Arizona Athletics has announced changes for softball and gymnastics start times on Feb. 6 to avoid conflicts. The changes mean that the Wildcats will no longer host Oklahoma softball and Utah gymnastics at the same time.
The Wildcats’ second day of action on the softball field was supposed to feature the Oklahoma Sooners at Rita Hillenbrand Stadium at 6 p.m. Meanwhile, the GymCats were set to host the Red Rocks for their conference home opener in McKale Center at the same time. The conflict meant
that fans would have to choose which to attend and Arizona would only be able to stream one of the competitions on ESPN+. That is no longer the case.
Arizona will host the Sooners beginning at 4 p.m. at Hillenbrand on Friday, Feb. 6. The GymCats and the Red Rocks will get underway at 7 p.m. in McKale.
Both the Wildcats and the Sooners are ranked in all three preseason polls that have been released. Oklahoma is ranked No. 3 by USA Softball, Softball America, and D1 Softball.
The three organizations are more uncertain about Arizona. The Wildcats are ranked 17th by Softball America, 18th by USA Softball, and 21st by D1 Softball.
The NFCA poll will be released on Jan. 27. That poll is used as the official poll by this website.
As for gymnastics, Utah is a perennial favorite and finished fourth in the nation last year. However, the Red Rocks are ranked 14th after the third week of competition.
Like their conference mates, Arizona’s current rankings don’t reflect where they ended last year and where they hope to be when the 2026 season ends. The GymCats finished the 2025 season ranked 20th and were one of the last 16 teams standing in the postseason. Unfortunately, they will be carrying a historically bad score from their outing at Texas Woman’s University two weeks ago for most of this season. They rebounded with an extremely high score last week, but they are currently ranked 30th. The top 36 teams go to the postseason.
Both the softball game and the gymnastics meet can be viewed on ESPN+ on Friday, Feb. 6.
