The head coaches of softball and men’s golf both get one year added to their deals
The head coaches of Arizona softball and men’s golf both have an extra year to prove themselves.
Softball head coach Caitlin Lowe and men’s golf head coach Jim Anderson were entering the final year of their contracts in 2025-26. Arizona has extended both by an extra year, giving them until 2026-27 to show that they’re the right ones to lead their programs. Arizona Athletics has not announced either extension, and a source said that there was no intention of announcing them.
Beyond the years added, the terms of the deals are currently unknown. Lowe was paid $225,000 for the 2025 fiscal year, according to the searchable database maintained by Arizona Luminaria. Anderson earned $140,000. Salary information for the 2025 fiscal year was updated in October of 2024, according to Arizona Luminaria.
Giving both coaches short-term extensions while not announcing either deal was likely due to the unsettled state of both programs. Both Lowe and Anderson have had some success but have also had some major disappointments.
Anderson was given a three-year extension in 2021, which was in effect through the 2024 season. That came on the heels of being named Pac-12 Coach of the Year and winning the Pac-12 title in 2021. The University has not announced another extension since that time, although he has signed at least one additional short-term deal that kept him under contract through 2026.
The postseason is likely the reason for the short-term deals. Anderson’s squad finished 12th of 16 teams in the Big 12 tournament. It then missed nationals by one stroke in the NCAA postseason. There were reasons to be optimistic, but there were also fairly significant concerns.
This is the first extension for Lowe. She was hired to take over the program in 2021 after the retirement of legendary leader Mike Candrea. The program has had both bright spots and bitter disappointments under her leadership. The 2025 season was a microcosm of her tenure.
The Wildcats finished second in their first season in the Big 12, behind only high-resource Texas Tech. They had three NFCA All-Americans and the Big 12 Player of the Year.
There were some disappointments, though. They lost their first Big 12 series to UCF. They had to mount comebacks in their first two games in the conference tournament, then fell behind Texas Tech by 4 runs in the championship game and couldn’t come back against NiJaree Canady.
The Wildcats earned the right to host regionals for the first time under Lowe. That suggested they should advance at least to supers, which they had done in two of the previous three years. Shaky defense and pitching ultimately led to them losing on their home field.
Arizona has had issues getting the best high school pitchers since late in Candrea’s tenure. That continued under Lowe, and she has definitely been at a disadvantage in the NIL era. While she has stated that they’re financially “competitive” for the kind of players they go for, and they have been able to pull in some of the top position players, most of the top pitchers have been landing at current SEC programs or UCLA. Stanford has even been ahead of Arizona over the past five years or so.
That imbalance is likely to last at least one more season. Although the House settlement is supposed to rein in some of the more unbalanced NIL spending, programs that already had very rich collectives were able to front-load deals for the 2025-26 school year. That means they dumped large amounts of money on players who were at those schools or transferred in ahead of the implementation of the revenue-sharing cap. They will then have revenue sharing to add on top of that.
While Arizona will have revenue sharing for softball, it did not have a well-funded collective that was especially concerned with women’s sports to engage in significant front-loaded deals. How much that affected the transfer decisions of a couple of top players is open to question.
Lowe will have two years to prove that she can lead the program deep into the postseason under the new rules. She likely has more support now than she has had in the past as far as luring players with cash. In that sense, revenue sharing will give Arizona softball another tool to use besides its history.
While men’s golf isn’t one of the Arizona programs known to be receiving revenue sharing, Anderson also has better support than in years past. The Wildcats unveiled their new facilities at the Tucson Country Club in 2023. Those were built under previous Athletic Director Dave Heeke, but the investment provides the program a true home, which it didn’t have before.
Photo by Ryan Kelapire