Last in our series evaluating each Arizona athletic program
The offseason is here, with all of Arizona’s sports done for 2024-25 season and the 2025-26 campaigns are still a little ways away.
This means only one thing, it is a great time to take stock on where some of the programs stand now. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at each of the UA’s men’s and women’s athletic programs to see what shape they’re in and what prospects they have for the near future.
We’ll break down each team and evaluate how it is performing under its current coaching staff, looking at the state of the program before he/she arrived and comparing it to now while also looking at what year two in the Big 12 might look like.
To finish up our series we look men’s and women’s track and field program that Andrew Dubs just took over last month:
How it looked before
After leading the cross country and track and field programs for 23 years, former director Fred Harvey announced his retirement in May. Overall he was with Arizona for 38 years.
During his time, across both programs, Harvey coached 11 national champions, 14 olympians, and 160 athletes who earned indoor or outdoor all-american honors.
About three weeks following Harvey’s retirement, the athletic department announced that Dubs would be the new head coach for track & field and cross country.
Where things stand now
Dubs now takes over a program that has seen individual success throughout the years, but has never been able to sustain overall success as a program.
Coming with Dubs is 14 years of Division I coaching experience along with coaching the USA National Track and Field team for the past five years.
When it comes to results on the track, he has coached 79 NCAA qualifiers, 32 all-americans, and 18 conference champions.
From Arizona, Dubs inherits athletes like Erin Tack, McKenna Watson, Antonia Sanchez Nunez, and Tapenisa Havea leading the women’s team.
For the men, it will be Sam Hala’ufia and Yan Vazquez, along with a 4x100m relay team that was able to get to the NCAA championships.
How Big 12 life differs from the Pac-12
Arizona was not able to have success when it came to winning conference championships in the Pac-12, but the move to the Big 12 brought new life into the idea of winning conference championships.
Even though Reinaldo Rodrigues won’t be returning to Arizona, he set a benchmark for his fellow athletes. Rodrigues won the Big 12 championship in the long jump.
This is the first Big 12 championship for the track & field program, and the goal now is to follow up with more next season, this time with Dubs at the helm.
One big question
Can Dubs bring fresh life into the program and stack the “small” wins? Arizona won’t necessarily be starting from scratch with Dubs coming in.
The Wildcats have the athletes, the facilities, and new life in the Big 12. This is a window for the program to start fresh in a way.
If the Wildcats can start to create a history of winning in the Big 12, it can allow them to establish themselves as a top program in a power four conference.
Once Arizona establishes itself as a top program, then being able to compete on a national level will follow. It will all start from the small wins.