University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Experienced Backline Anchors the Next Chapter of 30 Years of Pitt Women's Soccer
8/13/2026 1:00:00 PM | General, Women's Soccer
Thirty years after its founding, Pitt women's soccer opens its 31st season with a backline that reads like a program history lesson.
Katie Zailski, Olivia Lee, Mya Archibald and Claire Jones have combined to start well over 100 games in a Pitt uniform, anchoring a defense that has been a focal point of Pitt women's soccer over the years.
Now, two years removed from an NCAA Tournament appearance, that experience is the foundation head coach Ben Waldrum is building around.
A headline piece of that foundation is Zailski's return. A torn labrum kept her out of every game in 2025, ending a run in which she had started 61 of her first 63 games at Pitt. This season, she is back on the field, and so is the standard she helped set.
That group got its first proof of concept Wednesday, opening the season with a 2-1 win over Youngstown State.
"It's another chapter in the whole story of Pitt women's soccer," Waldrum said. "What's going to be unique with this group is we have an expectation to be a team that's an NCAA Tournament team. They have to relive the past to some degree. So I do think you have to kind of at least glance backwards before moving forward. That's the challenge this team has."
Last season did not go as planned. In Waldrum's first year at the helm, Pitt finished 6-10-2. That is the record this group is trying to turn the page on, and the backline's experience is central to how they plan to do it.
The Panthers historical win over No. 1 Notre Dame showed how important that was. It was only because they were able to hold the Fighting Irish scoreless that Archibald could sneak in a game winning goal at the end of the game.
"You don't concede, you got a shot to win the game," Waldrum said. "I do think that gives you a better starting point. Having people that have done it before makes a big difference. Whether it's defensively or just in possession in general, that does a lot of defending for you."
Lee has done plenty of it. She started all 18 games in 2025 and set a career high with 1,617 minutes, playing every second of 17 full matches while helping steady a Pitt defense that had to adjust to life without Zailski. The year before, she anchored the back line with 18 starts and a team-high 1,519 minutes, adding her first career goal in a win over Dartmouth.
Archibald and Jones round out the group, giving Pitt four seniors on a line that will lean heavily on players who have already been through the program's highs and lows together.
For Zailski, getting back onto that line means more than personal redemption. It means helping a young group understand what a Pitt defense is supposed to look like. Waldrum even called her a coach on the field. For Zailski, it is a bit bigger than that.
Coming back from an injury-shortened year, and helping a team that missed the NCAA Tournament each of the past two seasons, is personal.
"Part of it is almost like a redemption year," Zailski said. "Having had some difficulties last season. We all kind of want to just come back from that and prove everyone kind of wrong. But it's also just getting back to where we were a couple years before as well, and being a team that's competing consistently."
She was direct about what that requires up front.
The two best defensive seasons in program history came in 2022 and 2023, when Pitt allowed just 0.95 and 1.12 goals per game, respectively, numbers that still stand as the best marks in program history. Both of those teams featured Zailski on the roster.
"If you're not letting goals in the back of the net, then you're not losing," Zailski said. "That's probably the biggest part of it, just not conceding and having that mentality. If we aren't as strong up top, we're at least not going to concede goals. Going in with that throughout the season, that's a big goal of ours, to not concede and to be a strong defensive unit as a whole."
The link between those numbers and this season's group is not a coincidence, according to Waldrum. It is the plan, and it is why Pitt's best defensive numbers have come in seasons when the Panthers controlled the ball, not just when they defended it.
Their style of play emphasizes controlling possession. They aim for 60-70% of possession in a game, which limits scoring opportunities for the opponent. Waldrum pointed to that as being a key point of success in 2023.
That identity traces back further than just the defense. Lee points to 2025 as the year the team's culture crystallized, even if the results did not follow. They went through a lot of adversity, but through it all became even closer, especially since they spend a lot of time off the field together.
"It's nice having had that experience and getting to share that with each other," Lee said. "I feel very close to all of them. It helps us all in the field because we all understand each other, too. We understand what we bring to the table, and where we might need support and help. So it's been good."
Still, Waldrum is careful not to overstate what that means for Pitt this early in the season. The ACC is a gauntlet and they'll be tested even before that as Texas — typically a top tier program — comes to town on Sunday.
"I am cautiously optimistic, because it's a funny sport, it's a funny game, and the margin for error is really small," Waldrum said. "We have to execute. Really, that's the bottom line."
Thirty years in, with a backline built on players who remember what Pitt's best version of itself looks like, this season is the program's chance to write itself back into that story.
