The circle tightens as Cal Poly Women’s Soccer players gather around at the end of practice.
Shoulders press together. Heads lean in. Voices get louder.
Then, together they break the huddle. “We Here.”
The Mustangs have made this phrase a part of their routine. They say it at the end of practices and before kickoff on game days as a reminder of the identity Cal Poly is trying to establish. For a program coming off a Big West Championship and looking to prove itself as a powerhouse team, the phrase extends beyond just a rallying cry.
Now the Mustangs are at a pivotal point in their program. One where they prove last season’s success was more than a fluke, but instead the foundation of a program that will have a continued legacy as an established competitor.
In the 2025 season, Cal Poly had a 2-1 victory over rivals UC Santa Barbara to claim its first conference title since 2004. The win propelled the Mustangs to the first round of the NCAA Tournament, where they suffered a 3-1 loss to No. 1 Stanford.
The championship came in the program’s first season under Head Coach Bernardo Silva, who became just the second head coach in Cal Poly Women’s Soccer history.
Silva took over after Alex Crozier retired following 33 seasons as the program’s first and only head coach. For Silva, the job marked a return to San Luis Obispo after two seasons leading Cal State Bakersfield and four previous seasons as an assistant at Cal Poly.
Silva wanted to establish a new era of success for the program, dubbing it “Cal Poly 2.0.” The team began using the motto “We Coming” as a way to express their goal of becoming competitors in the Big West Conference.
In his first year at the helm, Silva turned a team with a losing record of 5-11-3 in the season prior into Big West Champions.
While Silva’s objective in every season is to win the conference title, he did not expect to have the level of impact he did in his first year as head coach.
“The fact that I did that in the first year is a testament to the coaches that we have and the players that we have, and the culture that we are able to build,” Silva said.
Now, the 2026 season is all about proving that they have arrived and are here to stay.
The objectives Silva has laid out for the Mustangs have three components: win the Big West, elevate Cal Poly’s regional ranking, and make a run in the NCAA Tournament.
Each goal presents its own challenges, but “We Here” is the team’s reminder that they are capable of jumping the hurdles to achieve their goals.
The most immediate challenge is tackling an expanded Big West Conference that added three new affiliate teams and saw two exit during the off-season.
The 12-team conference now includes Utah Valley and California Baptist, who will be title contenders. Cal Baptist was the 2025 Western Athletic Conference Champion, and both teams made last season’s NCAA Tournament.
A larger, more competitive conference makes defending a title more difficult.
However, the lowest expectation for Cal Poly remains to win another championship because they believe they are ready to do more with their program.
This includes improving their Rating Percentage Index (RPI). The team’s hope is that a higher RPI may allow them to face an opponent during the NCAA Tournament from outside of the competitive region where Cal Poly is located.
Avoiding a first-round matchup against a high-ranking team, such as Stanford, could be key to achieving the Mustangs’ ultimate goal: to make a run in the NCAA that will carry on beyond the first round.
To improve RPI, teams need to win as many games as possible while playing against a highly competitive schedule. Because a team’s ranking heavily depends on the opponents they play, defeating teams with a high winning percentage gives the biggest boost. Conversely, playing or losing to weak teams with low winning percentages actively hurts a team’s RPI.
With that in mind, the Mustangs testing themselves against strong competition is an important part of positioning the team for postseason play. Their schedule reflects this approach, with the Mustangs facing tough teams such as Stanford, Arizona State and Cal during the nonconference portion of the season.
For Silva, this is a part of a larger expectation that the team must remain competitive every season.
“People are calling me a little crazy because we lost Jessie Halladay, Camryn Penn, Brennan Cole, players that have big roles. But I don’t think transitional years ever have to be a thing in our program,” Silva said.
A focal point for the women’s soccer staff during the off-season was recruitment and player development to compensate for the loss of star players who graduated from the program.
“There’s a really cool competitiveness happening within the roster that’s pushing everybody to be the best,” Silva said.
A key focus for Cal Poly this season is developing a larger group of players who can contribute in meaningful moments. Silva felt last year’s team only had a handful of players he could trust in high-pressure situations, limiting the number of players he could turn to during big games. To make a longer NCAA Tournament run, he believes the team requires a roster full of players that can fully be trusted.
Now, the women’s soccer program is using “We Here” as their statement that they are in a place where they can achieve these goals and compete for a title every year.
Silva originally coined the phrases “Cal Poly 2.0” and “We Coming” in the 2025 season to set the expectations for what the Mustangs were setting out to achieve. As a program, they developed the phrase into “We Here”
Senior captain and defender Siena Urzua describes the transition from season to season as a change from being underdogs to big dogs on the field.
“This year we call it Cal Poly 2.0 Chapter Two because there is no 3.0. It’s just like a new chapter,” Urzua said. “We have the same goals, and then we have some bigger goals, like making a run in the NCAA [Tournament].”
They implement this concept into training and games by taking initiative and approaching competition with professionalism. The mindset is taught by having players envision that each match is their last. Success is measured by their satisfaction of the results and image they are putting out of themselves.
To senior captain and midfielder Sophia Minnite, “We Here” means that the team is established.
“We’re not finding ourselves anymore, and we are here to stay,” Minnite said. “To me, ‘We Here’ means being able to maintain the position we’ve gotten ourselves in, and then being able to perform under that pressure with that target on our back. Learning to be the hunted versus the hunter.”
Players like Minnite and Urzua have been with Cal Poly for their entire collegiate careers and are seasoned Big West competitors.
They experienced the culture shift from Crozier to Silva.
“Once Bernardo got here, we added more layers to the foundation we already had. That’s why it’s 2.0; it’s an updated version,” Minnite said.
On the field, the team has worked to improve efficiency, sophistication in their attack, and the ability to adapt to playing different systems.
Off the field, the team is prioritizing building connections and a supportive community amongst student-athletes. The team often attends other athletic events to support their fellow athletes.
Silva believes that “We Here” has resonated so heavily with the players because of the relationships the players have developed with each other and with staff, both on and off the field.
The team heavily relies on seniors and veterans, like Urzua and Minnite, to pass on their experiences to the newer girls in the locker room and give them perspective on situations that they have yet to encounter.
The 2026 season roster has nine new transfers and six freshman signees, so they also had to find a way to instill the “We Here” practices in the girls who were not around to battle through the “We Coming.”
The prioritization of relationships between players on the team has made the transfer of knowledge from veterans to newbies much easier, according to Urzua. As a captain and upperclassman, she feels a responsibility and desire to help these girls find their footing as a Mustang.
“We’re showing them through everyday actions what the right thing to do is, giving them more perspective and teaching them lessons without them having to go through it,” Minnite said.
The players entering the program during the “We Here” era are the future of the program. Whether Cal Poly continues to level up as they plan to in the coming years depends on the players currently learning the culture of being a Mustang.
The Big West Championship gave Cal Poly a tangible measure of what the program can accomplish. Now, with a changing roster and conference, the work is to establish a long- lasting legacy that carries this standard of winning and culture forward for future Mustangs.
“Last year, we got Cal Poly on the map. This year, it’s to keep us there, keep people scared of us, and continually raise the awareness of our mid-major program,” Minnite said. “I think that will skyrocket our program.”