The Arizona Wildcats lost a lot of offense and a lot of young talent after last season. Up until now, they had not announced any transfers to replace the five who left the program. In actuality, they have several who simply were never made public.
In addition to four freshmen signed last November, head coach Becca Moros has added five transfers to replace the five who left. The program announced the additions on Thursday, June 4.
A pair of former teammates at Xavier Prep in Phoenix and TCU have now
become Wildcats. Rising sophomores Ally Brown and Lainey Swanson did not play a great deal in their lone season in Fort Worth, but they were part of a highly successful program that went 18-3-3 and advanced to its first College Cup last season. The Horned Frogs have double-digit wins every season going back at least a decade.
Swanson will be especially crucial on a team that lost so much of its scoring. The 5-foot-9 forward made her debut in a match at Texas on Aug. 28 and appeared in a total of nine matches for 98 minutes. Eight of those matches were against Power 4 teams.
Swanson got her biggest opportunities against Kansas and Iowa State. She had one shot in 21 minutes at KU. It was on goal. She took two shots in 34 minutes against ISU.
Swanson was the 2025 AIA Offensive Player of the Year and 2025 6A Offensive Player of the Year at Xavier. She was part of two state championship teams.
Brown is a midfielder who made an impact in her first two matches as a college player. She had assists against Pepperdine and UTSA to start the season. She ended the year with 93 minutes of play in five games, including getting time in the Frogs’ first two NCAA Tournament matches.
Brown was one of just four players in Arizona history to win four state championships during her time at Xavier.
The Wildcats also bring in a trio of juniors to help shore up a class that was depleted by transfers out of the program. The first is Grace Smith, who comes to UA from Ole Miss. The other two give Arizona options at goalkeeper.
Smith is a 5-foot-8 midfielder from Cypress, Tex. She made 33 appearances with 23 starts in her two years with the Rebels. She played 782 minutes as a freshman and 1188 as a sophomore. She has two shots, one of them on goal, in her two seasons.
The other two juniors will compete with Sofia Cortes-Browne at goalkeeper. Redshirt junior Laurynn Ziller arrives from UC Irvine and Elesha Magley comes from UNLV. Both teams faced Arizona last season, although Magley didn’t play against the Wildcats.
Ziller didn’t play her first two years in Irvine. She got limited minutes her third season. She appeared just twice all year, for the final 11 minutes of a match against St. Mary’s and the final eight minutes against Stanford.
Her time finally came last season. Ziller appeared in 16 games and started 15 times, including at Arizona on Aug. 17. She held the Wildcats to one goal in a 1-0 Arizona win. She allowed just nine goals in 1369 minutes of play across 16 contests, giving her a 0.59 GAA. She had seven solo shutouts and one combined shutout. She allowed more than one goal just once all season. That came in a 2-0 loss to Cal Poly.
Magley did not play as a freshman. She saw action in six matches, including five starts, as a sophomore.
Magley was forced to face a ton of shots when she played. She stared down double-digit shots in four of her six contests, including facing 20 shots against Seattle University. She had at least three saves in four of six matches. She averaged 1.62 goals against.
As of Tuesday, June 2, the online roster included no freshmen and no transfers. The program updated the roster on Thursday. It began publishing press releases about the transfers on its website and social media accounts the same day.
