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If any other coaches in the Texas athletic department need a travel guide while exploring new roads in the SEC, Angela Kelly can help out.
The Longhorns’ women’s soccer coach spent 16 years coaching in the SEC, including 12 as the head coach at Tennessee. She may be more eager than any other Texas coach about joining the SEC, especially since her program seems primed to make an immediate push for a conference title.
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“I’m really excited to get back into the SEC,” Kelly said. “I had some success in the league there, (and) I think it’s very professional. I think they really brand their sports. ‘It means more’ is their motto, and we’re excited to get into an environment where it means as much as it possibly can.”
Texas looks like an SEC soccer contender
Kelly should be excited about the Longhorns’ chances after comparing the SEC with Texas’ previous conference. No. 3 BYU and No. 8 Texas Tech, two of the Longhorns’ toughest foes in the Big 12 last season, each rank in the top 10 of the United Soccer Coaches preseason poll. Georgia, at No. 14, is the first SEC side to appear in the poll, which suggests national pundits don’t expect a national championship contender to emerge from the conference.
“I think there’s a TCU in there, I think that there’s a Texas Tech in there and I don’t know if there’s a BYU, to be fair,” Kelly said. “I’ve played that game quite a bit in the past six months as I prepare. But they (the SEC) are good, top to bottom. They’re getting after it, but I don’t think it’s going to be a drastic change from the Big 12.”
Texas will open the season at No. 17
Like any soccer coach, Kelly appreciates a quality playing surface. And that’s one aspect of the SEC that she particularly welcomes.
“Almost every single school plays on grass, which I really appreciate,” she said. “That (surface) is important in the way that we like to play.”
Oh, about that preseason poll. Texas starts the season at No. 17, which could be considered low. The Longhorns welcome back two All-Americans in midfielder Lexi Missimo and forward Trinity Byars and don’t lose a single starter from a side that went 17-5-2 a year ago, won the Big 12 Tournament and reached the round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament.
On paper, the team looks even stronger. Center back EmJ Cox returns after missing the entire 2023 season with an injury, and Missimo said Cox, a senior from Highland Park, looks like the same player who earned All-Big 12 honors in 2022.
“Oh, man, it’s been great just having her back, having her impact on the field,” Missimo said. “She’s a big presence.”
So are forwards Rosa Maalouf and Amalia Villarreal, two freshmen who should see plenty of action on the veteran team when it opens the season Thursday evening against visiting Houston at Myers Stadium. Villarreal, a 5-foot-2 dynamo from Michigan, has international experience with the U.S. under-19 squad while Maalouf grew up in the Canadian province of Ontario, like her new coach, and has also played international competition.
Lexi Missimo, Trinity Byars: unfinished business
Of course, any hopes of capturing a crown in the Longhorns’ new conference starts with Missimo and Byars, the best of friends since playing together as young prodigies in the Dallas suburbs. Missimo has racked up 51 assists and 139 points in her four-year career, which tops all active players in NCAA Division I women’s soccer as well as the all-time lists at Texas. Byars holds the program record for goals with 47 while starting all four years alongside Missimo.
But all those numbers don’t add up to the ultimate goal for Texas’ dynamic duo, who want to end their careers by leading a charge for the program’s first national championship.
“I think that we have a lot of unfinished business,” Byars said. “Coming into a new conference, I think that we have a lot to prove. I feel like we have a really good chance at winning some titles.”
Missimo agreed, saying “the job’s not finished” in her college career.
“I think coming into the SEC, we want to win a national championship and also the SEC championship,” she said. “It would be cool, leaving the Big 12 with the (tournament) championship and going into the SEC and getting a championship.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas women’s soccer coach Angela Kelly welcomes return to SEC