This post was updated Feb. 3 at 9:56 p.m.

No. 10 UCLA softball begins its 2026 season Friday, and an offseason filled with transfers, graduating players and freshmen recruits helped the squad take on a new look. The Bruins concluded last season in the Women’s College World Series after finishing second in the Big Ten tournament.

2025 record: 55-13, 17-5 Big Ten
Coach: Kelly Iouye-Perez

Outgoing players:

UCLA lost 13 players to either graduation or the transfer portal.

The pitching staff saw particular turnover, as three of the Bruins’ four pitchers from last season left Westwood.

Headlining the departures were Kaitlyn Terry and Addisen Fisher, who both transferred out, committing to Texas Tech and Georgia, respectively.

Terry left Westwood after two seasons at UCLA and was the second-most-played starting pitcher for the 2025 squad, appearing in 33 games and starting 22. The former Pac-12 Freshman of the Year also pitched the most innings, ending with 148.1 for the 2025 season.

The former pitcher/utility served as a two-way player last season, playing in right field and batting while also giving the Bruins 172 strikeouts and a 2.64 earned run average, the highest marks for the squad in both categories.

Fisher, who was on the NFSA Freshman of the Year Top 10 List last season, finished the 2025 campaign with 100 strikeouts across 113.2 innings pitched. Coming out of high school, Fisher was the top-ranked high school recruit and was expected to make a jump in her sophomore year after a prominent freshman season.

Rounding out the trio of departing arms is Jada Cecil, who was with UCLA for two seasons and graduated after playing in 11 games and starting six last season, primarily in the Bruins’ Tuesday affairs.

The departure of the three pitchers will put more pressure on senior pitcher Taylor Tinsley, who was recently named to the 2026 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year Watch List.

Utility Savannah Pola’s graduation was also an integral loss to the team.

Pola led the team in batting average and hits, with .428 and 98, respectively. The Santa Ana, California, local ended her four-year UCLA career with NFCA Third Team All-American and All-Big Ten First Team selections in 2025.

Catcher and utility Maggie Daniel’s transfer to Ohio State and outfielder Jessica Clements’ graduation will be some of the more challenging defensive roles to fill.

Daniel ranked second on the team in chances and putouts, recording 218 and 204 across the season. She played in 35 games and started 30, while Clements started in all 67 games last season, ending the campaign with a 1.000 fielding percentage on 73 opportunities.

Infielder Seneca Curo exhausted her eligibility after playing in Westwood since 2020. This past campaign she played in 47 games, starting 30. Curo ended the 2025 season with a fielding percentage of .901 on 81 chances, playing most of the year at second base.

The graduations of long-term players like Curo and Pola could shift the leadership dynamics, meaning there may not only be a role to fill on the field but one off it as well.

Incoming players:

The Bruins are welcoming 11 new players, including six freshmen and five transfers.

UCLA received four new pitchers – freshman pitcher and utility Natalie Cable, sophomore Brynne Nally, redshirt junior Sydney Somerndike and sophomore Mattie Beliveau.

Cable comes to Westwood after pitching 552 innings and notching 1,136 strikeouts across her high school career. She ranked 20th in the class of 2025, recording a .457 batting average and will give the Bruins an impact on both sides of the ball.

Somerndike played at Arizona for three years but did not see the field much last season, only playing in two games after recovering from a shoulder injury. Beliveau played a season at Wisconsin, pitching out of the bullpen in eight games in 2025.

Nally enters the squad as the most experienced, pitching in 21 games and recording 12 starts in her sole season at Long Beach State, where she was an All-Big West Honorable Mention selection last year.

Outside of the circle, junior utility Soo-Jin Berry played two seasons at Iowa, where she started every game she played, recording 88 appearances across both campaigns. Berry played shortstop in all 52 of her starts last season and earned an NFCA All-Midwest Region Second Team nod.

UCLA’s top-ranked recruit is freshman utility Jolyna Lamar, who ranked second in the 2025 class. She boasted a .503 batting average and a .944 fielding percentage with 12 errors on 213 chances.

The freshmen class also includes infielder Bri Alejandre, who ranked 27th, and a utility duo of Jazmine Leyva and Saydrie Meoño.

Despite the loss of key players, the Bruins enter the season as a top-10 squad in the ESPN poll.