No — the University of Southern California does not sponsor varsity softball. Its athletics site lists baseball among its varsity sports; softball is not there. USC discontinued the program in 1997.
That is the short answer. The longer and more useful one is that most people searching for USC softball are not looking for the Trojans at all.
USC softball usually means South Carolina
There are eight NCAA or NJCAA institutions abbreviated USC, and seven of them sponsor softball. The one that does not is the University of Southern California.
If you were looking for a program with a roster, a schedule and a coaching staff, you almost certainly want one of these:
If a search result showed you a USC softball score, a signing announcement or a head coach, that is where it came from.
Why doesn't the University of Southern California have softball?
The program was discontinued in 1997. USC does not publish a current statement explaining the decision, and we would rather tell you that than manufacture a tidy reason.
What can be said accurately is that sport sponsorship is a department-wide decision rather than a judgement about one sport. Schools weigh scholarship budgets, facilities, conference scheduling partners, and Title IX participation balance across every team they field. USC's women's varsity sports include basketball, beach volleyball, golf, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, volleyball, water polo, track and cross country — so the absence of softball is not an absence of women's athletics.
It is also worth knowing that USC is not unusual. Several prominent Division I athletic departments sponsor baseball but not softball, and a handful sponsor neither. A school's football or basketball profile tells you nothing about whether it fields a softball team.
What this means if you are recruiting
If your athlete's list has USC on it, the practical question is which USC. The two readings lead to completely different recruiting plans — different competitive levels, different academic profiles, and different geography.
If the appeal was Los Angeles specifically, the metro area has real options: UCLA is the other Division I program in the city, and Cal State Northridge, Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State are all inside the metro. California has 22 Division I softball programs, plus Division II, NAIA and JUCO options — browse California programs to see the full picture.
If the appeal was academic — a private research university with strong academics — that is a filter worth applying deliberately rather than a reason to chase one school. Stanford and California are the closest in-state equivalents with softball programs.
Once you have a real target list, the next step is contacting the staff at those programs. Our guide to emailing college softball coaches covers what to send and when, and the NCAA recruiting timeline by grade covers when coaches are allowed to respond.
How this was checked
USC's varsity sport list was read directly from usctrojans.com on 2026-08-13: baseball is on it, softball is not. The seven USC-named programs above are all live entries in our school database with current coaching staff.