A Season of Promise? Evaluating the State of the Virginia Women’s Soccer Program

Last year’s season ended with a thud. This year has got to be better.

The hopes of a successful 2024 Virginia women's soccer season rely on Lia Godfrey returning to form after missing the entire 2023 campaign with an injury. / Virginia Athletics

In the United Soccer Coaches preseason poll, there are seven ACC teams in the Top 25.  Virginia ain’t one of them.  This speaks to the continued depth of the best women’s conference in collegiate soccer, which has only been enhanced by the acquisition of Stanford, long the queen of the west.  But it also reflects how deeply disappointing the Virginia Cavaliers were last year.

Last season was Steve Swanson’s 24th at the helm, and in every one of his previous seasons, the women had advanced to the NCAA tournament.  In an astonishing double, the women not only failed to be invited to the Big Dance, but they also failed to make even the ACC tourney, finishing 7th in the table.

The 2023 season was defined by the season-ending losses of Lia Godfrey and Emma Dawson (spring training injuries,) Laney Rouse (lost in the 57th minute of the opening game,) and Brianna Jablonowski (felled in the fifth game.)  That was the team’s reigning All-American, the team’s captain and first midfielder off the bench, the most athletic defender and the first forward off the bench.  Virginia never recovered.  The women slogged through an uninspiring out-of-conference slate, drawing nil – nil to both mid-table Michigan and Iowa (at home no less.)  In ACC play, the Cavaliers didn’t win until their sixth game.  After having a mini resurgence, in their final game and with a small chance of slipping into the ACC tournament on the line, the women allowed Boston College (winless in ACC play) to score first and the Hoos were only able to salvage a draw.

Season over. 

I’m sure the women are ready to turn the page on last year’s dumpster fire as Swanson faces his biggest rebuild since coming to Charlottesville.

The good news is that there is a lot of talent on the team.  Lia Godfrey is a force at left midfield and she’s probably the player that opposing coaches most have to gameplan against.  Forward Maggie Cagle is a stud and may be the best forward in the ACC this side of FSU’s Jordynn Dudley.  Center midfielder Alexis Theoret, now that Talia Staude has moved on, is the most underrated player in the conference and is the key to the team’s performance.  New keeper Victoria Safradin was the top prep keeper in the country coming out of high school and she’s already been selected to the Croatian national team.

The center of defense has been hollowed out – Staude, Lacey McCormack and keeper Cayla White all have graduated – but Theoret, Emma Dawson, Samar Guidry and Laney Rouse all opted to return for their COVID bonus year.  The team brought in the 16th-ranked recruiting class per Top Drawer Soccer and Swanson has a masterful record of integrating talented newcomers into his veteran lineups.

Based on just one game – the second exhibition game against Georgetown – the two most prominent newcomers would appear to be Linda Mittermair, a grad student from Austria who has played in Austria’s top league since she was 15.  She looked very comfortable in an attacking midfield role.  The most encouraging play from the game came from freshman Sophia Bradley who appears to be an actual winger.  My only long term critique of Swanson’s roster building is that for all of his love for the 4 – 3 – 3 is that he never seems to have any wingers.  Alexa Spaanstra was a capable winger, and sure, Maggie Cagle is a stud and will succeed anywhere, but I always felt that she and Rebecca Jarrett before her would have been more successful in the center of the pitch.  Bradley is a winger with pace and looks to be much more polished about bursting behind the back line.  If Bradley can play fulfill the promise she showed against Georgetown, this could be the highest-scoring Virginia front line since before Jarrett was injured a second time.

And that is welcome news because this was always going to be a challenging year.  The ACC is stacked.  Florida State is the reigning national champion and just waltzed through an undefeated season.  Randy Waldrum’s build of Pittsburgh is continuing to bear fruit.  Notre Dame has gotten successively better each of the past five seasons.  Duke’s Robbie Church has announced his retirement effective the end of this season and the Blue Devils may get an emotional bump all season long.  And then there is Stanford, whose arrival gives the ACC the two best teams of the past decade.  The most maddening thing about last year’s debacle was that Virginia had only the seventh best record even as they avoided FSU, Notre Dame and Pitt.  No such luck this year as the Cavaliers play Notre Dame, Duke, Florida State, UNC and Clemson.  The out-of-conference slate is pretty unimpressive with only Penn State offering worthy preparation for such the ACC gauntlet.

But most worrying, from a fan’s perspective, is the injury situation.  In that Saturday game against Georgetown,  Lia Godfrey, upon whose return rests much of UVa’s hopes this season, was seemingly on a very tight minutes restriction, playing maybe just 12 minutes per half.  Emma Dawson, who I presume is captain again this season, didn’t dress out.  Jill Flammia didn’t dress out either.  She has missed multiple games over the past two seasons and she seems susceptible to minor knocks.  A midfield of Flammia, Theoret and Godfrey is capable of beating any team in the ACC.  Losing Flammia would be huge.  The brightest player versus Georgetown was Yuna McCormack – she scored the team’s first goal – but she has been selected to play in the women’s U20 World Cup, which means she will miss most of September. 

The defense was… umm… uninspiring.  Since the end of last season, I had thought that Swanson was going to play Guidry and Rouse in the center of defense.  They are the two most experienced Virginia defenders and each had played some in center last year.  In what may just be gamesmanship – because Swanson is loathe to give anything away – Rouse and Guidry started out wide in the customary slots while Kiki Maki and Tatum Galvin started in central defense.  Kansas grad transfer Moira Kelley got the start in midfield but too often she reverted the defender she’s listed as, and she dropped back in between Galvin and Maki, effectively giving the Cavaliers a five-back defense.  There were way too many holes in midfield, cavities that a better squad will easily overrun.

In conclusion, this is a make-or-break year for Swanson.  When I first started covering the women, Virginia was one of the Big Three in the ACC, along with UNC and FSU.  Since then, Florida State has lapped everyone having won four of the last 11 NCAA championships and 9 (!) of the past 11 ACC tournaments.  Virginia is on a very short list of “best programs never to have won a national title” and heavy is the head that wears that crown.  Swanson is in his early 60s and he’s been coaching for 34 years.  Anson Dorrance just retired at UNC and Robbie Church has announced he’s leaving at the end of the year.  Mark Krikorian left Florida State two years ago.  Swanson may look at all the new faces and think his time on the sidelines is coming to an end.

Last year the Cavaliers dug themselves an early grave, and then they just kept digging.  Virginia begins the 2024 season on Thursday, August 15th at home against Towson (6pm on ACCNX) and the conference season kicks off in earnest on Thursday, September 12th as Virginia travels to Miami to begin ACC play.  It’s put-up or shut-up time for the Virginia women.  And I’ll be reporting all the way, so join us for the ride.  I can promise you it won’t be dull.