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:
28. Anna Purchase
Sport: Track & field
Arrival year at Cal: 2020-21
Previous school: Nebraska (Had a best of 203 feet,4 inches in the hammer throw at the 2019 England Athletics U20/U23 championships during her time at Nebraska)
Contributions at Cal:
— Purchase came to Cal in the fall of 2021 and became one of the best female hammer throwers in collegiate history, even while competing in the shadow of superstar teammate Camryn Rogers.
— A native of Nottingham, England, Purchase made a 15-foot improvement to 218-3 in her first season at Cal in 2021 (after the 2020 outdoor season was canceled due to the pandemic), climbing to No. 2 on the school’s all-time list. She finished fourth at the Pac-12 meet.
— As a junior in 2022, Purchase blossomed into a first-team All-America competitor. She cracked the 70-meter mark for the first time, throwing 231-8 at Cal’s Brutus Hamilton Invitational on April 8, a throw that ranked her fifth among collegiate athletes that season. She went on to finish second at the Pac-12 meet, then was seventh at the NCAA nationals.
— Purchase repeated as a first-team All-America honoree in 2023, winning the Big Meet, setting a personal best to win the Brutus Hamilton and finishing second at the Pac-12 meet. She closed out her college career with a third-place throw of 234-6 at the 2023 NCAA nationals.
Standout performance: Purchase was never more comfortable than at Cal’s Edwards Stadium, where two years in a row she delivered her lifetime best mark at the Brutus Hamilton Invitational. As a senior in 2023, she threw the hammer 239-7, a mark that remains her lifetime best and resides at No. 7 on the all-time collegiate list. It’s also the second-best throw in British history.
Impact on her team: Although Olympians Rogers and Mykolas Alekna have received the most attention, Purchase is among a group of throwers that have excelled under former Cal throws coach Mo Saatara. Purchase, who continues to train with Rogers under Saatara at Texas, won British national titles in the hammer in 2024 and ’25.
Previously on our list:
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