I’m as guilty as any of being swept under by the fall fervor of college football, but that’s not and shouldn’t be everyone’s be-all/end-all of collegiate sports during False Fall. TCU volleyball and women’s soccer are two of Fort Worth’s and the country’s premier programs that don’t often receive the recognition they deserve until late in their regular seasons or during tournament time.
Frog soccer’s trajectory since coach Eric Bell was hired in late 2011 can only be described as steadily and consistently excellent. There are no overnight flukes or magic bullets, simply improvement every season. Bell was the recruiting coordinator and associate head coach at soccer powerhouse Florida State before being lured to Texas. His emphasis on the defensive scheme combined with a personality to attract overachieving athletes has built the Purple and White into a team bound for the NCAA tournament year after year. Ever since the program’s first regular-season conference title in 2020, Bell and company have repeated their conference tyranny three more times.
Last year’s playoff run was historic for the TCU women, reaching the College Cup (NCAA soccer’s Final Four) for the first time, losing a hard-fought 1-0 matchup to Bell’s former team before the Seminoles went on to beat the Stanford Cardinal to win the national championship. The Frogs are approaching their conference season, gearing up to face Oklahoma State in Stillwater next Thursday. Their 3-2-1 record reflects two wins over ranked opponents: Georgia and Wisconsin, in addition to a dominant 3-0 victory over Texas A&M. Their two losses were by a goal each against Alabama and Texas, though they won’t see either of them again until possibly tournament season in November.
Midfielder Emma Yolinsky (#18), a Prosper native, is leading the offensive charge in 2026 with three goals scored — two at Alabama. Second in offensive production early on is fifth-year Frog veteran Grace Coppinger (#23), a defensive mainstay with the most minutes played on the entire team last season at more than 2,100. (That’s more than 35 hours of Division I soccer in one season.) Coppinger scored during both the Bulldog and Aggie wins from her defender position and should continue to be an anchor on the field in her fifth year in Bell’s system.
Courtesy TCU Athletics
Even though sports polls are a scam by media conglomerates and hack journalists like myself, it’s nice to see our school included in them. TCU soccer is currently ranked 19th after starting the season completely left off the list. How a team that finishes fourth in the country is completely left out of the Top 25 the next season is beyond me, because Bell continues to reload talent and be dangerous for anyone to play, whether it be regular or post-season.
TCU volleyball has earned similar admiration on campus for being a program that faced relative obscurity during their building phase in the late 1990s against larger and more well-established programs throughout the nation. Coach Jason Williams has been a huge part of the invigoration of the Horned Frogs’ volleyball program — not to be confused with beach volleyball, which is also a consistent top-tier contender — since becoming coach in late 2021 after leaving his associate head coach role at Baylor.
TCU has reached at least the second round of their tournament every year since Williams arrived. Last year, the squad cracked a Top-10 ranking for the first time and are off to a strong start this season as well. The purple volleyballers are hot off an upset of 8th-ranked SMU last Wednesday, before dropping their match against 6th-ranked Louisville (pronounced “Lewel-vul,” I’m told) on Friday. The Horned Frogs bounced back at 14th-ranked Purdue with a three-sets-to-none victory on Sunday.
Williams’ squad travels to the South Florida Invitational in Tampa this week for matches against South Florida, Michigan, and Dayton on consecutive days. So far, the only squads that have bested the Frogs have Top-6 rankings: Louisville and Texas, lending veracity to the Frogs’ 18th ranking and making a case for it to potentially rise through the pre-conference season. With success comes excitement. TCU volleyball has grown their in-person attendance year over year, smashing previous program records.
Arizona State is the consensus pick via polls to win the Big 12 with a dozen first-place votes, but the Frogs are close behind with three first-place nods and are firmly seated as second, so the expectations both on campus and throughout the conference are at an all-time high.
Frog Football plays only two non-Saturdays this year: a Friday in early November at Arizona and a Thursday in late November against Texas Tech. Otherwise, you should be clearing your calendars to include as many home stints for Frog volleyball (who play on Fridays and Sundays) and soccer (who play a combination of Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays). If you’re a real Frog superfan, you should be showing up for these nationally ranked programs that have done nothing but improve since their current coaches arrived.
