Thirty-six days and six games have passed since Virginia men’s soccer’s last win. There have been injuries and suspensions. There have been match-losing goals in the waning minutes. But most of all, there has been a barren streak now teetering on the edge of the wrong kind of history.
With time dwindling in a deadlocked 1-1 game Tuesday, it looked like Virginia had nabbed a monumental goal. A shot rippled the net. Everybody jumped to their feet, gasping. But the ball had only pummeled the outside netting, delivering a fleeting taste of a winning goal that never came. The Cavaliers had their chance, and they would not get another one.
That taste of a potential winning goal soon soured. Virginia conceded with four minutes left and lost, transforming a game packed with positives — sustained possession, threatening maneuvers, successful tactical experiments — into a dreary outcome. Still, some Cavaliers have hope.
“It’s okay to be upset,” junior defender Nick Dang said Tuesday. “For today, take the loss, figure out what you did wrong, and then tomorrow and Thursday we just get back on the horse, work our butts off.”
Luckily, there is still time — as the regular season shudders toward its final third — to reverse the negative momentum. But the window is shrinking. There is only one option. Survive.
“[We have to] keep going,” Coach George Gelnovatch said, after Tuesday’s 2-1 loss to UNC Greensboro. “And keep the group together, and stay positive, and have belief, and get ready for the next one. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
That is all in preparation for Friday’s game, at Klöckner Stadium at 7 p.m. against No. 19 Virginia Tech, in a Commonwealth Clash that has taken on extra meaning. Not that it needed it. But the Hokies will certainly relish this opportunity — it is a chance to submerge their most bitter rival to an almost unprecedented low.
One would have to look back all the way to 1967 for the last time Virginia went seven games without a win. Virginia’s schedule that year included Eastern Mennonite, Washington & Lee, Lynchburg, Randolph-Macon and Roanoke. Virginia no longer competes against those schools, by virtue of them all belonging to Division III. But the Cavaliers managed to lose to all five of those teams in 1967 — when college soccer was unrecognizably different than what the current landscape looks like today.
“That’s about the time I was born,” Gelnovatch said Tuesday. “So it’s a long time.”
The college soccer landscape has changed mightily since then. The sport, in the last few years, has witnessed a steep rise in parity. There are no easy games — blowouts feel like anachronisms, quaint things out of the past.
Virginia, one of the sport’s most decorated college programs, has managed to remain perched among the elite. Maybe this is just a down season, or even a down period. After all, Virginia is the only school, as Gelnovatch pointed out Tuesday, to qualify for more than 25 straight NCAA Tournaments — doing so from 1981 to 2019.
“The track record of this program and this team over the years speaks for itself,” Gelnovatch said.
A key reason that such a stellar track record is not continuing into this year is one that Gelnovatch has no agency over though — injuries. Losing key players to injury has absolutely shafted the team this season. Junior forward Reese Miller, the squad’s most dynamic and reliable attacker, suffered a season-ending ACL injury after only six games. Junior midfielder Umberto Pelà, a team captain, has missed the last two outings.
Then there are the injuries that have flown under the casual fan’s radar, like the ones to sophomore forward AJ Smith and junior defender Grant Howard. Both missed the first five or so weeks of the season with unspecified injuries.
All this misfortune seems to have arrived simultaneously. But injuries are part of soccer. Being adaptable is a requirement to win in the current landscape of college soccer.
“Nobody feels sorry for me,” Gelnovatch said. “All my colleagues in the ACC and competitors around the country, because of all the winning we’ve done over the years. So I don’t cry about it too much. But we’ve taken a massive hit.”
The injuries and the losing have invited a raft of tactical changes. Players have shuffled to different positions. Some, like sophomore defender Victor Akoum, have recently gotten significant playing time for the first time this season, as Gelnovatch and the coaching staff have hurled the proverbial kitchen sink at it, searching for answers.
Maybe those answers will finally come Friday, in a must-win game. The best time to end the winless streak would have been during any of those losses — but the second best time to find a victory is Friday. This will be just the third time ever, in 55 previous matchups, in which an unranked Virginia will confront a ranked Virginia Tech.
Dang, informed about the historic winless stretch, only smiled. What did the streak mean to him?
His response was simple. The streak stood at six. It must never reach seven.
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