UCLA's Megan Grant breaks 31-year-old NCAA softball home run record
UCLA senior Megan Grant broke the previous single-season record of 37 homers, set in 1995 by Arizona's Laura Espinoza.
UCLA senior Megan Grant set the NCAA Division I softball home run record on Saturday with her 38th long ball of the 2026 season. Grant was also a member of UCLA's 2026 NCAA basketball championship team. In the third inning of Saturday's game against Nebraska, Grant hit a blast to deep left-center field to pass the previous record of 37, set in 1995 by Arizona's Laura Espinoza.
Grant set the record in 55 games, 17 fewer than Espinoza. 3ļøā£8ļøā£ SINGLE-SEASON HOMERS ā¼ļø @UCLASoftball 's MEGAN GRANT HITS THE MOST HOME RUNS IN D-I SINGLE-SEASON HISTORY š¤Æ šŗ: @BigTenNetwork pic. twitter.
com/3BVu3tSYId ā Big Ten Softball (@B1Gsoftball) May 9, 2026 "Records are made to be broken," Mike Candrea, who coached Espinoza at Arizona, told The Athletic. "It's a pretty phenomenal record to be able to break, so tip my hat off. " Nebraska defeated UCLA on Saturday, 7-2, to claim the Big Ten title.
On Friday against Wisconsin, in the semifinals of the Big Ten conference tournament, the Bruins reached 181 homers on the season, eclipsing the previous record of 161 that had stood since 2021. Grant boosted that number to 182 with her record shot on Saturday. "When I first came into college, I wanted to put myself in the books as one of the best, and I didn't really know how to at the time, but throughout my career, just more and more has gone on, and to be able to do that, it's just, it's surreal," Grant told reporters.