Four. That’s the number of most national championships won by Penn State in a single school sports year. How much longer will that record last?
Given the excitement about this coming Penn State sports season — set to kick off shortly, with soccer exhibition games at Jeffrey Field on Aug. 8-9 — it’s a number that many Nittany Lion fans hope…think…is in imminent jeopardy. Especially after what transpired on the field last season and off the field (and ice) this off-season.
The foundation: In 2024-25, Penn State won national titles in wrestling and women’s volleyball, and made the Final Four in football, men’s lacrosse and men’s hockey.
For wrestling head coach Cael Sanderson, it was his 12th national championship at Penn State. For Katie Schumacher-Cawley, it was her first national title as the PSU head women’s volleyball coach. As a player, she also won a national title in 1999, competing for coaching legend Russ Rose, who won seven nattys.
Two is good, three is better and four is best. The record four Penn State national titles came in 1979-1980, when PSU women’s teams in field hockey, fencing, gymnastics and lacrosse all won championships. The field hockey and lax teams won their titles just seven months apart. Both squads were coached by the late Gillian Rattray, who led PSU to five overall national championships from 1977-1981 (two in field hockey, three in lacrosse).
Twice in the past Penn State has won three national titles in one season. In 2007, PSU won championships in men’s gymnastics, women’s volleyball and fencing. And in 2014, Penn State won titles in wrestling, women’s volleyball and fencing. (Do you notice a pattern here?)
Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft, entering his fourth full season at Penn State, laid down the More Titles gauntlet when he was introduced as PSU AD on May 1, 2022: “We are 31 strong. Hear me again: We are 31 strong. And we are committed to winning national championships, conference championships. We will continue the tradition of winning.”
Kraft has five head coaches on his staff who have already won national titles in their time at Penn State: Sanderson (12); Randy Jepson, men’s gymnastics (3); Mark Pavlik, men’s volleyball (1); Erica Dambach, women’s soccer (1); and Schumacher-Cawley (1).
Pennsylvania State College won its first national championship back in 1921, a title earned by wrestling — who else? — as the Nittany Lions beat both Iowa and Indiana on the way to the title. (Penn State won its first NCAA wrestling title in 1953.)
NO. 1 BY SPORT
Overall, Penn State has won 84 national team titles — 49 in men’s sports, 22 in women’s sports and 13 in combined (all in fencing). A breakdown:
MEN: Wrestling (14), men’s gymnastics (12), soccer (11), boxing (5), cross country (3), football (2) and men’s volleyball (2).
WOMEN: Volleyball (8), lacrosse (5), fencing (3), gymnastics (2), field hockey (2), soccer (1), bowling (1).
COMBINED: Fencing (13).
Not counting wrestling, the last Penn State men’s team to win a national title was men’s volleyball in 2008. Other than volleyball and soccer (2015), the last Penn State women’s team to win a national title was lacrosse in 1989.
Plaques representing each championship team, except for football, are on display in the Penn State Athletics Administration Building, at the corner of East Park Avenue and Porter Road. The AAB is on the site formerly occupied by the Centre County-Penn State Visitors Center, adjacent to the Penn State Meat Lab. The NCAA plaques are replicas, and the pre-NCAA ones are generic trophies.
THE SEASON AHEAD
The promise of an historic sports season has already started. Football, women’s volleyball and women’s soccer are already in preseason. Wrestling is the perennial favorite in collegiate wrestling. And Nittany Lion hockey has garnered all kinds of offseason headlines — and flashy recruits, beginning with Gavin McKenna — since it participated in the Frozen Four for the first time in April.
Here’s a rundown of what should be the Penn State teams vying for a national title in 2025-26:
FOOTBALL: The Nittany Lions were ranked No. 1 for the first time in last week’s Big Ten Conference preseason poll. Myriad media outlets and college football experts have Penn State as the overall pick in all of college football. Among them: ESPN, Phil Steele, Joel Klatt, Mark Schlabach and Heather Dinich.
In February, after Penn State finished 13-3 overall, made it to the Big Ten title game, won two College Football Playoff games, retained QB Drew Allar and hired defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, Kraft said the Nittany Lions are “close.”
“You don’t come to Penn State willy-nilly and say, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ We’re here to win national championships,” Kraft said, “and we’re going to do it the right way. Yeah, I’m committed. It takes everybody. … When it comes to football, we’re close. We’re going to keep going and keep going and keep going until we get to where we want to be.”
Two interesting financial nuggets from James Franklin’s most-recently published contract, should the Nittany Lions win the national championship:
- “Win College Football National Championship Game – $800,000.”
- National Championship Compensation Adjustment: In all years remaining in contract term [Dec. 31, 2021] following a National Championship, Supplemental Pay shall be increased per the contract by $800,000 (one time during term of the contract).”
WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL: Schumacher-Cawley had Penn State back on the national stage last week when she accepted the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPYS. Now, her team’s focus returns to the court. Penn State, which is ranked No. 2 in the preseason Big Ten rankings, returns starting setter Izzy Starck, who was the AVCA National Freshman of the Year and a second-team All-American; libero Gillian Grimes, who joined Starck on the All-Big Ten team; and Caroline Jurevicius, who made the Big Ten All-Freshman team.
WOMEN’S SOCCER: Last season under Dambach, Penn State advanced to the Elite Eight for the second year in a row, extending the nation’s longest streak of consecutive Sweet 16 appearances to eight. Dambach has six starters back, including goalkeeper MacKenzie Gress and forward Kaitlyn MacBean, who had a 34-point season, with 16 goals, in 2024.
WRESTLING. Cael Sanderson is still the head coach. Just as he was in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. As Sanderson said the day he was hired by Penn State, on April 17, 2009: “My goal is to compete for the national championship every year. It’s real simple.”
MEN’S HOCKEY: DraftKings likes Penn State’s chances to win the national title in 2025-26. The betting site has Penn State 4-to-1 to win it all, followed by Boston University (8-to-1) and Michigan State (9-to-1). It’s a good bet.
It wasn’t enough that Guy Gadowsky took Penn State to one win from the national title game last spring. Or that the Nittany Lions had a 14-3-2 late-season stretch that included an OT loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. Or that incoming PSU freshman Jackson Smith was selected by the Columbus Blue Jackets with the 14th overall pick in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft. What clinched it was when Guy also signed McKenna, the reigning WHL and CHL Player of the Year and the highest-rated recruit to choose NCAA hockey. McKenna is the consensus No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL draft.
McKenna is thinking big: “You saw what Penn State did this year, making it to the Frozen Four. They’ve come a long way as a program and next year the goal is to win a championship with them.”
Guess who likes that? Pat Kraft, who said of McKenna: “We can’t wait to see him compete alongside this incredible group and help push our program to even greater heights.”
MEN’S LACROSSE: Head coach Jeff Tambroni is The (Unheralded) Man. Penn State went to the Final Four last spring for the second time in three years and the third time in six seasons. The Nittany Lions also beat eventual national champion Cornell, ranked No. 3 at the time, on the road in the regular season. (Tambroni coached Cornell to the national title game in 2009.)
ALSO CONSIDER: Men’s gymnastics, which won its first-ever Big Ten title and placed No. 5 in the nation last season; three-time AHA defending champion women’s hockey; and women’s lacrosse, whose new head coach, Kayla Treanor, took her previous school, Syracuse, to the semifinals twice and was associate head coach at Boston College in 2021, when BC won the national championship. Boston College’s athletic director that season? Pat Kraft.
