Courtesy of Colorado Christian University
Audio By Carbonatix
Keep Westword Free
We’re aiming to raise $20,000 by April 26. Your support ensures Westword can continue watching out for you and our community. No paywall. Always accessible. Daily online and weekly in print.
Colorado is rich with sports glory, with Colorado Springs training gold medal winners, professional teams bringing home championships and Denver University winning another championship, but fans of Centennial State athletics shouldn’t overlook the 38-game streak by the Colorado Christian University softball team in NCAA Division II competition.
The CCU Cougars softball team has been making a name for the private Christian university in Lakewood this spring. After winning its second Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) championship in three years in 2025, the team already clinched a berth in the RMAC title playoffs on April 3, a month before the conference tournament begins, with a record-setting 38 consecutive wins since February 3. Now the Cougars have to prove they’re good enough to bring a national NCAA softball title to Colorado for the first time.
“This streak says a lot about who this team is. They’ve played with togetherness, toughness and real belief,” says Jon Poag, the athletic director at CCU. “What stands out is not just the number of wins, but the determination and fight in a team that plays for each other until the last pitch. That is what has set this group apart.”
The 38 consecutive wins and 31-0 run in conference play are all-time records for RMAC softball, which started in the 1990 and now features a dozen schools, mostly from Colorado, like Regis University, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Colorado School of Mines, along with South Dakota, New Mexico and Nebraska colleges.
The CCU Cougar’s feat might be overlooked at the national level, however, as RMAC teams are rarely a threat to win the NCAA DII softball championship. No Colorado NCAA softball team, including in DI, II and III competition, has won the national title or played in the championship series since it began in 1982.
Courtesy of Colorado Christian University.
With a 42-2 overall record, the Cougars are currently ranked seventh nationally by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association, rising from ninth last week. The team is still seventeen wins away from reaching the NCAA record for consecutive wins, 55, set by Northern Kentucky University in 2005, but the Cougars only have twelve games left before the conference and national championship tournaments begin in May.
CCU has the longest ongoing win streak across NCAA softball, including DI.
“What they should be proudest of is putting together the longest active win streak in the NCAA-all divisions,” Poag says. “That shows the skill, hard work and dedication this team has brought to each and every game.”
Meet CCU’s Softball Team
The win steak has been bolstered by a talented offensive that currently leads all DII teams in total runs scored and hits, is second in team batting average and total runs batted in, and among the top ten in home runs.
Most of that batting prowess comes from returning juniors and seniors, like Kat Hanson at second base (whose .535 batting average currently ranks fourth across all DII softball players), pitcher Elyse McMullin and utility infielder Arriana Wright, who all had home runs in the most recent win on Sunday, April 12. The sixteen-player roster only has three locals: freshman catcher and outfielder Alexandra Johnson from Windsor, shortstop sophomore Peyton Marvel from D’Evelyn High School in Lakewood and junior pitcher Hanna Espinoza from Kiowa.
About 300 teams play in two dozen conferences across DII softball, and most of the national titles and dominance are concentrated in the Gulf South Conference, the Lone Star Conference and the California Collegiate Athletic Association. The Cougar’s 38-game win gives them good chances of returning to the regional tournament on May 14.
Courtesy of Colorado Christian University.
Like DI baseball and softball, winning the regional paves the way to the super regional tournament, and then a chance at the brutally exclusive eight-team national tournament, which will start on May 28 and culminate in a three-game national championship series on June 2 and 3. Teams can only get into the regional tournament by being ranked among the top ten in their NCAA DII region, and CCU is in the South Central Region alongside University of Texas at Tyler from the Lone Star Conference, who are currently the reigning back-to-back national champs.
“To put together a streak like this, you have to face moments in games when defeat is staring you in the face and still find a way to win,” Poag says. “Finding that extra strength, that belief and that way through, is what marks real champions.”
Last year, CCU had a 44-16 overall record, was 36-8 in conference play, and made it into the NCAA DII regional tournament. The Cougars were a five seed and qualified alongside lower seeds MSU Denver and Colorado Mesa University. None of those Colorado teams advanced to the next round, however.
The next game for CCU softball will be on Saturday, April 18, when they travel to Grand Junction to play Colorado Mesa. It has one more home series against Adams State University the weekend of April 24, and then the Cougars will close the season against Colorado State University Pueblo, on an eighteen-game winning streak of its own. Colorado Mesa and CSU Pueblo will be tough challenges, as they also rank among the top offensive teams across DII (which shouldn’t be a surprise given Colorado’s altitude).
