As the calendar prepares to turn, it is time to reflect on another year of Virginia sports. A few pieces of hardware and several momentous victories highlighted an eventful 2024 for the University’s athletic programs, which achieved national success and even represented the University on the world stage at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
With honorable mention to the baseball team’s College World Series appearance and an ACC title in men’s track and field, here are The Cavalier Daily’s top five Virginia sports highlights of 2024.
5. Virginia twice shocks Pittsburgh with pair of weekend upsets
Photo by Albert Tang | The Cavalier Daily
The second weekend of November brought the Cavalier football and men’s soccer teams to Pittsburgh as underdogs. Football was reeling from three straight losses heading into a Friday night battle with the No. 23 Panthers, while men’s soccer encountered the ACC’s top-seeded team the following night in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.
Neither team was expected to win, but both did. First, the men’s soccer program looked on from the Acrisure Stadium bleachers as Virginia football stunned Pittsburgh in a 24-19 victory, helped by late heroics from senior safety Jonas Sanker.
Less than 24 hours later and five miles away, Coach George Gelnovatch’s team took the pitch at Ambrose Urbanic Field and summoned the same magic as their football counterparts. The Cavaliers scored twice in 25 seconds to seal a 2-0 win and conclude a remarkable weekend in Western Pennsylvania.
4. Volleyball earns highest-ranked win in program history, returns to success
Photo by Benvin Lozada | The Cavalier Daily
Memorial Gymnasium had not housed a 20-win volleyball team since 2006, but Virginia changed that in 2024. The Cavaliers won 21 games and earned their first postseason appearance of the century. The highlight of the year came earlier, though, in an Oct. 4 match against No. 16 Florida State.
That Friday evening, Virginia was resilient as it overcame deficits in all three sets to sweep the Seminoles out of Charlottesville. Senior Milan Gomillion’s career-high 19 kills provided the exclamation point on the Cavaliers’ first win over a ranked opponent since 2010 and only their third in program history.
“We asked our team to play fearless tonight and just go after it, and … that’s what we did,” Coach Shannon Wells said postgame.
3. Gary Martin races to ACC men’s cross country title
Photo credits: Virginia Athletics
Gary Martin ran, ran and ran some more Nov. 1 at the ACC Cross Country Championships. The junior competed in the men’s 8k title race in Cary, N.C., and though he sat in seventh place early on, he emerged with the front pack late in the race.
Then came the move. With 1.5k to go, Martin blew by North Carolina senior Parker Wolfe and took his first lead of the race.
“I have a step or two and I’m not gonna let it go,” Martin later said about the move.
He didn’t. The Warminster, Pa., native glided through the rest of the event, running the final straight all by himself to claim the ACC title in 22:17.6, the fastest time in meet history. Martin became the first Virginia men’s runner to win an ACC title since Emil Keineking in 2010.
2. Men’s lacrosse advances to Championship Weekend in legendary NCAA Tournament game
Photo credits: Virginia Athletics
The best game on the 2024 college lacrosse calendar was played May 19 in Towson, Md. Virginia and Johns Hopkins, each top-six seeds in the NCAA Tournament, required two overtime periods to determine who advanced to Championship Weekend.
The winner, despite going down 4-0 in the first quarter and never leading in regulation, was Virginia. The Cavaliers scored three unanswered goals in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime, and another extra period later, the golden goal arrived.
Connor Shellenberger started on the left sideline and ended up behind the Johns Hopkins net, nearly completing a full circle of Virginia’s attacking half while cradling the ball the entire time. Then he cut back on a dime, worked an angle to shoot and fired the ball into the goal.
A Cavalier dogpile ensued in the aftermath, and it left Shellenberger, a Charlottesville native, laying on the ground with his hands on his helmet. Virginia’s season, and Shellenberger’s college career, continued after all. The Cavaliers fell to Maryland 12-6 in the semifinals, but their journey there was one to remember.
1. Virginia prolongs dominant women’s swimming run, wins on national and world stages
Photo credits: Virginia Athletics
The other games and performances on this list are cool, but there is no debating Virginia’s No. 1 highlight of 2024. This year was, to undersell it, owned by Cavalier swimmers.
It began in February when Virginia women’s swim and dive won its fifth straight ACC title, continued in March when it claimed a fourth consecutive national championship and climaxed during the 2024 Paris Olympics, where four Cavaliers combined for 11 swimming medals. Virginia won gold in three separate events in the pool — a total which put them above all but four countries.
The Cavaliers don’t appear to be slowing down, either. The World Aquatics Short Course Championships took place from Dec. 10-15 in Budapest, Hungary, where past and present Virginia swimmers accumulated 16 gold medals and 14 world records.
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