State of the Program: Arizona Softball

Over time, Arizona softball has had a tremendous amount and success thanks to the Mike Candrea era where the program turned into a national power and forever changed the game by winning eight national titles, making 25 Women’s College World Series and 37 NCAA Tournament appearances.

However, it is the players that make the program and the Wildcats have had 111 All-Americans in their rich history.

Now, under head coach Caitlin Lowe, Arizona had a highly successful 2025 season going 48-13 in the inaugural season in the Big 12. The Wildcats finished second only behind Texas Tech, which made the National Championship Series and came within a game of winning the title.

Leading the way for Arizona was dual threat player Devyn Netz, who posted an ERA of 2.25 (career-high)  winning 22 games in 152 ⅓ innings of work to go along with her 118 strikeouts.

But, that’s not all Netz did during the year. She was a monster at the plate batting .347 in 173 at-bats and smacked 19 home runs while driving in 68RBI on the year.

With the ability to pitch in the circle and get it done at the plate, Netz won the Big 12 Player of the Year Award and was named to the NFCA second-team All-American list.

Although the Wildcats were able to make the postseason and host a regional as the No. 13 overall seed hosting Ole Miss, Grand Canyon and Santa Clara, the Wildcats were unable to get out of their own regional.

Then, since the end of the season, Arizona and Lowe saw a mass exodus of players enter the transfer portal leave the program including most of its pitching staff and star outfielder Dakota Kennedy joining other teams.

So, the question is, was it a successful season for Arizona?

In terms of the number of wins compared to other teams across the country, 100%. Most teams don’t host regionals.

However, in terms of the standards for Arizona?

No, it wasn’t a successful season and when you take a deep dive into the Lowe era, Arizona has been an under achieving program during that time.

With Lowe as the head coach, the team has only hosted a regional once and missed the postseason for the first time in over 30-plus years.

One thing that shows that it hasn’t been an amazing era is that Lowe was sitting on her final year of her contract and A.D. Desiree Reed-Francois gave her a one-year extension in comparison to Chip Hale’s four-year new contract.

Now, Reed-Francois has stated before that she feels one-year deals will be the way of the future of programs with player movement and the era of the NIL.

However, you have to wonder and kind of have the feeling that this one-year deal is performance based and with the players that left, Arizona isn’t in a good position as of this moment for next season.