In the summer of 2016, Hope Hisey and her parents toured McKale Center with the Arizona soccer coaching staff. Their attention was divided.
The UA baseball team was playing Coastal Carolina in the College World Series championship game, and it was streaming on the jumbotron overhead.
“We would stop and watch,” UA head coach Tony Amato recalled. “They were super engaged in wanting baseball to win that. It was vivid to me how bought in they were to U of A.”
The Arizona ties run deep in Hisey’s family. Her father, Jason, pitched for the Wildcats from 1987 to 1991.