I opened up Instagram on Thursday morning to see if I could track down a signing date for a late addition to the Marquette men’s soccer roster for the 2026 season. Before I could get to the search function to pull up the men’s soccer account, I saw this sitting at the top of my feed.
I hit the translation button:
The 2026 French LF2 Champion, Aïnoah Rio, joins the Tigresses!
Freshly champion with the @bctm_feminin_, Nantaise, passed by the INSEP, will now fight under Yonnaise colors!
That is Marquette
women’s basketball commit Ainoah Rio being announced as a new signing on a different team in the second division French league that her previous team won in the 2025-26 season.
TO REVIEW:
- In late April, Ainoah Rio posts a graphic on her Instagram that’s clearly coming from inside the Marquette women’s basketball office (the Jordan logo and the Marquette fight song makes it obvious, plus it matched all the other commitment graphics going around) to announce that she’s committed to the Golden Eagles.
- Rio is never announced as signing with the team even though she could sign at any time because she turns 20 in May and would seem to not be a recruit for a future season because of her age.
- Marquette goes about re-posting all of the Instagram content about Rio’s French team winning the second division league, which is a thing you’re allowed to do for prospects, committed or not, apparently
- Marquette confirms to me that she is not signed by telling me that they do not comment on unsigned players.
- In mid-July, Rio’s agency includes her in a collection of images for their players that are going to NCAA Division 1 basketball for the 2026-27 season.
- Rio is still never announced as signing with Marquette.
- And now, this announcement, three weeks later, making it clear that she’s staying in the French second division for the 2026-27 season.
You ready for the really wild part?
Here’s something that Rio re-storied on Instagram from her agency.
“When one door closes, another one opens.”
Okay, so that’s as close as we’re getting to “Ainoah Rio is never coming to Marquette.”
By the way! The “Committed” image is still up on her Instagram! The MU team account is still following her as are all the coaches! Three Marquette assistant coaches and Halle Vice liked the post about the new signing in the two hours between it being posted and me seeing it!
WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?
There’s very clearly some variety of nonsense going on here. I presume no one is going to come close to badmouthing anyone involved here, but how do we go from “committed” in late April to “staying in France” in early August? Heck, how do we go from “the agency is proud of her signing with a college team” on July 14 to “when one door closes” from the agency on August 6th??!? Remember: We can safely presume that Marquette did not cut ties with Rio and she signed with Roche Vendee minutes later and they posted on Instagram minutes after that. It seems pretty obvious that this was already moving along at some point in the last week or two, but her agency was seemingly completely unaware of a problem three weeks ago! Because Rio never actually signed with Marquette, there’s no responsibility for anyone in Milwaukee to announce anything, so that’s another extra fun level of having no idea what’s going on here.
Maybe it’s as simple as a visa problem. No reason to actually have Rio sign anything official if her paperwork to attend college in the United States never comes through, right?
ANYWAY, here’s the new scholarship chart with Rio removed until I see a press release out of the McGuire Center that says she’s signed and specifically outlines precisely when she’ll be with the team. TO BE CLEAR: I am not expecting to ever see this happen.
Yep, that means Marquette has 11 players for the 2026-27 season with four open roster spots available. That’s not really a terrible thing, you don’t really expect a full time rotation to go past eight players all that much anyway. It just doesn’t leave MU that much in the way of leeway in terms of nicks and scratches in terms of being able to play 5-on-5 in practice (although that’s what the male practice players are for, I suppose). We’re also about to hit the start of the school year with just one player committed to join the roster as a freshman in 2027-28 with the fall signing period just three months away. The adoption of the 5 years/5 seasons rules gives Marquette a little bit extra space here as that gives Halle Vice an extra year to play, but swapping Haylie Dulas for Jordan Meulemans doesn’t actually increase the size of the roster, either.
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