History was made on May 22, 1993, when the UWF softball team defeated Oklahoma City University 4-2 for the first national championship for any sport in West Florida history. In standard UWF softball fashion, the 1993 team put together a "Cinderella Story," battling through injuries all year and taking one come-from-behind win after another in the postseason.
 
West Florida was seeded sixth in the national tournament in Columbia, Missouri, but the consensus around the tournament was that UWF would be lucky to finish that high. Head coach Doug Palmer was forced to remain home in Pensacola due to medical reasons; All-American pitcher Anne Ebinger was no longer with the team once they reached the national tournament, leaving Danielle Harvey as the squad's only pitcher; and starters Mel Page (catcher), Lynn Benenati (second base), and Adrienne Hauck (shortstop) battled injuries throughout the season.

At the start of the tournament, the roster was down to just 10 players. 
 
UWF's run at the tournament started with a 10-inning, 5-4 win over Wilmington College, when Kim Van Fleet hit a three-run walkoff home run. It was her first career round-tripper.
 
The Argonauts then took down defending national champions Pacific Lutheran 1-0, before taking another 1-0 win in extra innings over OCU, with Kristen Warren's two-out RBI single. UWF advanced to the championship round with a 3-2 win over Hawaii Pacific.
 
Oklahoma City hung a 10-1 loss on UWF after cruising through the loser's bracket, but the Argonauts rebounded with the 4-2 victory immediately after. OCU took a 2-0 lead in the first, but Danielle Harvey drove in the go-ahead run in the 3-run third inning and shut down the Lady Chiefs offense the rest of the way.
 
To make the win even more impressive, Oklahoma City would go on to each of the next four national titles, from 1994-97, and they won another three in a row from 2000-02.
 
Harvey would be named the MVP of the National Tournament, while Hauck, Van Fleet, Benenati, and Jennifer Johnson earned spots on the all-tournament team.
 
Palmer had an incredible run at the helm for the Argonauts starting in 1986, with a 481-132 overall record over eight seasons, turning the slowpitch program into a national powerhouse overnight. The Argonauts reached the national championship site every year in his tenure, finishing in the top five in the tournament in five of his eight seasons.
 
Palmer said he had accomplished everything he set out to do after the 1993 team won the national title, and he became UWF's assistant athletic director that summer. In addition to the national championship, West Florida held the No. 1 ranking in the country throughout the 1988 and 1989 seasons, the No. 2 spot during all of the 1990 season, and had 24 All-Americans between 1986-93.
 
The 1993 UWF softball team would earn a spot in the university's athletics Hall of Fame in 2004, and center fielder Misty Haynes was inducted in 2001. Haynes set single-season program records in slugging percentage (.676), hits (115), runs (97), triples (21), total bases (190), and stolen bases (51) in 1993.