Last year’s Alabama soccer season was one of the most successful in school history. The Crimson Tide won the SEC regular season championship before making its first ever appearance in the College Cup.

UA will open the season Thursday against DePaul. With his team picked by the coaches to finish No. 7 in the nation, head coach Wes Hart said he was happy with where the group is entering the year.

“With each new team there’s little wrinkles that each team brings in so I’m excited to see what this team can do,” Hart said Monday. “Got a great group of players that are fun to be around, enjoyable to coach and just excited to see where it takes us.”

Alabama returns 18 players from the 2022 team, including All-American midfielder Felicia Knox. Knox holds the UA all-time record in assists.

Now a senior, Knox said she’ll try to move into more of a leadership role in 2023.

“It’s been fun so far,” Knox said. “I think the easiest way to do it is lead by example, but also with a voice. With losing a couple of mature seniors last year, stepping into that role has been a little bit of a challenge, but also at the same time, it’s been fun and I’ve enjoyed it.”

Alabama has quite the group of players to replace from last year’s team. UA’s single-season goals leader Riley Mattingly Parker is gone, along with Reyna Reyes, McKinlsey Crone, Riley Tanner and Kat Rogers.

However, the team does return a solid amount of talent beyond Knox, with SEC freshman of the year Gianna Paul back, along with Sah Pickard and Brook Steere, who made all-SEC last season. The Tide also have nine new players coming in.

The new-look Tide saw the field for the first time Tuesday, drawing with Tennessee 2-2 in a preseason exhibition. Hart said the game helped work out some of the kinks in the new lineup.

“We knew we had some work to do,” Hart said. “Lost a lot of key players from last year’s team, right? Half the starting lineup is gone, four of which are now playing in the NWSL, so we lost some key players. So for us it was trying to fill some holes and see what we have.”

Even with the draw, Hart was still optimistic going forward.

“I thought we saw enough good things in that game to build off of,” he said. “And now we’ve had a week since that game to kind of clean some things up and improve in some areas.”

The Crimson Tide’s 2023 season opener is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at Alabama Soccer Stadium.