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Head coach Becca Moros’ fifth season at the helm with the Wildcats is the first where the players were entirely recruited by the Duke alumnae and her staff.

“It’s different, it’s definitely different,� Moros said. “I think all of us in the spring kinda had this conversation like ‘is the team different?’ and the players said the coaches were like different.�

Arizona features six seniors, five of whom have been at the UA their whole college career. Starting goalkeeper Olivia Ramey transferred after a couple of seasons at Oklahoma.

“I always joked that they were all kind of natural leaders,� Moros said. “So I think that they’re coming into their sweet spot when you have six great personalities, great people, great players, in our senior class; it’s natural and it’s been really great.�

UA went 11-6-2 overall and 6-4-1 in the Big 12 last year after it was 6-8-5 in 2023. Moros went 8-7-3 in 2022 and 5-13 in her first season in Tucson.

The Wildcats are seeking their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2019.

Arizona returns 19 players from last year and adds six freshmen and two transfers.

The Wildcats’ three captains are all seniors: Ramey and defenders Maia Brown and Ella Hatteberg.

“We’re big voices back there and that’s something that we want to push down the field to the offense, as well,� Ramey said. “We’ve been working so hard and we have so much to build off of because our entire backline is returning.�

Ramey went 11-5-2, had six shutouts, a 0.94 GAA, and .784 save percentage. She had a season-high nine saves at North Carolina, which won its 23rd national championship.

Brown started 16 matches and played 1,240 minutes last year. Hatteberg started 14 and played 1,221 minutes.

Last year, UA gave up 17 goals in 19 matches (.89 goals against average) and had eight clean sheets.

“We’ve been able to build on what we worked on last season as far as defensive unit,� Brown said. “We have a good returning group.�

Ramey was fifth in the Big 12 in GAA (.941) and shutouts (6), sixth in saves (59) and 10th in saves per match (3.28).

UA lost Gianna Christiansen and Nicole Dallin, who each had eight goals and five assists. Sophomore forward Narissa Fults, who had four goals and three assists in her rookie campaign, is the UA’s top returning scorer.

Moros says their offense will take a “community approach� and expects scoring to come more from the middle of the field.

“I think we’ll have more options from more areas than we’ve had in the past,� Moros said.

Christiansen was fourth in the Big 12 in match-winning goals (4) and eighth in points (21) along with Dallin.

“I feel that our strengths are definitely out wide and we’ve got a lot of great players that are going to fill those roles and are already leaders on this team,� Hatteberg said. “And they’re itching to fill those gaps.�

UA’s transfers come from the SEC in sophomore forward Aurora Gaines from LSU and sophomore midfielder/defender Lily Boydstun from Arkansas. Gaines was a four-star recruit coming out of Milton, Ga., and has played for the USA youth national teams and Puerto Rico’s U17 and U20 sides.

Boydstun was the 2024 Colorado Gatorade Player of the Year and was a three-star recruit.

“What I like is that they came back (laughs),� Moros said. “It’s the first group, the first class where we recruited people, maybe became No. 2 or wherever, and they’re listening somewhere else and then it came back to us, so really excited about that.�

Midfielder Whitney Reinhardt highlights the freshmen class. She won the Gatorade Arizona Girls Soccer Player of the Year at Scottsdale Notre Dame Prep.

She scored 46 goals and had 51 assists in her high school career, scoring 18 and assisting 11 times last year.

Moros said the freshmen have already shown that they can adjust to the speed of college soccer.

“I think the freshman class is a really solid class,� Moros said. “Good teenage hard workers, consistently play well together, they’re already fitting into the style and system.�

Arizona kicks off the year with a home match against UNLV on Thursday.

At the end of August, the Wildcats face the former Pac-12 Bay Area schools on the road. Stanford is ranked seventh in the preseason United Soccer Coaches poll, and California is receiving votes.

“I think that’s the one thing we kind of missed changing conferences is regularly playing the top 10 contender,� Moros said. “So we played UNC last year, we play them at home in ’26, so excited to have those programs on our schedule and I think it helps us know where the bar is.�

Arizona plays six Big 12 home matches, including No. 22 Oklahoma State, No. 9 TCU, No. 25 Texas Tech and ASU, and five on the road.

The Texas Tech game on Oct. 19 on ESPNU in one of two Big 12 women’s soccer matches broadcast on national television.

Big 12 coaches predicted Arizona will finish eighth in the 16-team league in the annual preseason poll. UA didn’t have any preseason All-Big 12 selections.

Junior defender Aranda Hurge was second team All-Big 12 after last season, along with Christiansen and Dallin.

Arizona sophomore goalkeeper Sofia Cortes-Browne won the CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean) Women’s U-20 Championship with Canada over the summer.

UA assistant coach Nat Gonzalez (Puerto Rico) and Gaines (Puerto Rico) also went to the tournament in Costa Rica.

Canada’s performance earned the Canucks a spot in the U-20 Women’s World Cup next year. Cortes-Browne went to the 2024 U-20 Women’s World Cup last year.

Moros said playing international soccer with “the hopes of a nation on your back� helps a lot.

“I think any time you get exposed to another level, a higher level, I think it stretches you,� Moros said.