The Arizona Wildcats soccer team gets the 2026 season underway when official practice starts on Wednesday. Unlike years past, that means almost a full month of practices before the team has to step on the field for a match that counts.
In years past, NCAA soccer didn’t start practice until the end of July. Last year, the opening date was July 29, a full two weeks later than this season. Arizona had an exhibition against NAU on Aug. 5, then it was on the field for the season opener on Thursday, Aug. 14.
The NCAA finally came to the realization that this was not a workable or fair schedule. The Wildcats will still have their exhibition on Wednesday, Aug. 5 and their first match on Aug. 12, but that will come after significantly more preparation.
The extra practice will be helpful for a team that has a lot of new faces both on the field and on the sidelines this season. The Wildcats carry 25 players, just three short of the 28-player roster limit set by the House settlement. Nine of those are either freshmen or transfers. They also welcome two new coaches.
The Wildcats lost five players to transfer after a 7-11-1 season in 2025. While the number isn’t huge for a sport that can carry 28 players, four of the five were either regular starters or played significant minutes for head coach Becca Moros and her squad. Spring was the time to rebound and put things back together.
“The spring was really good for us,” Moros said. “I think the team is, it’s just, it’s good people, and they’re very competitive, and they’re focused on what’s important and building for the future. So, I think from that standpoint, the fall was a bit of an anomaly for us, and frustrating, for sure. It was challenging for the players, challenging for us coaches, but I think they handled it really well. Some of the movement afterwards was just, it was expected, given the kind of experience we had, and some of the reasons for those experiences. So, I think the team is in a better place because of that, and…we’ve also brought in some really talented players to kind of rebalance the roster and make sure we have competition in positions, and have the athleticism we need, have the soccer people we need.”
Arizona returns an experienced back line, although they will have a new goalkeeper for the first time in two years. Sofia Cortes-Browne may have the inside track on the job since she has been with the program for two years, but she will be pushed by transfers Laurynn Ziller and Elesha Magley. Magley joined the team for the spring practice season.
“When you put our stats from last season into the algorithms…our defense performed very well at the top of the conference, even, and most of our games that we lost, we lost by one goal,” Moros said. “So, most of our defensive unit is returning.”
The returning experience comes in the form of defenders like Trinity Dorsey, Zoe Mendiola, Marissa Arnst, and Aranda Hurge. Although she’s listed as a forward on the Arizona roster and was listed as a midfielder when she played at Ole Miss, Moros also brought up transfer Grace Smith when discussing the defense, noting that Arizona had recruited Smith as a defensive midfielder out of high school. Freshman Amanda Maynard graduated from high school in time to join the team during the spring.
“Trinity has played center back for us all spring and did an amazing job,” Moros said. “So we also had Amanda here in the spring as a freshman, so she’s now got playing experience. We’ve brought in Grace, who started as a center back for Ole Miss, that was a ton of experience…and Aranda…her ceiling is extremely high, and her ability to kind of be a veteran player there is going to be big too. So, defensively, I think that’s going to be a very comfortable and confident part of our team, and it’s coming off of a very strong year. And if you look at the stats, Marissa and Zoe are always at the top of the conference defensively every single year. They’re beasts. They can defend, and they’ve continued to also bring some attacking firepower, especially Zoe. You know, she’s very comfortable getting out of the back and moving up the field, and so I think as she goes into her junior year, you’ll see more of that.”
The goalkeepers will be coached by newcomer Nils Roth, who joined the staff from a very successful Pima College men’s program. Last year, the Aztecs advanced to the semifinals of the NJCAA DII Men’s Soccer Championship in Wichita, Kan. before falling to fellow Arizona squad Phoenix College.
As a player, the native of Thun, Switzerland helped the Aztecs win the NJCAA DI national title in 2018. They defeated Barton Community College in double overtime despite being a man down for much of the second half and both overtimes. Roth made eight saves in that game.
Nat Gonzalez has handled the goalkeepers for the past two years, but Moros saw an opportunity to get Gonzalez involved in field coaching while bringing in someone who has strong ties to the Tucson soccer community in Roth. For Roth, it was about challenging himself at the NCAA Division I level while also getting to stay in town.
“I came over (to the U.S.) in 2018 through my agent in Germany, and I played for Pima for two years, and I got to meet my wife, and we have now two young kids,” Roth said. “So, I love it. It’s my second home now.”
Where Arizona will be trying to improve the most is on the offensive end of the field. Moros pointed out Mireya Stephenson as the forward who took the biggest steps forward in that regard, but she also noted that improvement in the midfield will be the most important part of reaching their goals.
“I think our team will look a little different,” Moros said. “Our midfield is beefed up, and our engine and their ability to do work to support the attack is going to be, I think, bigger than it was in the fall. So that’s a big place where we should be able to get more offense through service to the front line, but also through creation for themselves, and I think that’s going to be an area where you see a lot of improvement. We also have Lainey Swanson coming in, and we have other players returning. (Kyleigh Johnson) is returning, and has had a big impact through the spring, as well, and I think those will be areas that will hopefully be pretty strong.“
There will be a lot of learning, though. Arizona lost a big chunk of its junior class to transfer.
“We’re just young,” Moros said. “The front line is young. We were potentially going to get a little older, but I think we’re about the same age wise as we were in the fall, but we are, I think, going to be stronger, more mobile, and have a bigger impact in the midfield.”
Youth makes coaches who are committed to teaching and relationship building even more vital. The second new coach, former Louisiana Tech head coach Steve Voltz, should help with that. Voltz has coached at all levels, both in the college game and the development system. He feels that the relationship piece is being lost in modern college sports, but it doesn’t have to be.
“You can have that opinion that college is a business, and clearly it’s trending that way more and more and more, but I also think it’s an excuse sometimes for folks not to invest time into the athlete as a human being, as a person,” Voltz said. “That matters to me…because at the end of the day, a person, an athlete, somebody that you work with in whatever setting…if you want to motivate them, you have to understand who they are. And you can’t just throw, hey, here’s…whatever the amount may be. It’s like, is there a connection?”
That connection between Moros and her players has been evident over her previous five seasons, and it’s still the focal point as she enters an important year in her tenure. While the NCAA Tournament is always the goal, it’s not what’s most important when she speaks about what she wants for the seasons.
“I want the team to have a hell of a time,” she said. “I want them to have fun. I mean, last year was hard for us, and they held together beautifully as people, as leaders, as teammates to each other, but it was a hard year, and so I think they deserve to enjoy competing…I want them to compete every day, do the best that they possibly can, give it everything they’ve got, have each other’s backs, and just recognize how special it is. You’ll never have an experience like the one you have here. And I think appreciating what your locker room is, and being able to go to battle together, and know that there’s nothing like it. No office environment, no next job, no nothing will ever feel like that, so enjoy it, and be all in on it.”
