The yells emanated from the locker room, distorted through the brick and concrete but audible all the same. They sounded like the howls of madmen. Maybe they were.
They came, after all, from the victorious locker room, just moments after a mad game with a completely mad finish.
Virginia and No. 10 James Madison had seemed destined for a scoreless deadlock — action-packed but goalless. Then it happened, in the final minute. Quite literally. The Cavaliers (4-4-3, 1-2-2 ACC) scored with 58 seconds left to snatch a 1-0 win over the Dukes (5-1-4, 1-0-1 SBC).
“Inside of a minute, most teams would be just, ‘okay, all right, let’s just get out of here with a tie,’” Coach George Gelnovatch said.
Not junior forward Umberto Pelà and his Cavaliers.
The loudspeaker had not even finished notifying fans that one minute remained when sophomore defender Brendan Lambe floated a ball toward the back post. It drifted softly, its freckled face spinning in the night, dropping toward the six-yard box. Pelà’s first touch pushed it across the face of goal, toward two charging teammates.
Senior defender Enrique Garcia Barelles got there first for James Madison. Except his sliding clearance did not go exactly as planned. The ball went into the goal.
Thus began the first round of unhinged celebrations. Sophomore forward Cesar Cordova dropped to his knees and pounded the ground. Everyone else mobbed each other in the corner. Not Pelà.
“Honestly, I was even too tired to celebrate,” Pelà said.
Perhaps this was true immediately after the goal. But the yells that swirled out of the locker room a few minutes later, and the laughing Pelà that emerged, said otherwise.
There was much to celebrate. There was the win, for starters, a massive achievement in itself against an undefeated team ranked No. 10 nationally. There were the postseason implications, the sense that this win had helped rehabilitate Virginia’s chances of making the NCAA Tournament. Then there was the performance.
“That performance, as well as Friday’s performance, are more what we’re used to,” Gelnovatch said. “In terms of just that belief and quality and making sure that we get the three points.”
In the span of five days, the complexion of this season has completely shifted. Everything felt drab and dreary just a week ago, a winless streak stretching from four games to five and then to six.
But then Virginia beat No. 19 Virginia Tech and followed it up with Tuesday’s win, and now it’s all confidence and buoyancy — hope restored and then some. Friday’s trip to Boston College, which will kick off at 7 p.m., will be a chance to extend the newfound winning streak.
The sorely-needed wins came, ultimately, from a deeper place than soccer. They were in the Cavaliers’ attitude. As proof, look no further than junior defender Nick Dang.
“Easing out of every pore in [Dang’s] body was the will to win,” Gelnovatch said. “And that’s contagious. Umberto, too. That’s what you need in these games, man.”
Until the goal, it had been a high-speed game of chicken, played at increasing velocity. There was no sustained possession, no tactical warfare of trying to break an opponent down. The midfield became a battle in the trenches.
The ball whisked back and forth and back again, bodies flashing and crunching together. Dirt smudged white jerseys. A procession of yellow cards — nine in all — occurred. It was chippy, scrappy, a game of moments.
“Showed great grit,” Pelà said. “Which is something that can’t go away. So proud of this team for the grit and determination we had.”
The style felt like a departure from the sometimes methodical games Virginia has played this season. No team ever really established possession Tuesday, but they still created chances aplenty.
Then the scoring chances turned more dangerous in the late stages, especially for Virginia. Dang laid down big tackle after big tackle. Graduate midfielder Daniel Mangarov, a maelstrom of a player all night, flitted into and around the box, searching for something.
It almost arrived for Virginia with 22 minutes left. Sophomore forward Cesar Cordova thudded a shot into a James Madison player’s arm, drawing yells for a penalty. The whistle followed. But video review wiped away the penalty, deeming that the offending player’s arm had been tucked to his chest.
It seemed, after that, like it would end in a draw. On a night where an insidious chill infested the air, it felt like it just might freeze the proceedings enough to deny a goal.
But the goal came, and from a player, in Pelà, who had missed the previous two games with a minor injury. He smiled when asked how it felt to be back.
“So good,” he said. “So good.”
Pelà is back. So, it seems, is Virginia.
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