photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas junior Livvy Moore goes to cross in a pass during the Jayhawks' NCAA tournament game against California Baptist on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence.

The Kansas soccer team’s lineup was so consistent in the early stages of the season that head coach Nate Lie started the same 11 players for the entirety of the Jayhawks’ unbeaten nonconference slate, and even for a few games afterward.

But after a stretch of three losses in four matches early in Big 12 play cast its aspirations in the conference into doubt, KU changed it up, and beginning with a match at Iowa State on Oct. 10, Lie opted for a new lineup.

Emily Tobin slid in from wing back to replace Fiona Skwierawski at center back, Livvy Moore dropped back from her role as an offensively minded midfielder to replace Tobin at a position that was very new to her and Emika Kawagishi entered in the midfield.

Since then, KU is 7-2-1 in a challenging five-week span that included a trip to the Big 12 tournament final and last Friday’s 3-1 NCAA Tournament victory over Cal Baptist. The third-seeded Jayhawks will put their recent success to the test as they enter what is uncharted territory for the players, if not necessarily for Lie’s coaching staff: the second round. KU will match up with No. 6 Louisville on Thursday at 3 p.m. in Durham, North Carolina.

“I know the team is super excited and we just feel an immense amount of gratitude to be in this position,” said Moore, a junior from Deer Park, Washington.

The three principal players called upon to help engineer KU’s lineup shift had all arrived with the Jayhawks as transfers: Kawagishi and Tobin prior to Lie’s first season, from N.C. State and IU Indianapolis, respectively, and Moore from Oregon this past spring after she saw the Jayhawks’ rapid success and their gritty personality under Lie.

Lie explained several matches after inserting Kawagishi that his intention upon recruiting her was never for her to come off the bench, as she did in 2024 (albeit while playing in every game) as a redshirt junior. She may not be the biggest or fastest, but her patience with the ball at her feet and her understanding of tempo made her a valuable addition to the lineup this year, Lie said in October.

“I think we’ve tended to have a little bit more control of the game with her in there in possession, and that’s her calling card,” he said.

Then, moving Moore and Tobin around required a bit of an adjustment from each. For Moore, it was a fairly drastic one, although it made sense to Lie given her skill set: “I think it feeds into a lot of her biggest strengths,” he said. “She’s really dynamic out there. Her service can be really dangerous with both feet.”

On the other hand, she hadn’t been playing as a defender at all.

“You might have to defend your own box a little bit more, you might have to get run at (one-on-one) more,” Lie said. “So not an easy transition, and right from the start I thought she’s done well with it and continues to grow in each game.”

It helps, she said on Monday, to have the player who until recently was playing that same role right near her on the field as a resource.

“I know Tobin was in the position I’m in currently,” Moore said, “so just having her one step behind me, she’s a great communicator and so it’s really been super helpful for her just to be able to talk to me on the field and better understand the position.”

As that understanding grows, the result is increased potency for KU coming up the wing. The Jayhawks already have a brilliant first-team all-conference wing back on the left side in Caroline Castans contributing to the attack by crossing the ball in from all sorts of unusual angles. The attack-minded Moore can attempt to fill a similar role on the right, even if she’s now nominally also a defender.

“Caroline’s an awesome player, so I think when I was told that that was maybe a role I was going to step into on the team, I definitely paid more attention to the way she was playing it and how I could kind of replicate that on the right side because she creates so much success for us on the left,” Moore said. “I think I was excited about the open space that’s created out there. I like to have the ball at my feet, I like to run at people, so I think that was a good opportunity to do that.”

As for Tobin, Lie has frequently said this season that center back isn’t by any means an easy position to play under his coaching staff.

“That position in our system, and with our coaching, is pretty demanding, and has probably thrown a lot of people through some growing pains,” Lie said. “I think Emily’s growing pains probably took place more last year or the beginning of this year.”

Entering the season he had called it the Jayhawks’ “biggest question mark,” but indeed, sliding the junior Tobin inside provided quite a solid answer for KU. From the first game she played center back against Iowa State, it was a “borderline seamless transition.”

“We were sitting there on the bench and being like, ‘Man, she looks like she’s been doing this forever,’ and I thought she was very, very, very solid throughout the Big 12 tournament,” Lie said.

Indeed, he had particularly intensely praised her for a “monster” showing, especially in the air, against Colorado in the Jayhawks’ 2-1 comeback victory in the Big 12 semifinal.

“It’s definitely been a little bit of a change to get used to because both of us (she and Moore) moved around a little bit, but I think it’s worked out really well in our favor,” Tobin said. “We’ve been doing really good. And the whole team is just really accepting of the fact and just working with each other to do what’s best for the team and everything.”

The Jayhawks have settled on a new starting group: Sophie Dawe in goal, Olivia Page, Jordan Fjelstad and Tobin along the back line, Castans and Moore on the wing, Kawagishi and Kate Langfelder with attacking threat Jillian Gregorski in the midfield and Lexi Watts and Saige Wimes upfront.

photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas junior Emily Tobin attempts to get past California Baptist’s Katrina Marsh during the Jayhawks’ NCAA tournament game on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence.