Texas will suit up in the SEC for the first time on Thursday when Longhorns soccer takes the pitch

The entire Longhorn fan base can’t wait for the Texas football team to begin its first season in the Southeastern Conference. But Steve Sarkisian’s team won’t be the first Longhorn athletic squad to suit up in an official game with a SEC patch on their jersey. Or rather, their kit.

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That honor goes to the Texas soccer team, who takes on the Houston Cougars tonight at Mike A. Myers Stadium to open the 2024-25 University of Texas athletic campaign. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. SEC Network+ will televise the affair.

tomorrow starts the marathon towards Cary 🤘#HookEm | #RunWithTexas

— Texas Soccer (@TexasSoccer) August 15, 2024

Head coach Angela Kelly leads an experienced team into the SEC, a league she coached in for over a decade when she was head coach at Tennessee from 2000 to 2011 before switching UTs. Her Texas program had one of the best seasons in UT soccer history in 2023, and excitement from that campaign which saw the Longhorns win the Big 12 Tournament and reach the Sweet 16 for the second time in her Texas tenure has carried over as they usher the entire athletic department into a new league.

It’s also a league the Longhorns are expected to do well in. Texas was picked second in the preseason SEC poll and ranked No. 4 in the nation in the Top Drawer Soccer preseason poll.

“I’m really excited to get back into the SEC,” Kelly said August 5. “I was there for 16 years and had success in the league there. I think it’s very professional. 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 for all our sports. The success that everybody at the University of Texas on this 40 Acres had last year was tremendous. It’s an absolute privilege to be a part of this group of head coaches.”

The same feeling Longhorn fans have about moving to a new league is felt within the halls of the UT soccer facilities.

“I think it’s nothing but excitement,” Kelly said. “I’m very familiar. I hadn’t been in the league for 12 years, but was there for 16. Some of the coaches are exactly the same. There’s a lot of new coaches, but I think every challenge we’ll be faced with will be met with nothing but excitement.”

There are a number of sports where the SEC is considered the king (or queen). Football and baseball come to mind, so too does women’s basketball. The SEC doesn’t claim the same dominance in soccer as it does in other sports. The last SEC team to win a national title was Florida in 1998.

However, the new league brings new challenges tactically and personnel-wise.

“As there was in the Big 12, there’s different styles of play,” Kelly said. “The majority, almost every single school, plays on grass, which I really appreciate. With quality surfaces, which is important in the way that we like to play. They’re 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.”

When the Longhorns take the pitch, what should fans who may have only seen the Texas XI play when flipping through channels and landing on the Longhorn Network look for?

“I think we pursue an attractive style of play,” Kelly said. “I think we want to play and have the ball as often as possible. If we don’t have the ball, we want to work our tails off to get the ball back. If you had to ask, in a very simplistic form, that’s what I’d say.”

Texas boasts a number of nationally elite players returning from last year’s team. Trinity Byars, a senior forward, and Lexi Missimo, a senior midfielder who is also Division I’s active leader in points, return and provide the Longhorns with two players who were named to TDS’s preseason first-team Best XI. Byars scored 18 goals and added 14 assists in 2023. Missimo notched 26 goals and 20 assists in 24 contests. Those two anchor a team with plenty of experience.

Byars and Missimo, who already find themselves at or near the top of several school records, will be looked to once again for scoring production.

“The hardest thing to do in our sport is to score a goal,” Kelly said. “Those two make it look really easy. Having players like that on your squad is a gift. It’s an absolute gift.”

Coming back this year is 2022 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year EmJ Cox, who missed all of last season due to injury. Kelly is excited to see what the Top Drawer Soccer third-team Best XI member can do this season, describing her as a tremendous set-piece player and a commander on the back line.

“I think she’s a better player,” Kelly said. “We challenged her in the fall. The part of the game she hadn’t done yet is to watch. Watch more of the game. Become more of a student of the game. She was able to do that all last spring and all fall. As I watch us build out of the back, her movement and her nuances went to a higher tactical level.”

As Kelly mentioned, it just means more. The match will be on SEC Network+, available to those who have the SEC Network as part of their streaming or cable subscription.

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It will mean more to Texas in a different way, too. It will mark the beginning of a new era of Longhorn athletics in a new conference, fully realizing a move that was made three long years ago.