AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 The University of Texas soccer team opened the 2026 campaign with a 3-0 victory over HCU at Mike A. Myers Stadium on Wednesday evening. The win marked the Longhorns’ first victory under head coach Margueritte Bates.<\/p>\n
“It was great to get our first win as a staff here at Texas and begin this new chapter,” Bates said. “It was exciting to see some players earn their first minutes as a Longhorn and even score their first goal as a Longhorn. While we still have a lot of work to do, hopefully we can build some momentum from this into the weekend and the rest of the season.”<\/p>\n
Texas (1-0-0) kicked off its new era in style, as two-time All-SEC Second Team selection Amalia Villarreal<\/a> found the back of the net in the third minute.<\/p>\n Fifth-year Callan Harrington<\/a> connected with Villarreal, who danced free from an HCU defender to create space just outside the box. The junior planted and fired a right-footed shot into the far corner of the net to put the Longhorns on the board.<\/p>\n The junior’s 21st career tally was Texas’ quickest goal to start a season since Haley Berg’s strike 25 seconds in against Rice on Aug. 18, 2017.<\/p>\n Later in the half, Sadie Hoch<\/a> doubled the Longhorns’ advantage by curling a shot from 25 yards out into the back right corner of the cage. Hoch’s second career goal came off assists from fellow sophomores Audrey Bryant<\/a> and Kennedi Cotter<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the 84th\u00a0minute, Cotter punctuated Bates’\u00a0Texas debut with her first goal as a Longhorn. Cotter delivered a world-class left-footed strike into the top right corner to cap off the scoring.<\/p>\n Texas finished the match with a 19-3 advantage in shots, holding the Huskies (0-1-1) without an attempt on target. The Longhorns controlled 74 percent of possession, earning seven corner kicks in the victory.<\/p>\n Bates’ squad returns to action Sunday, as Texas travels to face Pittsburgh. Kickoff is slated for 11 a.m. CT \/ noon ET at Ambrose Urbanic Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 The University of Texas soccer team opened the 2026 campaign with a 3-0 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-405427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}