Soccer preview: at Florida

Match 2: Texas (0-1-0) at Florida (0-1-0)

Time: Sunday, Aug. 22 – 11 a.m. CT

Location: Gainesville, Fla. (Donald R. Dizney Soccer Stadium)

Tickets: Florida soccer matches are FREE and open to the public

Live Stats: LINK

TV: The match will be broadcast live on SEC Network+ and can be watched online through this LINK.

Free Kicks:

Texas and Florida will match up on Sunday for the first time in either program's history. The Longhorns are 37-32-9 all-time against members of the Southeastern Conference. The Longhorns did travel to play in Gainesville, Fla., back during the 2003 NCAA Tournament, but didn't face UF as Texas dropped a 1-0, first-round match to Ole Miss.

Texas head coach Angela Kelly owns a lot of personal history against Florida after battling the Gators at least once each season during her 12-year head coaching stint at Tennessee. During her time on Rocky Top, Kelly led her squad to an 8-7-2 overall mark against UF (2-5-0 in Gainesville), including seven victories over nationally-ranked Florida teams.

Texas holds a 28-22-3 overall record in matches following a loss (that total doesn't carry over losses from end of a season to the next) under the guidance of head coach Angela Kelly.

Texas boasted three players in the Aug. 17 release of the annual Top Drawer Soccer Preseason National Best XI Teams. Senior midfielder Julia Grosso earned a Top Drawer Soccer Second Team Best XI selection, while both midfielder Lexi Missimo and forward Trinity Byars reaped Top Drawer Soccer Freshman Best XI accolades.

Five of Texas' eight 2021 signees played together for Solar SC (Byars, Missimo, EmJ Cox, Miller, Stanley) under head coach Derek Missimo (Lexi's dad), while McFarland, Nobles, Claros, Lapomarda, Sydney Cox and Pace are also previous Solar FC products. Tatiana Fung grew up playing alongside Missimo and Byars on teams in both California and Texas, while Holly Ward was part of the same Vancouver Whitecaps program that produced Grosso, Regan and Akindoju.

Senior midfielder Julia Grosso recently made history as part of the Canadian Senior National Team's gold medal win over Sweden at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. In helping Canada to its first gold medal, Grosso earned five overall caps (Great Britain, Chile, Brazil, United States, Sweden) and made the decisive sixth-round shootout penalty kick in the final to seal the extra-time title triumph over the Swedes.

Julia Grosso also became the first Olympian in Texas soccer history and is now the first Olympic medalist in program annals.

The Longhorns coaching staff looks significantly different this season as head coach Angela Kelly hired former Samford assistant coach Ben Munger and former UAB assistant coach Lee Hughes to replace departed assistants Keeley Hagen and Keri Sanchez. Hagen moved on to become the head coach at Colorado State, while Sanchez is now the head coach at Illinois Wesleyan.

Texas now has both the 2020 and 2021 Top Drawer Soccer IMG Academy No. 1 national recruits in uniform at the same time as Lexi Missimo (2020) and Trinity Byars (2021) have each donned the Burnt Orange & White. The duo are longtime best friends (13+ years), having grown up together playing for Missimo's dad Derek as part of Solar FC.

Lexi Missimo was named by Goal.com in 2021 as the No. 4-ranked player on the #NXGN list of the world's best wonderkids of women's football.

The Longhorns have won 32 consecutive matches in which they scored two-or-more goals in a contest dating back to the start of the 2017 season. The last time Texas failed to win when tickling the twine on two occasions was in a 3-2 defeat at TCU back on Oct. 28, 2016.

UT is 25-3-1 since the start of the 2018 season when scoring first in a match and was 7-0-0 in such contests in 2020-21.

The University of Texas at Austin Athletics