Not a sport I follow, or know anything about, but want to take a minute to acknowledge Coach Austin Pile and the 2025 UCD Women’s Field Hockey team. In Coach Pile’s 4th season in, the 6-10 record equalled the 2019 Fall campaign, and represents the best since 2019. The young Aggie team was competitive in most of the losses, despite traveling east of the Mississippi for more than half their games.

Assuming Pile returns in 2026, he will become the longest tenured coach in the program’s history, and with 1 victory, the 2nd winningest UCD Field Hockey coach. The program has shown definite progress under Pile, and is beginning get recruits from some of the top high school programs in the country.

It’s a tough competitive environment, as only UCD, Cal, Stanford and Iowa have D1 programs west of the Mississippi. Looking at the schedule over the last few seasons, it seems that only stronger programs are willing to travel to California. Here’s hoping that Coach Pile remains in Davis for a good while longer, provides stability to the program, and continues to deliver improved results.