Continuing through our journey to preview all Mountain West softball teams, we reach the team that made me fall in love with this sport: my hometown team, the Nevada Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack are the reigning regular season champions of the MWC, a title which broke both a 17-year conference title drought for the softball team and a nearly 4-year drought where no Wolf Pack sports team won a single conference title.
Under first-year head coach and former Olympic medal-winning softball star Victoria Hayward,
the Wolf Pack went 41-14 and tied a program high watermark in conference wins by going 18-4. Despite falling short in the conference tournament, 2025 was a breakthrough season for Nevada.
The success of the Pack from a year ago has brought sweeping changes to the program. Nevada’s administration had neglected its previously successful softball program for years prior to 2025, most notably in the fact that the team’s home field, Christina M. Hixson Softball Park, was the only remaining Mountain West field that did not have lights. That all changed with their regular season championship, as the Pack earned the right to host the conference tournament in 2026, and thus, would be required to install lights in order to do so, which they finally did in the offseason.
Now, the Wolf Pack head into 2026 as the defending champions, having earned both an advantage in the conference tournament and some of the upgrades and support that past Pack teams could not receive. They also enter with a massive chip on their shoulder, having been the second team left out of the NCAA Tournament despite winning the most games out of any team to not make it in. The Pack were also recognized as one of three Mountain West teams on the D1 Softball Mid-Major Top 25, set in 8th place alongside GCU (3rd) and San Diego State (9th).
Let’s see how the Wolf Pack stack up as they enter their journey to reach the mountaintop at home.
Schedule
The Wolf Pack’s season will begin at the LSU Tiger Classic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Here, the Pack will face Illinois, NC State, Lamar, and two games against the hosts, preseason #13/12 LSU, who are very likely to be led in the circle by former SDSU star Cece Cellura, who recorded the win in the elimination game that knocked the Wolf Pack out of the NCAA Tournament in 2025. Aside from presenting an opportunity for belated revenge, the Tigers will be an immediate challenge for Nevada to tackle, and a good litmus test for where Nevada will be at as a team this season.
Next, the Wolf Pack will travel back out west to Tempe, Arizona, to take part in ASU’s Littlewood Invitational. Here, the Pack will face off against Portland State, hosts Arizona State, their first of several matchups against the Pacific Tigers, and two games against Indiana. Arizona State is undoubtedly the best team here, as ASU is currently the first team out in the ESPN.com/USA Softball Top 25. The Hoosiers also made the Tournament last year, making this another chance for Nevada to face some very good teams.
Before leaving the state, the Wolf Pack will make a quick stop in Tucson to face off against preseason #18/21 Arizona. Afterwards, the Wolf Pack will be one of many teams to travel to Cathedral City, California, to take part in the presigious Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic. Last year in this event, the Pack were dealt a five-game schedule that included a near top-25 Baylor, who they fell to in extras, and four mid-major teams that came nowhere close to making the NCAA Tournament.
This year, Nevada will only play four games, though against much better competition, those teams being Oregon State, preseason #10/10 UCLA, California, and UC Riverside. UCLA, who made the WCWS last season, is the star of the show, and is also a more personal matchup for anyone associated with Nevada softball. Nevada has never beaten UCLA, with the team’s best season ever (2008) coming to an end against the Bruins, consistent run-rule losses outside of 2008, including last season, and a marquee home game against UCLA in 2023 having been cancelled due to weather. A lot of Pack pain is personified in the form of the UCLA softball team, and Wolf Pack fans will be chomping at the bit to finally slay the dragon.
Next, the Pack will take a bit of a break at the annual Capital Classic, a joint event hosted by UC Davis and Sacramento State. Here, they will face Sacred Heart, UC Davis twice, Santa Clara, and Sac State. Last year at this same tournament, Nevada went 5-0, including sweeping both matchups against the eventual West Coast Conference champions, Santa Clara. The Pack will need a performance similar to that once again.
Finally, Nevada will take a drive up the coast to Eugene, Oregon, to take part in the Jane Sanders Classic. Here, the Wolf Pack will get two more games against Oregon State, a quick rematch against Sacramento State, and will end the tournament with a back-to-back against the hosts, preseason #5/6 Oregon, who also made the WCWS last season. Oregon, with their seemingly endless resources, may be a bit tough for the Wolf Pack to handle, but Nevada is certainly capable of keeping one or both of these games close.
Once they get to conference play, the Wolf Pack will have four more nonconference matchups. They will play at Utah Valley and Northern Colorado, and have a home-and-home with Pacific.
Nevada’s conference slate is certainly more difficult than most, being given five road series and four home series. At home, the Pack will face Boise State, San Jose State, New Mexico, and Fresno State. On the road, the Wolf Pack will face Utah State, GCU, San Diego State, Colorado State, and UNLV. Facing both of the projected conference contenders on the road, especially doing so in back-to-back series, is a rather unfortunate outcome, although Nevada has made a habit of beating projected conference contenders on the road in recent years.
Hitting Core
A year ago, Nevada’s hitting core ranked out as the best in the conference in stolen bases, as well as the third-best in the conference in batting average (.321), OPS (.930), runs scored (324), and home runs (61). All are good numbers, but let’s focus on home runs for a moment. 32 of those home runs came from two players.
First, Haley Painter, who may have only hit .311 on the year, ranking seventh on the team, but her 15 home runs and 47 RBIs both ranked second on the team. Both stats came runner-up to the reigning Mountain West Conference Player of the Year, Aaliyah Jenkins, who led the Pack in batting average (.446), OPS (1.462), home runs (17), RBIs (60), total bases (152), slugging percentage (.916), and stolen bases (31).
As has been a theme in this series, though, both of these fantastic players are no longer with the Pack—sort of. Jenkins graduated after the season, but actually stayed on with the Pack as a graduate assistant, where she was nearly immediately promoted to assistant coach status. Painter, meanwhile, made the decision to transfer to Big Ten school Purdue in the offseason. This leaves the Wolf Pack, like so many others in the MWC, without their top two scorers from last season, as well as their leader in every statistical category. Thankfully, the Wolf Pack, a consistently speed-oriented team, is not lacking for that trait on their 2026 roster.
Leading the way on the base path are the Clark sisters, redshirt junior Madison and true junior Bailie. In 2025, Madison was the Pack’s second-best hitter behind Jenkins, hitting .380 while stealing 26 bases. She fits the mold left at Nevada by legendary hitter Chelie Senini, a lightning-quick athletic marvel who ended her career ranked in the top 25 all-time in NCAA history for stolen bases. The younger Clark, Bailie, also fits the Senini mold, maybe even more accurately since Bailie now dons Senini’s number 22. Bailie will be looking to rebound from a down sophomore season where she only hit .279, following a freshman season where she exploded onto the scene, hitting .402.
For scoring and power hitting, the Wolf Pack will look towards seniors Hannah Di Genova and Haylee Engelbrecht, as the two hit near-identical clips (.326 and .327), Di Genova holding a 44-32 lead in RBIs. I would also look to now-junior UC San Diego transfer Lexi O’Gorman, who only started 27 games, all towards the end of last season, yet still recorded 22 RBIs.
For the transfer class, expect Reno native and Louisiana Tech transfer Karolyn Glover to be the primary starter at catcher, inevitably benefiting from the coaching of former superstar catcher Jenkins. The other hitter to transfer to Nevada in the offseason is Rylie Haith, who hit .302 and totaled 19 RBIs in her 38 starts as a freshman at Utah Tech last year. Lastly, for the freshman class, the most likely contributor is Orangevale, California’s Zaria Gee, who is coming off of a senior season where she hit .565, with 48 hits, 17 doubles, six home runs, and a 1.714 OPS.
With Nevada needing to quickly find a replacement for their former superstar, I could see the Wolf Pack hitting core undergoing some growing pains this season, but after last season, it’s hard not to trust the coaching staff to make this transition as seamless as possible.
Pitching Core
It’s always crucial for a team to be able to score runs to win games, that’s a given. However, when you have a pitching staff like the one the Wolf Pack have assembled for 2026, it’s safe to say you can give your players time to figure things out at the plate.
Under the tutelage of former UConn pitcher Carli Cutler, the Wolf Pack surrendered a team ERA of just 2.94 in 2025, third-best in the MWC. They were led in this effort by Utah State transfer and former Nevada Gatorade Player of the Year, Sparks native Hailey McLean, who gave up an ERA of 2.62, ranking third-best in the conference. Notably, that total was heavily ballooned after a horrific series against her former team, where she gave up 12 runs in just 5.1 innings, a total ERA of over 20. Her season ERA went up from 1.61 before the Utah State series to 2.62 at season’s end. McLean will be looking for revenge against the Aggies, as well as continued dominance and a bit more consistency against the rest of her opponents.
Backing up McLean were her former Aggie teammate, Tess Bumiller, and redshirt freshman Ainsley Berlingeri. The two combined for a 19-4 record in the circle, compiling a combined ERA of 2.88. I think we can expect a similar performance to last season out of Bumiller, while I would be shocked if now-sophomore Berlingeri does not take another step up. Nevada’s final pitcher last season was Sierra College transfer Jessica McPartland, who had a worse ERA of 4.59, but still served as a reliable spot starter in her sophomore season with the Pack. This pitching staff is already deep and consistent enough to neutralize most threats, but we are still not done.
Now we get to the freshman/transfer class, which has two players. First, freshman Sofie Seese, who had a 1.01 ERA across her two varsity seasons. Seese will add a new dimension to the Pack pitching staff, as she is the team’s only southpaw. However, her impact as a freshman could pale in comparison to the one transfer in this class: Gardnerville, Nevada native Talia Tretton.
The two-time Gatorade Player of the Year, two-way star Tretton was notable enough to commit to—and start for—a Big Ten team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, right out of high school. As a freshman, Tretton performed admirably. She went 10-9 as the team’s secondary starter, recording an ERA of 3.32 with 97 strikeouts, while also recording an average of .173 with two home runs in her 98 at-bats. Against Mountain West competition and with another year of experience, Tretton is immediately a starter to be feared for 2026.
This is an extremely strong pitching staff, that is five, possibly even six players deep. This staff is exactly why Coach Hayward made the Pack’s schedule as tough as she did: because she knows she has a squad of pitchers that can keep Nevada in any game against any team. I don’t see a staff like this giving up an ERA any worse than third in the conference this season, and they could easily go much higher.
Prediction
2025 Result: 41-14 (18-4 MWC), Regular Season: 1st, Tournament: 3rd, Missed NCAA Tournament
2026 Prediction: 39-14 (19-6 MWC), Make Conference, NCAA Tournaments
A year ago, when the Wolf Pack were left out of the tournament, the biggest reason cited was their pitifully easy schedule, and lack of any quality wins. The Pack lost to UCLA, Cal, Baylor, twice to Stanford, and their best nonconference wins of the season were against Houston and Saint Mary’s, each of whom Nevada actually split against. Their best win with no losses to the same team was Loyola Marymount, who ended the season outside the top 100 in RPI. Their resume, while good in conference, was simply too weak to warrant an invitation to the Tournament.
Coach Hayward seems to have taken the reasons cited for why Nevada was snubbed personally, because the schedule she came up with for her team in 2026 is among the toughest in program history, and is the toughest in the conference. The Wolf Pack will play 12 games against power conference schools, 12 against teams that were either ranked or received votes in the preseason polls, and 13 against teams that reached the NCAA Tournament in 2025, all of which are the most in the conference. This is a demanding slate for any squad, much less a mid-major school, but Hayward clearly has confidence in her team to take care of business.
The Wolf Pack’s hitting core is a bit of a concern, having lost both of their home run threats from a season ago. They still have their speed, but against the fast, agile SEC and Big Ten teams on their schedule, speed will not matter nearly as much. They will need consistent home run hitting to keep up with those teams, and someone will have to take that leap into true bomber status at some point. Thankfully, the pitching staff will give more of a margin for error on that front, but if Nevada’s hitters can’t figure it out, it may be a long, frustrating nonconference slate for the Wolf Pack.
I believe that if Nevada can reach 34 to 37 wins, their schedule will be more than tough enough to justify an at-large bid if they advance as far in the MWC Tournament as they did a year ago. If they do, it would be Nevada’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 2009, and their first in any sport since the men’s basketball team’s devastating collapse against Dayton in March Madness 2024. Avenging last season and making it to the big dance is the goal for the Pack, anything beyond that would just be icing on the cake.
As we have reached the halfway mark of this journey, I will take a one-day break from this series before coming back on January 29 at 8:00 a.m. PST with my preview of the New Mexico Lobos.
