Defending women’s soccer champion High Point has been voted the favorite in the annual Big South Conference preseason poll by the league’s head coaches, it has been announced by the conference office.
In addition, the coaches voted Longwood’s Samantha Fischer (Charlottesville, Va.) the Preseason Forward of the Year, High Point’s Kari Powell (Boiling Springs, Pa.) the Preseason Midfielder of the Year, Radford University’s Caitlyn Nottingham (Moseley, Va.) the Preseason Defender of the Year, and Radford’s Lexi Radvanyi (Leesburg, Va.) the Preseason Goalkeeper of the Year. The Panthers, under the direction of fifth-year head coach Aaron McGuiness, collected seven of the nine first-place votes and 76 total points in being voted the preseason favorite for the first time since 2021. In 2025, HPU won the Big South conference championship as the No. 4 seed and welcomes back seven starters and 17 players from last year’s squad.
Radford was voted second behind High Point with 69 points and received a first-place vote. Longwood totaled 63 points to finish third in the poll and was followed by USC Upstate (58 points and the remaining first-place vote). Charleston Southern landed in the fifth spot (43 points), with Winthrop (32 points) in the sixth position. UNC Asheville claimed seventh in the polling (29 points), followed by Gardner-Webb (eighth, 22 points) and Presbyterian College (ninth, 13 points). Fischer was the 2025 Big South Freshman of the Year as well as a First-Team All-Big South forward who tied for second in the conference with seven goals and tied for third in the circuit with 16 points. She was the Big South Offensive Player of the Week once and Big South Freshman of the Week twice and played in all 19 matches last season with seven starts. …first three matches — capped by… Powell was named to the Big South All-Tournament Team last season and was a member of the 2024 Big South All-Freshman Team. She started all 20 games a season ago and recorded two goals. Powell played the second-most minutes for the Panthers in 2025 with 1,534, which included all 110 minutes against USC Upstate in the Big South Championship Match. Nottingham was one of six Highlanders to start every game in 2025, and she played the fourth-most minutes on the team at 1,216. She tallied a goal plus three assists over the course of the season and helped the Highlanders record six shutouts. Aug. 21, scored her lone goal of the year on Sept. 11 at East Tennessee State, and posted assists vs. Morehead State (Sept. 7) and Gardner-Webb (Oct. 29). Radvanyi received Big South Honorable Mention All-Conference honors last season as she started all 16 games in net and played a full 90 minutes in all but two matches for 1,421 total minutes. She finished the campaign with 51 saves, a .729 save percentage, 10 wins, six shutouts and a 1.20 goals-against average (4th-best in the Big South).
Radvanyi earned the Big South Defensive Player of the Week honor (Oct. 6) after making a career-high 10 saves in a 2-1 win at USC Upstate. She recorded five shutouts during Big South play, including a pair to end the regular season to clinch the Big South regular-season championship.
She ranks tied for fifth in Radford history with 14 career shutouts seventh in goalie minutes (3,589). conference play
Big South Conference
