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Cavaliers Now

Virginia Women’s Soccer Falls to Wake Forest

In the ACC opener, the Demon Deacons stuffed the Cavaliers 1 – 0 for a well-deserved victory.
Val Prochaska|
Sophia Bradley was a standout performer vs Wake Forest.
Sophia Bradley was a standout performer vs Wake Forest. | Virginia Athletics

Eleven years ago, when the ACC Network allowed me to watch Virginia, the Hoos were in the midst of an 8 – 0 – 1 streak versus Wake.  Oh, how the tides have turned as Wake has knocked off Virginia three straight games, shutting out UVa in all three matches.  Wake is clearly the better team and the ascendant program. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Virginia was without three starters:  the injured Jill Flammia, and Pearl Cecil and Gio Canali, away with their U20 teams at the women’s world cup.  Injuries are a fact of life in sport – the Yankees are trying to win the AL East and Aaron Judge has played in just 63 games – and there’s a U-something world cup every year now.

As always, you play the game with the players you have, and Wake, as did Tennessee and Georgetown before them, dominated the opening frame.  Wake didn’t press high, but rather focused their energy on jumping the passing lanes as the Cavaliers entered the middle third of the pitch.  Tennessee jumped Jordyn Hardeman in the middle third and it’s what led to their goal, so it was always reasonable to expect that other teams would do the same.

Virginia plays into this as the game plan seems to be that the outside central defenders, in this case Faith Broering, Mackenzie Mize and Kathryn Kelly keep trying to slot the ball, long and often over the top, of the defense, for the wingbacks, completely by-passing the Hoos midfield.  It’s not an effective tactic and Virginia has been beating their head over this for the past two-three years.  Against quality teams, the Hoos struggle to control midfield.  Georgetown had the greater possession in the first half and I’m certain that the stats would show the same versus Wake.

The solution to me seems glaringly obvious: get Ella Carter the ball!  Bill Walsh, first at Stanford and then with the 49ers, pioneered the practice of scripting his team’s first 15 plays.  Didn’t really matter what happened, he was sticking with the plan.  I fail to see why Steve Swanson’s game plan isn’t ensuring that Carter get 15 touches in the first 10 minutes.  I don’t know if it is causation or correlation, but I do know that Virginia plays much better when Carter is getting more touches.

As I said, Wake was on the front foot from the get-go and it took just 10 minutes for Wake to force what should have been a PK following an Allie Ross handball in the box.  The referee initially waved off the call and even when he went to VAR, he still denied the call.  (I can see why he didn’t make the call originally, but with the camera angles that VAR affords, well, Virginia got off lightly.) 

Two minutes later, Virginia keeper Victoria Safradin had to pull off this save to keep the game level.

And just a minute later, Wake had a lovely goal called back for offsides.  It was the right call, but Virginia was clearly floundering.  Wake continued to control the midfield and in the 35th minute, Swanson brought in Aniyah Collier and Virginia got even more one-sided as the team looked, repeatedly, to take advantage of her speed and spring her on the long ball.  For ten minutes I don’t think Virginia had a possession of more than four or five passes as it was just one hoofed pass after another.  Wake’s counters were just much more impactful and it looked like a goal was going to come at any moment.

And then Virginia got a reprieve as lightning moved into Winston-Salem and the game took a 55-minute hiatus.  I was exulting because there is no one better than Steve Swanson at keeping his team focused during the interminable wait that lightning strikes can bring. Against both Penn State and Duke last year, the Cavaliers came out of the tunnel on all cylinders, scoring in the opening minutes of each re-start.

The magic wasn’t there on this night, however.  Wake scored within two minutes and I don’t think Virginia had even managed five passes following the re-start.  The rain was pouring, so that didn’t help, but of course, Wake was battling the same elements as the Hoos.

It had been a thoroughly dispiriting first half.

But as always, Steve Swanson teams don’t quit.  Because of the 55-minute delay just ten minutes earlier, there was only a six-minute halftime and it was sufficient for Swanson to help the team reframe their approach.  Ella Carter started getting touches and subsequently bossed the midfield.  Wake decided to drop back into a low block defense and the Cavaliers took advantage of that.  Carrie Helfrich started at left wingback for the half, and I don’t know why, but she was much more impactful on the left than she had been on the right.  Kyra Koopman, on the right, got upfield continually, pinning Wake’s Sierra Sythe and thus blunting much of Wake’s build-up.   Addie Halpern dropped back a bit into the heart of midfield, even replacing Hardeman for 10 minutes, and Virginia was playing Virginia soccer.

As Wake dropped lower, the enticement of the long, through ball evaporated, so the Hoos had to look for better crosses and play through the lines.  Sophia Bradley, who is really playing well in this (still) new 5 – 2 – 2 – 1 of Swanson’s, sent in a sublime cross that eluded Allie Ross by mere millimeters.  It is Striker 101 that you meet a ball crossed from the right with your left foot, but Ross stabbed with her right foot.  Sometimes you just gotta play the ball with the foot that is there, but it should have been a goal.

With five minutes remaining, Virginia got that goal off a lovely Ella Carter header.  Since you know the scoreline of the game, you know it was waved off for offsides.  Carter was maybe slightly less egregiously offside than Wake’s Henley Tippins on their disallowed goal, but in a cosmic scorekeeping sense, the call was appropriate.

In the end, it was a classic game of two halves.  In the first, Wake outshot Virginia 8 – 1 while in the second frame, Virginia outshot the Deacs 11 – 2.   Virginia absolutely could have equalized if the game had gone on for another 10 minutes, but that is the lament of the losing team.

Virginia fought back after a disastrous first half, so this is a moral victory of sorts???  But the fact remains that in the last three games and 270 minutes against decent competition, Virginia has scored just once.  Virginia should get some help soon as Canali’s Brazil and Cecil’s USA play each other in the first second round game.  One of those two is coming home early.

The Verdict:  I don’t like the double-pivot pairing of Ella Carter and Jordyn Hardeman.  It’s too duplicative.  They both can turn on the ball and avoid pressure, but they are neither fast nor particularly athletic, and the reason I don’t want them playing side-by-side, they both play slowly.  Neither one can explode out a turn.  The answer seems obvious to me: play Halpern alongside Carter.  Addie’s got the motor, she’ll be involved with the offensive play plenty.

Next Up:  Virginia hosts Miami on Thursday, September 17th at 7:00pm.  The game will be streamed on ACC Network Extra.

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Val Prochaska
VAL PROCHASKA

Val graduated from the University of Virginia in the last millennium, back when writing one's senior thesis by hand was still a thing. He is a lifelong fan of the ACC, having chosen the Tobacco Road conference ahead of the Big East. Again, when that was still a thing. Val has covered Virginia men's basketball for ten years, first with HoosPlace and then with StreakingTheLawn, before joining us here at Virginia Cavaliers on SI in August of 2023, continuing to cover UVA men's basketball and also writing about women's soccer and women's basketball.

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