Oklahoma City University boasts about being the “Home of Champions” holding 73 national titles, 3 NAIA Learfield Cups, several Sooner Athletic Conference Championships and a streak of at least one national championship won for the past twenty-eight years.
These 73 titles raise OCU above not only their thirty-six Oklahoma peers, with the closest school in national titles being Division 1, Oklahoma State University boasting 53, but the entire NAIA.
The Henry J. Freede Wellness Center serves as a shrine to OCU athletics dominance throughout the years. Even with red banners blocking out the ceiling and an overflowing trophy case filling the front wall of the entrance, is OCU still the NAIA powerhouse it once was?
The 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s are littered with championships won by OCU athletic teams, with softball earning eleven, men’s golf earning eleven, women’s basketball winning nine, competitive cheer bringing home eight, women’s golf boasting eight, men’s basketball holding six, competitive dance holding five, men’s cross country earning five, women’s wrestling winning four, the now non-existent men’s tennis team holding four, baseball earning one and men’s indoor track and field holding one.
Softball and men’s indoor track both won a title in 2022, but the last time that happened before them was in 2018.
A four-year gap does not seem like a major blow, but for a school that leverages its athletic image on winning national titles, it seems devastating.
OCU has twenty-two varsity sports teams, with almost half of them missing a national championship.
Men and women’s soccer, men and women’s rowing, men’s wrestling, women’s cross country, women’s indoor track and field, men and women’s outdoor track and field, women’s volleyball and stunt all lack the coveted national title that their peers have earned.
Winning a national title is the most difficult thing an athletic team can do, proclaiming the team the best in the nation, but when your program is built around winning national championships, it is not just a hope, it is the expectation.
OCU has only mustered up a lackluster five national titles in the past five years, which seems weak when compared to the rich athletic history of the university.
IS OCU losing the competitive edge that made it such a powerhouse to begin with? Are other NAIA schools recruiting better? Is the athletic gap closing? Is the administration slipping? Will the phenomenal twenty-eight-year streak continue?
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