Counting Down Cal's Top-50 Transfer Athletes: No. 25 Julia Leontini

We rank the mid-career arrivals in Berkeley who have had the greatest impact on the Golden Bears

Julia Leontini (22) is greeted by teammates after a goal | Andrew Madsen, KLC fotos

The transfer portal era in college athletics seems like it’s been with us forever. Likewise, most fans can recall less turbulent times when transfers happened, they simply didn’t look like a stampede to the 1849 California Gold Rush.

We thought it was time to rank the best transfers Cal teams have attracted, most of them in recent seasons but also including a few OGs from yesteryear. 

We limited our ranking to transfers from four-year colleges.

Here is the next athlete in our countdown: 

25. Julia Leontini

Sport: Soccer

Arrival year at Cal: 2024-25

Previous school: Stanford (Played in 78 games over four seasons, including an appearance in the 2023 NCAA championship match)

Contributions at Cal: 

— Leontini came to Cal as a graduate transfer in the fall of 2024 and started all 21 matches that season, playing every minute in 11 of them. She was among just three players to start every game and she was second on the team in minutes played.

— A 5-foot-7 midfielder with roots in the San Francisco East Bay, Leontini scored three goals and added a team-best seven assists for 13 points, second-most on a team that assembled a record of 13-6-2 and earned an NCAA tournament berth.

— Leontini had a goal and an assist in the Bears’ 3-2 win over Miami on Sept. 29. 

— She assisted a goal by Alexis Wright that gave Cal a 2-0 lead midway though the second half of a critical 3-2 win over 14th-ranked Stanford, her former school, in the regular-season finale.

Standout performance: Leontini assisted on both goals in Cal’s 2-1 double-overtime road victory over No. 22 Pepperdine in the NCAA tournament opener. She set up the game-winning play with a corner kick directed at Courtney Boone, who missed an attempted header. The ball bounced off Alex Klos to Boone, who knocked it into the net.

Impact on her team: Leontini made substantial contributions to a Cal team that won its first NCAA tournament game since 2014 and won a road game in the event for the first time since 2012. The Bears’ 13 wins matched their highest total in 10 years.

Previously on our list: 

No. 26. Recee' Caldwell

No. 27. Jacob French

No. 28. Anna Purchase

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