UF coach Nick Zimmerman addresses his players during Thursday's practice that opened the 2026 preseason. [Photo by Mia Nun]
SEC Merger: Zimmerman Era Officially Kicks Off
Thursday, July 16, 2026 | Soccer, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Nick Zimmerman stood before his first Florida team earlier this offseason. The audience was mostly a comparable mix of UF players who stuck out the coaching change of last winter and those who followed Zimmerman from Mississippi State, a place he helped transform from soccer wasteland to Southeastern Conference champion.
Nick Zimmerman
"Where are you from?" Zimmerman asked the group, as he went around the room. Their answers ran the gamut.
Orlando. Tampa. Camarillo, California. Rochester, New York. Hilltown, Pennsylvania. Warren, Michigan. Missouri City, Texas. Georgetown, Kentucky, to name a few.
Zimmerman nodded to each until they were done.
Not one player said Florida (as in the Gators). Not one said Mississippi State. And each made the coach's point for him.
"Were we all of a sudden sing "Kumbaya" and be one big, happy family? That wasn't going to happen," Zimmerman said in recounting the moment Thursday morning following the official start to 2026 preseason practice. "Yes, I had relationships with those Mississippi State players. I recruited all of them. But we want to invest and develop the same transformational relationships here at Florida and grow them all; the new ones and the previous ones."
With that, a collective sigh of relief settled over his team. The Bulldogs – 10 of them, including seven transfers and three MSU incoming freshman signees – who trailed Zimmerman from the campus in Starkville to the Dizney complex on Hull Road may have had a leg up on those relationships, but no one was going to play favorites.
"From that point on, it's really tough to put into words how well we meshed together," said junior defender Skye Barnes, one of the UF holdovers. "There was a respect factor that kind of happened naturally."
In great part because the dueling-faction elephant in the room was addressed immediately. The Gators, regardless of how they got here, were in this soccer thing together.
Now, about that soccer thing.
Skye Barnes
The decline of the Florida program over the last decade, given its resounding run of championships through its first two decades, borders on the unfathomable. The Gators, who played in 22 NCAA tournaments and won 14 Southeastern Conference titles, plus a national championship from 1996 to 2019, went a combined 28-54-25 over the past six seasons under three different coaches. The fall-off began in the final seasons under Becky Burleigh, continued in one tumultuous and controversial year under Tony Amato, then the team managed just five SEC victories in Samantha Bohon's four seasons.
The consistent losing took its toll.
"It's frustrating knowing when you work so hard, during the four weeks of Summer 'B,' with the heat and the running," Barnes said. "Then, you get into the season and it's like all the work has gone to waste."
Enter Zimmerman, who at Mississippi State came in on the ground floor of a bottom-feeding program that had zero history of success.
When Zimmerman arrived at MSU, alongside head coach James Armstrong in 2019, the Bulldogs had played in just one NCAA tournament and only twice had put together back-to-back winning seasons since the program debuted in 1995. When he left in December, the program was on a streak of four consecutive NCAA berths, including a 2024 season when the Bulldogs won the SEC with a 10-0 record, earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and reached the Sweet 16.
Armstrong bolted for Auburn after that '24 campaign, with Zimmerman promoted from his associate head coach post and guiding the Bulldogs to a 12-7-1 record in '25 that was highlighted by an upset of No. 1-ranked Tennessee. Zoe Main
Now he's starting over again with sights set on a similar turnaround. His players' sights, too.
"What happened here before has nothing to do with us," said forward Zoe Main, who in each of the last two seasons with the Bulldogs, scored six goals and earned All-SEC honors."Not with this team."
That mindset figures to pair nicely with a Zimmerman's aggressive tactics. It was welcomed in the spring and carried over to the team's first preseason practice.
"It's a mentality," he said. "There was certainly carnage early on."
Literally.
The practice pace Thursday was frantic, but organized and intentional. During one counter-press drill, midfielder Norah Abbot executed a slide-tackle that blocked a shot and caused the ball to rocket into the air, over the fence and smashed the windshield of a parked SUV.
The four weeks of spring workouts set expectations and standards. Now, it's about executing those markers on a daily basis all the way up to the season opener Aug. 13 at UCF.
The new staff talks a lot about identity and trust. Regarding the former, the Gators will play a brand of soccer that is high risk, but high reward. They want to possess the ball to the point of the opponent's exhaustion; both physically and mentally. If they can do so, this team -- unlike recent ones -- might be able to score.
Some numbers:
UF's 11 returnees accounted for 13 of the team's 26 goals last season, led by four from third-year sophomore Addy Hess.
The seven MSU transfers combined to score 17 of their team's 35 goals last season.
The new Gators want to put constant pressure on a defense. Hannah Jabril
"Our willingness to go and control our effort and attitude – our courage – are the things that are going to make us elite," said Hannah Jibril, a senior and third-team All-SEC defender at Mississippi State last season. "Coach holds us accountable. It's not like, today he's choosing to be hard and uphold the standards and tomorrow he lets things slide. No. The standards are set, they're protected and he continuously drives us to stretch them."
As for the trust piece, well, those baselines were set down from the outset of the Zimmerman era; from the moment the Gator and Bulldog worlds collided back in January.
The circumstances were somewhat upside down. Instead of that core of returning UF players providing insight, they were the ones asking the incomers what they were in for. Now, they know.
They all do.
"It's a new group, new staff and new style with how we want to play, so establishing trust within the team is something for us that's part of our mission statement," Zimmerman said. "We pride ourselves in being consistent with our messaging and doing it daily. Not just words on a wall that you talk about in preseason and never revisit. It's who we are, it's in our DNA and very important to us."
