Bonnies Women's Soccer Enters New Era as 2026 Season Opens

Ray Leone’s coaching career has led him around the country – and he’s been a winner in just about every time zone.

During his coaching career, he's led Division I powerhouse programs at Harvard, Arizona State, Creighton, Clemson and Maryland. His 309 overall victories rank 34th among all active Division I head coaches, and he has a career winning percentage of better than 58 percent.

Now, he turns his attention to rebuilding the St. Bonaventure women’s soccer program in his first season at the helm of the Bonnies after arriving in Western New York this past February. 

“I want to help young players and coaches develop. I’ve been around the block, and I want to share that and give back to the game,” he said.

With the Bonnies, he will be working with a young group that had only about a dozen players on the roster for the spring training season.

“The returning group was so motivated to come together. They could’ve all gone in the portal. They stayed because they loved St. Bonaventure,” Leone said. “They have that love for their school and their team and I’m excited to work with people like that.”

Juniors Hannah Lindenberger and Hannah Smith as well as sophomore Addison Brown are the three returning players who played in all 18 matches a year ago. Lindenberger is the team’s leading returning scorer with four points. Senior Nayelle Heredia played in all but one contest last year, posting two assists, while sophomores Jolie Bull, Caitlyn Kellogg and Abigail Wysong also saw considerable minutes. 

In net, senior Juliana Castellano made nine starts with a 1.33 goals against average last fall.

Most of the roster, though, will be new as 17 players are set to make their Bonaventure debut in 2026, including three athletes who spent the spring semester on campus. The new roster includes athletes from eight different states and six different countries.

“We’re going to have some growing pains, but you’re going to play the way you train. So, we’re going to train at a high level,” Leone said. “We’re going to play hard first. We’ll play pretty soccer when we can, but we’re going to play hard.”

Leone says his current roster situation is a bit like what he experienced when his head coaching career began at Berry College in Georgia. At Berry, he became the first coach to take a first-year program to a national championship game in college soccer history. The next year, the team won the NAIA national title and Leone was crowned as the national Coach of the Year. The experience of constructing a roster and then assimilating a nearly entirely new group of players year-to-year was similar to Bona’s current challenge of working with a small collection of players during the spring and introducing many new faces this summer.

“We started from scratch and had that crazy year of going to the national championship game. The team turned over almost half the roster one year to the next,” Leone remembers. “We had 10 or 11 players and half the team was brand new. The schools were similar; people love their school and want to come back. It’s come full circle for me.”

The Bonnies have spent the spring and summer implementing a new style of play which figures to be entertaining for fans to watch and fun for players to play.

“When you watch us play, we’re going to move the ball. We’re going to go to goal, gain possession with a purpose and we’re going to defend with our life,” Leone said. 

“We’re not going to run people over. Normally when you’re the team that’s chasing, you’re only a counter-attack team. The other team has the ball and you’re waiting,” he continued. “We’re not going to play that way. We don’t have the speed demons where there’s one, two passes over the top, goal. We’re going to have to find another way. Everyone will be involved – it’s more fun to play that way.”

If there’s one thing that could help the Bonnies in their early season prep, it’s a friendly schedule. St. Bonaventure is slated to play five of its first six contests at home, opening at the Marra Athletics Complex Sunday, Aug. 16 against Saint Peter’s. 

After a quick road trip to Cornell Aug. 20, the Bonnies will play four straight on home turf vs. Canisius (Aug. 23), Le Moyne (Aug. 27), Niagara (Aug. 31) and Cleveland State (Sept. 6). In all, the team will only travel twice during non-conference play, wrapping up that portion of the schedule at LIU on Sept. 13.

“It gives us more practice time; we don’t have to travel,” Leone said. “We skip that for a lot of the non-conference section and that will be helpful.”

The Bonnies will even get their first taste of Atlantic 10 play at home as they welcome Dayton Sept. 19 in the conference lid-lifter. The team hopes to make the trip to WNY a tough one for all visitors.

“We have to be a tough out for everybody,” Leone said. “I’ve heard that opposing teams don’t like coming here – and we have to give them a reason that people don’t like coming here to play. We have to develop that kind of pride.”

The Bonnies will spend several days in Richmond for games against VCU (Sept. 24) and Richmond (Sept. 27) in the longest road trip of the season, also traveling to play conference games at Rhode Island (Oct. 11), Saint Joseph’s (Oct. 22) and George Washington (Nov. 1). The ever-challenging A-10 slate will also include home matchups vs. Fordham (Oct. 4), Loyola Chicago (Oct. 8), George Mason (Oct. 17) and Davidson (Oct. 25).

All home matches during the season will stream live on ESPN+.

“The conference is excellent. It’s an exciting conference because it covers so much ground,” Leone said. “I’ve coached in a lot of different leagues, but to play all the way down in Charlotte and out to Chicago, it’s cool for a team like ours that’s in a small town to get to visit these big cities. The top teams in the league are as good as it gets in the country. It’s a good soccer league. Our league should be good enough over time that two or three teams are getting in to the NCAA Tournament.”

And for the Bonnies, this fall is the first season in a new era that will have Leone’s program setting the foundation for a successful future in the Enchanted Mountains as well.