Virginia Women’s Soccer Fails to Hold Lead, Ties Georgetown

On a beautiful Labor Day weekend, after the football team had rewarded Wahoo Nation with a 48 – 7 win over Coastal Carolina, the women’s soccer team welcomed the #16 Georgetown Hoyas to Charlottesville, hoping to deliver a similar victory.

The women didn’t deliver. Despite having over 60% of the possession in the first half, the Cavaliers recorded just a single shot on goal for the opening frame. Luckily for Virginia, that single shot was a free kick from Lia Godfrey:

She's automatic!

Another free kick banger from Lia Godfrey has the Hoos up 1-0 on No. 16 Georgetown!#GoHoos | #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/BUpjUlMpUJ
— Virginia Women's Soccer (@UVAWomenSoccer) August 31, 2025

That’s gotta be 30 yards from goal, the equivalent of an Isaac McKneely logo-3. The Georgetown keeper, Cara Martin, was defending the back post, and Godfrey just went ahead and put it right over her. That is in-your-face soccer right there.

For those counting at home, it was Godfrey’s third free-kick goal of the season, and the sixth of ten goals that the Cavaliers have scored off set pieces. Goals off of set pieces – free kicks and corners – are usually the icing on the cake. They are either the result of a singular player’s particular skill, in this case Godfrey, or of solid training-ground coaching. Set-piece goals can also be especially back-breaking because they introduce an element of chance or capitalize on bad luck, as Godfrey’s shot did to Martin.

But when 60% of your goals are coming off of set pieces, it signals something else, something more sinister: this team really cannot score in the run of play. In the first half against Charlotte, Virginia had a 12 – 3 shot advantage, had hit the crossbar twice and the upright once, and were only up 1 – 0 at the half, thanks to a Kiki Maki goal off a corner.

Today, with 60% possession in the first half, Virginia failed to make a single link-up pass in the box that would yield a shot. Oh, wait, that’s not right. Midway through the half, just two minutes after Godfrey’s goal, Virginia had a lovely counter where Addison Halpern played a perfectly weighted through ball to Meredith McDermott sprung McDermott for a one-v-one with the keeper. It was the kind of shot that a top 20 team’s striker has to be able to finish, but Virginia doesn’t have anyone who can. Now, the call on the field was offside (which I think was pretty egregious), and it may very well have affected McDermott’s finish, but that ball should have been in the back of the net.

On the other side, this was Maja Lardner’s equalizer:

Lardner evens the score!#HoyaSaxa #HoyaBold pic.twitter.com/0XJ4o8olzX
— Georgetown Women’s Soccer (@HoyasWSoc) August 31, 2025

Virginia doesn’t have anyone who can finish like this. For the record, and while not obvious here, Virginia doesn’t have anyone with Lardner’s speed. So most of Virginia’s goals are going to come from long-range shots – as both Maggie Cagle’s and Sophia Bradley’s were vs Charlotte – or every couple of games from a cross.

There is no one on the team strong enough to receive that ball with her back to the goal. National high school player of the year and scorer of over 180 goals in her scholastic career, Addison Halpern, looks very much like your average, run-of-the-mill collegiate player. She took five shots today, three of which were blocked. McDermott didn’t register a single shot, but she did commit fully half of Virginia’s eight team fouls. For the season, Maya Carter, now playing center back, has as many shots on goal as McDermott.

Last year, Virginia scored 13 goals in their 10 ACC games, and it looks very much like it will have that kind of scoring output again this season, which will most likely keep it outside of the ACC tournament once again.

Head coach Steve Swanson is tinkering around the edges a bit. He has had multiple players take corners, from Ella Carter to Godfrey to Linda Mittermair to Jordyn Hardeman. It’s a variety of deliveries and Tatum Galvin on the back edge of the six-yard box is going to be dangerous.

I’ve also noted for years just how deliberate these Cavaliers are. The women have sped up this year, and so far, when not pressed, are advancing the ball more quickly. This is good. The team is also playing dead balls faster. In just five games, I have counted one quick corner, three quick free kicks and seven throw-ins. That was an entire season’s worth of fast restarts in past years.

Ella Carter has elevated her game, and she’s soon going to make me forget Alexis Theoret, my favorite Hoo of past years. She is turning on the ball well, and she’s more direct than Theoret.

And in other good news, it seems that Laughlin Ryan’s return is going to be “any week now,” according to the game announcer. I still haven’t seen her on the bench (along with Aniyah Collier), but I was starting to wonder if she was still on the team. Jill Flammia was wearing a white brace today (I don’t know if there is a gradation among knee braces), but Swanson said that she is likely to return by mid-season. Flammia doesn’t have a great goal-scoring record, probably because she is injury-prone, and just as she starts playing well, she gets injured. But she is a very direct player, and on a team struggling to score goals, this could be just the ticket.

Last year, Georgetown was one of just two non-Power 4 teams to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. They’ve packed a very ambitious schedule to ensure that if calamity befalls them and they lose the Big East tournament, as they did last year, they can still make the Big Dance. It was nevertheless telling that it was the Hoyas who in the last five minutes of the game, were having their keeper hold the ball, having Maja Jardner take the ball to the corner flag. Virginia was the better team, truth be told, but their scoring bugaboos prevented them from claiming a fifth straight win. I suspect this is going to be the story of the season for the Cavaliers.

Up Next: Virginia hosts #9 Penn State on Thursday, September 4th. Game time is 6:00pm and the game is on the ACC Network.

More Virginia Soccer News: