The offseason offers a moment to pause and assess where Arizona soccer stands under head coach Becca Moros. Five years into her tenure, Moros has altered the program’s identity and now faces the practical challenges that come with heavy roster turnover and a disappointing 2025 finish in the Big 12. The Wildcats went from a season of double-digit wins and a competitive conference record in 2024 to a 7-11-1 overall ledger and a 2-8-1 mark in conference play a year later, leaving the program with more questions than answers as it prepares for 2026.
The program that Moros inherited was no national powerhouse, but it carried a level of consistency with regular NCAA Tournament appearances under former coach Tony Amato. Amato finished his Arizona tenure with the program record for coaching wins — an 88-53-17 overall mark and a 39-39-9 record in Pac-12 play — before departing in May 2021. Moros was announced as his successor on June 16, 2021, arriving with a compressed timeline: roughly six weeks before practice and a couple months before the first on-field opportunities. Early in her time at Arizona she leaned on veteran leadership such as fifth-year star Jill Aguilera, who set the program career goals record in the fall of 2021, even as the program continued to adjust to a new coaching philosophy.
That philosophy has been a clear departure from the direct, speed-focused approach that characterized the team under Amato. Moros has emphasized possession-oriented soccer, favoring shorter passes and building from the back rather than launching the long, direct balls that previously defined the attack. The shift in style has been consistent through her tenure; she has maintained the possession-first identity even when results have been uneven. There have been bright spots — the 2024 season produced an 11-6-2 overall mark and a 6-4-1 conference record, Arizona’s first double-digit win total since 2019 and the most conference wins since 2017 — but the following season’s decline exposed vulnerabilities, particularly in offensive production and depth.
Shows: Arizona midfielder pushes upfield in front of a packed stand — a moment emblematic of the Wildcats as Becca Moros shapes the program ahead of Big 12 play.
Roster turnover since the end of the 2025 campaign has been substantial and hits most heavily on the offensive side of the ball. Top scorer Aurora Gaines, who transferred to Arizona after a freshman season at LSU and led the team with 11 points as a sophomore — tying for the team lead with four goals and adding three assists — returned to the SEC after one season in Tucson. Rising junior Narissa Fults, one of the more promising young forwards, is also gone, taking two goals and three assists (seven points) with her. Rose Calkins, who totaled one goal and four assists across two seasons at Arizona, transferred as well. The departures didn’t stop there; defender Kennedy Fletcher and reserve goalkeeper Kayla Kirchoffner also left the program via the transfer portal.
Graduation accounted for additional losses on both ends of the field. Four-year starter Sami Baytosh exhausted her eligibility after a senior season that included two goals and a team-leading four assists for eight points, tied for third on the team. The Wildcats also lost senior goalkeeper Olivia Ramey along with defenders Ella Hatteberg and Maia Brown. Taken together, those exits represent a major chunk of the production from 2025: Arizona scored just 22 goals last season, and the players who combined for 10 of those goals will not be on next year’s roster. The team tallied 20 assists in 2025, and those responsible for 13 of them are among those who have departed.
There are, however, returners who will be expected to shoulder greater responsibility. Junior Jess Bedolla tied Gaines last year with four goals and returns as the team’s top scoring option. Lily Boydstun brings balance to the attack after finishing with three goals, three assists and nine points, ranking second on the team in points. Sophomore Kyleigh Johnson, while credited with a single assist as a freshman, showed notable activity in her first season, a pattern also seen from second-year player Whitney Reinhardt. Graduate student Trinity Dorsey will be back following a redshirt year, and defensive experience remains on the roster with Zoe Mendiola, Aranda Hurge and Marissa Arnst. The goalkeeper position appears set to shift: Sofia Cortes-Browne, who spent the past two years behind Ramey, is expected to step into the starting role.
Shows: Arizona goalkeeper dives to secure the ball in a night match, highlighting the defensive grit that has become part of Moros’ team identity.
Depth, particularly in goal, presents a real concern. The current roster lists only one goalkeeper, which raises obvious risks should injury or fatigue arise over a long season. In response to the need for specialized training, Arizona hired Nils Roth in the offseason with the title of assistant/goalkeeper coach. Roth replaces Sebastian Pineda Gordillo in title, though Pineda Gordillo didn’t have primary keeper training responsibilities previously — that work was covered by assistant coach Nat Gonzalez, who remains with the program. Regardless, Cortes-Browne will be relied upon heavily, and the new staff addition underscores the priority the program has placed on shoring up the position.
To replenish the roster, Moros signed four players in November. Defender Amanda Maynard accelerated her arrival by finishing high school early and joining the team for spring matches; fellow defender Alexa Khan is slated to arrive in the fall. Midfielders Ashley May and Emerson Stoft, both labeled as attackers when they signed, make up the rest of the class. Those additions, combined with the returners already on campus, aim to address the holes left by transfers and graduation, but the loss of so many contributors from last season means the Wildcats will enter 2026 with a markedly different personnel picture than a year earlier.
On the conference front, Arizona’s first season in the Big 12 produced encouraging signs: a 6-4-1 league record in 2024 that tied Kansas for sixth place, with the Jayhawks claiming the tiebreaker after a head-to-head victory in Tucson and leaving Arizona as the seventh seed in the conference tournament. That year included a win over BYU, a draw against West Virginia and a tight loss to TCU, but losses to Utah, Houston and Kansas followed by an early exit from the Big 12 Tournament kept the Wildcats out of the NCAA Tournament. The following season proved far less forgiving: Arizona managed seven total wins in 2025, finished 14th in the conference standings and failed to qualify for the league tournament. The program also felt the impact of roster turnover tied to exhausted eligibility after the 2024 season, when Nicole Dallin, Gianna Christiansen and Megan Chelf left the team.
The central questions facing Arizona soccer are straightforward and immediate: can the Wildcats rebuild the offensive production lost to transfers and graduation, and can Moros guide the program back toward regular NCAA Tournament participation? The changes in personnel, coupled with the coaching staff’s continued commitment to a possession-based style, set up a decisive stretch for the program as it prepares for Big 12 play in 2026. The answers will begin to take shape once the roster is fully assembled and the season is underway.