.m. PT). Fans can cast one vote per day through ceremony night at ESPYS.com — vote for Teagan Kavan in Best Championship Performance and Texas softball in Best Team.
Softball’s footprint on the 2026 ballot runs wider than Kavan alone. UCLA’s Megan Grant is nominated for Best Record-Breaking Performance; the Longhorns are up for Best Team alongside nominees from the NBA, NFL, Olympics, and more. Grant’s story →
Knighten lost this category to a bigger-name pro in 2017. Kavan is asking voters to weigh a full championship tournament against Olympic goaltending and an NBA Finals run. The record book already has her name in it. The vote decides whether primetime ABC agrees.
Desk note: Photos by Anthony Rivera / Hookem Sports from Texas home games at McCombs Field. Hookem Sports was not on site in Oklahoma City; WCWS and ESPY facts from Texas Athletics, ESPN Press Room, NCAA.org, USA Today, the American-Statesman, and Longhorns Wire sources cited above.