Bears Beat Horned Frogs, Prove Baylor Soccer is Setting Up for Exciting 2026
Last Friday night on the Banks of the Brazos, Baylor Soccer sent a message. The Bears earned a 4-3 victory over rivals TCU in a game that looked like a key regular-season conference clash and offered as much entertainment as a Champions League knockout stage second leg … and I only saw the second half.
A quick recap of game events:
- Lauren Omholt opens the scoring, cleaning up a spilled shot from the other side of the goal. Omholt helped create the initial chance as well. 1-0.
- TCU tied it up. 1-1.
- Halftime.
- Grace White poked home a Callie Conrad cross. Amazing effort from both players with very thin margins for success. 2-1.
- TCU ties it up in the blink of an eye. Seriously, I was reviewing photos for 30 seconds after play had restarted for a few minutes, and then I heard a cheer at the far end of the field. 2-2.
- Omholt tallies her second of the game with a high, powerful shot that tests the keeper from the offensive left wing. The keeper got most but not all of the ball, and it bounced into the goal. 3-2.
- An errant back pass leads to a TCU indirect free-kick just inside the BU 6-yard box. The shot hits Omholt and is eventually cleared.
- TCU ties it up with a clinical breakaway finish after a BU defensive mishap. 3-3 with about 10 minutes to play.
- White subbed back in and took over on the left wing, where she then forced the issue and won the Bears a penalty, getting tackled just inside the TCU box. Olivia Hess converted the PK. 4-3.
- Baylor held on for the last five or so minutes and won 4-3.
But how much can you really take away from a spring exhibition game? Neither team is what it was last year when they went to the Sweet Sixteen and Final Four, respectively. Neither team will be the same come mid-October when the Bears and Frogs next face off.
“It means something. We haven’t beaten TCU since I got here [in 2021], so we’ll take it whatever month it is,” said Baylor head coach Michelle Lenard after the game. “They were in the Final Four. Nobody is playing their best soccer in the spring, but still, it's a good team. They’ve got a lot of good players, and we were resilient.”
This game was also conducted much like a regular game. Two 45-minute halves were played, and subs were — if not restricted to in-season rules — at least very similar to those made in regular-season games. This is in contrast to the three 30-minute periods with freer substitutions typical of spring scrimmages.
The physicality was Big 12-level with players fighting not just for the win, but to earn more playing time come the fall. The game was fast-paced, moving from end to end regularly. The coaches were constantly in the referees’ ears, too. There was very little that could help you identify the game as an exhibition outside of no PA announcer and a lack of ball kids.
Having hopefully established the caliber of the event to support the weight of the takeaways, let’s get to the takeaways.
Michelle Lenard has a great understanding of her team’s strengths and weaknesses. Any coach should, but I have to give credit when she told me after the UTSA exhibition that her team might have to win more games 4-3 than the 2-0, 2-1, or 1-0 wins of last year. A 4-3 win over your rival directly following that remark is no coincidence.
Lauren Omholt will be a difference maker in 2026. With the emergence of Grace White and the departure of so many defenders, Omholt’s move to outside back makes so much sense. Omholt is a high-effort player with a great work rate and physicality. With practice, she should learn how best to work with the other defenders. Best case, Omholt becomes a more offensively oriented mirror to Natalie Vatter. Vatter, “The Machine”, is considered an All-American by Coach Lenard, so Omholt matching that quality would be immense for the Bears.
Callie Conrad might be the cog that makes the entire offense spin. I don’t have tactical insight from Coach Lenard here. Conrad, who earned a spot on the All-Big 12 second team last season, is so good with her back-to-goal hold-up play. She can be a target for the outside backs and midfielders to progress the ball forward before playing it out to the wings for runners. McCullough, White and others benefit so much from this, and without the gravitational pull of a Tyler Isgrig in the midfield, the Bears’ attack might actually flow better in 2026. Players still need to get the ball in the back of the net like the All-American did time and time again, but it doesn’t have to all come from one player. Conrad facilitates that so well.
On that topic, and at risk of highlighting a single player too much when the successes are truly team efforts, freshman forward Grace White proved Big 12 competition won’t be too much for her. I had some doubt — perhaps a by-product of many Baylor teams and players falling short of expectations recently — that the freshman could continue to amaze as the competition ramped up. Her goal and penalty earned put that to rest for me. As for Coach Lenard, it was never a question.
“I did not have any doubts that she could [produce against top-quality opponents]. But, you know, going into a first Power 4 opponent, I wondered how much the nerves would affect her. Plus, she was being asked to do a lot of running, because their right outside back is very, very attacking-minded. So for her to just push through that throughout the entire game … she's just really consistent with how she moves off the ball, and that leads to good chances, and then she's a clinical finisher. So I'm never surprised when Grace scores.”
There are still questions in the defense. Emerson Garcia will likely nail down a starting center back spot, and Vatter will hopefully be a team leader in minutes yet again at outside back. But who joins them? Omholt is an early leader for the other outside back, as mentioned before, but if the team needs her in a more forward position, who will slot in? For that spot and the other center back, the Bears have some decent-looking options on the roster, but even then, the depth is a concern. At the end of the spring, I’ll dive deeper into the options at each spot, but for now, this is simply the big question for the Bears of Betty Lou.
“We're coming along,” said Michelle Lenard when asked generally about the offseason so far. “We're, I think, a little ahead of where I thought we might be at this point in the spring, just with the number of changes we had in our starting lineup. So I'm happy about that.”
And as happy as she is — as good as the vibes around her program are — it doesn’t keep the competitor in her from showing up when she starts talking about what's left to improve on. The Bears reached the Sweet Sixteen. Great. TCU was in the Final Four and won the Big 12 regular season. Trophies and banners are the goal. This spring win over TCU shows Baylor is continuing down the path to that goal.
