Cardinal Couple: New Era for Women's Soccer -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

New Era for Women's Soccer -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Karen Ferguson-Dayes Retires

The University of Louisville has a new longest-tenured coach on campus, and his name is Jeff Walz. Coach Karen Ferguson-Dayes announced her retirement last week after 26 years in charge of Louisville women's soccer. KFD earned 224 wins in her career and was coming off of the Cards' best season in quite a while. In her last season, Louisville went 13-5-3 overall, advanced to the ACC tournament, and defeated UK at home in the NCAA tournament before falling to Kansas in the second round.

Ferguson-Dayes took the women's soccer program to new heights after joining in 2000. Prior to her joining, Louisville had just one winning season in the previous 15 years. In her tenure, Louisville had 15 winning seasons and made the NCAA tournament seven times. It will be quite strange not seeing KFD on the sidelines this fall, but she will remain an advisor with the staff through June. That arrangement is almost certainly due to Kentucky fiscal year contract details, but it will be valuable to the continuity of the program.

Speaking of continuity, women's soccer took their lead from another fall sport that recently underwent a coaching change: they promoted the obvious internal candidate. Along with the Ferguson-Dayes retirement, Louisville simultaneously announced the promotion of Hunter Norton to head coach. Norton has been on the women's soccer staff since 2014, and has been the associate head coach for the past four seasons. Norton came onto the staff directly after finishing his playing career at Georgia Southern, where he was a three-year captain and started all 72 games of his career.

Hunter Norton has signed a four-year contract, and I would assume he'll look to keep most of the staff together where possible. With another staff position opening up, I wouldn't be surprised to see a player that competed for KFD joining the sideline, but that will come in due time. Keeping Norton, who has been part of the program for 12 years already, is a fantastic choice for Louisville, as he should be able to maintain the recruiting that has been developed and build on momentum of the last couple of seasons. We'll see in just about six months.

Until next time, Go Cards!

Case

1 comment:

Anonymous2/24/2026 10:42 AM
Norton was the logical choice for the job. No offense to KFD, but wth that state of the art facility and close campus location, Louisville should be a top ten team every year. Recruiting has been *meh*
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Jan 15 at Notre Dame W 79-66
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