RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A week from Friday, UC Santa Barbara Women's Water Polo Head Coach Emma Myall will lead her Gauchos into the unknown. In her first season as the full-time skipper and with a roster that bears little resemblance to last year's squad, Myall knows the importance of riding the learning curve.
 
"My expectations for the season, honestly, it's my first season so I have no idea," Myall said. "I am walking in with patience, with excitement and I'm ready to win some games and I'm ready to learn from the experience and learn what I can do better to shape these girls into being better players. We have a really young team, so we have the advantage of having basically the same team next year, and they will be even stronger than this year because of the experience of what they go through."
 
Santa Barbara opens their 2026 campaign in Riverside with a pair of matches at California Baptist's The Joust, including against the hosting Lancers themselves. Conference play kicks off in late February, with the Gauchos' first home contest set for the 28^th against Cal State Fullerton. The Gauchos finished sixth in The Big West with Myall as the interim head coach in 2025, a result they are predicted to repeat in this year's preseason coaches' poll. But if Santa Barbara is to meet (or exceed) that expectation, it will be in a vastly different fashion than last season, as the scorers of 261 of the Gauchos' 357 goals in 2025 are not on the 2026 rosters, leaving plenty of room for breakout seasons.
 
"Lainey Weintre has really stepped up on the four-five side as a lefty, and as a leader in the water (in the fall)," Myall said. "A bunch of (other) standouts who are doing really well are Marta Manninetti, Hadde Hall, Molly Souza and Isabel Valaika. Those girls are contributing to not just goals but points on defense, points on offense from steals. They really are stepping up especially since we don't have a strong older class. We've had some girls have the challenge of I know you're not really ready to be a leader yet but we're going to start being leaders."
 
CAPTAINS
The Gauchos have named three captains for this season: the aforementioned Souza and Valaika, as well as Cami Mras. Mras, who missed the 2025 season, is the longest-tenured Gaucho, entering her fifth year at UC Santa Barbara. Through her first three seasons in the pool, she has 58 goals, highlighted by a 30-goal haul in 2023. Of the returners, Valaika was the top scorer last season, with 31 goals in 2025. She was also the team's first-choice sprinter last season, winning 39 of 59 races for possession. Like Valaika, Souza is in her third year as a Gaucho and, like Mras, is a utility player — capable of contributing to the attack from the outside or down low in the post. Souza also captained her high school team and is one of four returners who tallied double-digit goals in 2025 with a 13-goal, five-assist haul.
 
RETURNERS
Morgan Hoffman and Loretta Hovey are the other two returners with double digits to their names last season, and both are just sophomores in 2026. Hoffman in particular can only go up from her freshman campaign, which started with 10 goals in five games but was then derailed by injury. Hovey is the team's top returning assister, with 17 to go along with the 14 goals she put home in her rookie season.
 
With a total of eight outfield players departing after 2025, there is plenty of room in the lineup for the likes of Hall and Weintre to show off the gains they made this offseason, with Zoe Gabriel and Athena Wigo also in line to increase their contributions. Each of those four were limited to fewer than 20 shots in what were their first seasons with the program, but all also scored on at least 35% of those limited attempts at goal.
 
Zoe Ann Watson, Brynn Tully and especially Kiera Wall are all set to see their first collegiate action after redshirting last season. The aptly named Wall is the team's longest-tenured goalkeeper, with freshmen Siena Jumani and Lydia Soderberg completing Santa Barbara's netminding corps for 2026.
 
NEWCOMERS
Jumani and Soderberg are two of 10 new Gauchos this season, an incoming class that gives Coach Myall plenty of depth and flexibility. Miranda Salinger is another true center to complement Hoffman in the post, though Maninetti offers the utility to play through the middle as well as from outside. Maninetti also brings international experience, having taken part in last summer's U20 World Championships with Italy. Another newcomer with an impressive resume is transfer attacker Addie Lane, who was a two-time All-American at Santa Barbara City College. Freshmen Phoebe DeMoss, Emmerson Ferriera, Mia Sullivan and Gigi Rimlinger, the latter of whom was selected to USA Water Polo's Cadet National Team, round out the group of incoming attackers. The final new face on Santa Barbara's 2026 roster is Eliza Harlow, the one out-and-out defender on the squad.
 
"I'm genuinely very psyched to see what they've been hiding from the fall because I feel like we only had a couple of opportunities to play and when we did, we were learning so much to a point where I haven't seen a full potential and we have been really focused on conditioning and ball skills and shooting skills. Going up and down, we've been doing that recently and it's exciting, but we still have a lot of things to be working on."