For fans who enjoy pointing to their televisions and saying, “I watched them back when they played for UVA,” this University of Virginia athletics season is required viewing. From marking national bests and setting school records, to going on championship streaks to taking teams to the postseason, athletes are making UVA history this year—and they’re not planning to stop when they leave Grounds. Here’s a look at memorable seasons from five Virginia athletes who, based on their performances this spring, will be players to watch in the future.
Ashley Anumba
Track & Field
A discus throw takes place in the span of a second.
During that second, second-year law school student Ashley Anumba has dozens of muscle movements to think about.
“A misconception about throwing is that it’s all arms, but it’s a total body movement from your legs up to your hands,” says Anumba.
Anumba has to make sure her hips are open enough for her turn. She must turn her head as she uses her glutes to power her twist to the front, while keeping her back precisely angled so her release sends the 2.2-pound disc flying in the right direction.
She might think over each of these movements while practicing, but in competition the throw is seamless. After thousands of repetitions, her body knows exactly what to do.
That’s not to say that Anumba’s throw isn’t still evolving. This fall, new UVA throwing coach Steve Lemke helped her see the process differently. Instead of leaning on her natural elegance in the ring, she began deliberately using each muscle to its maximum strength during the wind.
That’s part of why she was able to set a Virginia discus record with her first throw of the 2023 season.
At North Carolina State’s Raleigh Relays on March 24, Anumba threw the discus 59.37 meters, or 194 feet and nine inches. That’s the fifth time she has set a new school standard since she joined the team in 2022—and it was with a distance 2.87 meters (nine feet, five inches) farther than her first record-breaking throw.
“When you reach a certain level of expertise, the jumps in distance or time progressions … get smaller, because you’re already reaching that peak,” says Anumba. “So, the fact that I was able to bypass all of that and still, even though I’m on a high level, make such a big jump, that’s been amazing. Evidently, something is going right with this technique change.”
Anumba arrived at UVA as a graduate transfer from the University of Pennsylvania, holding a degree in public health and two extra years of athletics eligibility thanks to COVID-19. She was looking for a school that would support her simultaneous pursuit of a law degree and the world standard discus throw of 63.5 meters (208 feet, three inches). She found that university in Charlottesville.
“This team, this school, has shown me that I shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing goals that are scary, or things that I want in my life that may be far away,” says Anumba. “People will help me get there.”
After taking on the ACC and NCAA championships this spring, Anumba wants to qualify for the World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August. Her ultimate goal is to represent Nigeria, where most of her extended family lives, in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I’m chipping away at it, and more than ever, I see it as more of a reality than a possibility,” says Anumba.
This is a future Anumba never imagined while playing soccer as a child. While her older sister Michelle, now head athletic trainer for the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, was setting shot put records at Duke, Ashley was busy dreaming of a future in the National Women’s Soccer League. She joined track only as a part of injury recovery in eighth grade.
It was not until a high school coach told her that her discus talent could someday earn her a college scholarship—and even an Olympics bid—that Anumba began trying to become one of the best in the world.
“I never expected to be as good as what I am now,” says Anumba. “Seeing the vision that my high school coach had for me, it’s absolutely crazy. I’m believing everything he said, because it’s becoming true.”
Connor Shellenberger
Lacrosse
When Connor Shellenberger was 9 years old, he watched his hometown University of Virginia triumph over Maryland in the 2011 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship.
Ten years later, the Cavaliers took on the Terrapins in a 2021 title rematch—but this time, Shellenberger was on the field.
The redshirt first-year scored four times to help Virginia to a 17-16 championship victory.
“I don’t know if it’s hit me, to be honest,” says Shellenberger. “I’m hoping one day, once I’m done playing lacrosse, it’ll be able to fully sink in. It was crazy. It happened so fast.”
For his 14 goals and 10 assists in four 2021 playoff games, Shellenberger was the second rookie in NCAA history to be named the tournament’s most outstanding player. He finished the following season as a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award, handed to the most outstanding player in college lacrosse, after leading UVA with 76 points and 44 assists in 16 games in 2022.
Shellenberger tries not to focus on accolades. He says he models his game after Steele Stanwick, the last Cavalier to receive the Tewaaraton in 2011, who he always felt cared more about team wins than stats chasing.
That might be part of why on May 23 of last year, the day after the Terrapins knocked Virginia out of the 2022 NCAA quarterfinals, the team voted to make Shellenberger captain.
“You’re always thinking about winning games and winning championships and stuff like that, but some of the bigger honors are stuff like that, where your teammates trust you and want you to lead them,” says Shellenberger.
Shellenberger’s dominant 2022 season earned him an invite to U.S. Men’s National Team tryouts last summer. There, Shellenberger was able to pick the brains of players he’d grown up watching, like Cornell’s Rob Pannell and Princeton’s Tom Schreiber. Both are now professional lacrosse players.
“I was seeing all the guys that I had grown up watching on TV,” says Shellenberger. “Being around them off the field and talking to them, and also on the field and going against them— it’s tough to have that confidence at first, to feel like you belong, because you’ve seen all the great things they’ve done.”
Shellenberger is starting to believe he belongs as he gets closer to his goal of making the national team—and to leading UVA back to the national championships.
Although the team entered the 2023 season without Matt Moore, Shellenberger’s offensive partner and UVA’s all-time points leader, Virginia offense has been led by Shellenberger and a squad of fifth-year veterans.
Xander Dickson has become one of the top scorers in college lacrosse, Petey LaSalla is one of the best in the country on draws and Payton Cormier’s 145 career goals rank No. 2 in UVA history. All three were wearing orange and navy blue for both Virginia’s 2019 and 2021 championships.
Now, Shellenberger is looking to get a second ring of his own as he finishes out the season with his family watching from the stands of Klöckner Stadium.
“Thinking back 10 years ago, I was going to the game with them as a fan, and now I get to look over and they’re standing in the same place that we stood,” says Shellenberger. “It’s kind of a full circle.”
Eden Bigham
Softball
The day before the UVA softball team boarded a plane to Houston for its February 9 season opener against Lamar University, freshman pitcher Eden Bigham got the news she would be starting.
It was a moment she had spent every day that fall preparing for. She had completely reworked her changeup. She had learned not to rely on the rise ball, her go-to in high school.
She also toughened her mental game, which might have been the most important skill waiting in her arsenal as she stepped onto the mound for her collegiate debut.
“You have the ball in your hands, you have every possible chance that something can happen, so it creates a lot of excitement,” says Bigham. “At the same time, it is also a lot of pressure.”
Bigham made it through five innings without Lamar registering a hit. Someone mentioned the forbidden, jinx-ridden word—“no-hitter”—between frames, but she shook it off.
“It’s in the back of my head, but I know if I focus too much on it, then I’m not going to go perform well,” says Bigham. “I was definitely thinking about it, but I didn’t let it change anything.”
In the top of the sixth, two Lamar runners got on base on a walk and an error. Bigham remained cool.
With her dad, the coach of her travel team, and her mom, a former college pitcher who was named to the Liberty Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017, watching in the crowd, Bigham retired the next six batters in order.
She ended her debut with a 5-0 shutout win, nine strikeouts and the first solo no-hitter recorded by a Cavalier since Ally Frei in 2019.
“My team was so happy for me, and having them there was really exciting,” says Bigham. “I was nervous, but (it showed) I could come out and compete with college girls.”
Bigham has continued to prove that throughout the season. Her ERA ranks her among this season’s top 15 freshman college pitchers. She has started in more than a third of the Cavaliers’ outings and earned seven shutouts.
Last year, UVA softball came to the edge of qualification for the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010.
Bigham is part of a strong first-year class that looks ready to end the decade-long drought, and bring this Virginia softball back to the NCAA postseason.
It is not a long drive from Bigham’s hometown of Rustburg, Virginia, to Palmer Park, but there is a significant distance between the skill level of the opponents she faces in Charlottesville and those she challenged in high school. Having old travel ball teammates like her roommate Jade Hylton, who leads UVA with 10 home runs, has helped Bigham adjust.
Growing certainty from Bigham on the mound and Hylton at the plate has helped Virginia softball put up the program’s highest single-season win total in 13 years.
“In high school and travel, if something didn’t go my way, it would tear me to pieces,” says Bigham. “But I definitely know these girls have my back, and if I give up runs, they can come back and score them … my confidence has definitely gotten better since I’ve been here.”
Jake Gelof
Baseball
When third-year Jake Gelof fouled a ball straight back in his first at-bat against the University of Richmond on April 11, the crowd let out a collective sigh.
They, like Gelof, knew what was at stake. His 37 runs tied E.J. Anderson (1995-98) for the career record by a Cavalier, and his next homer would make school history.
In the fifth inning, Gelof returned to the plate. This time, he put the ball over the fence at far left field to become Virginia’s all-time leader in home runs during the Cavaliers’ 18-0 shutout of the Spiders.
“Once I saw it go, I was really excited,” says Gelof.
It’s a record Gelof never expected to hit during his rookie season, when he was seeing limited at-bats. It wasn’t until the 2021 postseason that he showed the Cavaliers what his swing could do.
Truist Field is famous for its long balls: Three days before UVA took the field to face Notre Dame in the 2021 ACC Tournament quarterfinals, the University of Louisville set an ACC championship record there for home runs, with seven in a single game.
It’s no wonder Gelof sent his first collegiate homer over the fence at Truist, and helped Virginia move on to the tournament’s semifinals.
“I was batting a little low in the lineup, and balls were flying for guys in the beginning of the lineup,” says Gelof. “Once I hit it, I hadn’t had that feeling in a while … that feeling of getting a ball out of the stadium, that was a great feeling.”
The key to hitting 37 more home runs in the 108 games since that day, Gelof says, has been not changing too much, staying in his approach and remaining confident each time he steps up to the plate.
That strategy helped him become a key part of the lineup as UVA went to the 2021 College World Series.
After starting every game his second season, and ranking second in the ACC with 81 RBIs, Gelof earned an invite to the 2022 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team Training Camp, where he bumped elbows with other rising stars in American baseball.
Tips from the camp’s nationally ranked players and coaches have helped Gelof lead the Cavs in RBIs and home runs, as he helps power them to their third straight NCAA postseason in 2023—and so did off-season training with his brother, Zack, who started every game for UVA from 2019 to 2021, until he was selected by the Oakland Athletics in the 2021 MLB draft.
He’s exactly where Gelof wants to be someday.
“Having such a great person to come to, who has had success at the levels that I aspire to play at … just to have someone to talk to all the time that you look up to, is very special,” says Gelof.
Gretchen Walsh
Swimming
Heading into the 2023 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships in March, Gretchen Walsh was very familiar with the American record for the 100-yard backstroke. After all, she was there, just one quarter of a second behind, when North Carolina State’s Katharine Berkoff set the 48.74-seconds record last year.
That’s why the UVA second-year knew she had broken it the moment she touched the wall and saw 48.26 on the clock.
That thrilling moment would have been unimaginable to Walsh just a few years ago, when she was a Tennessee high school student, doing backstroke just for fun. It wasn’t until she arrived in Charlottesville that coaches convinced her to compete.
Walsh says UVA swimming coach Todd DeSorbo calls her underwater abilities her “secret weapon.” She worked on maximizing it by training to hold her breath under water through punishing sets, until not breathing became second nature.
“Once I started doing that, my backstroke career really took off, and obviously now here I am with the American record,” says Walsh. “I never, going into college, thought I’d be saying that, but here I am, and I couldn’t be happier.”
Walsh’s 100-yard backstroke win, in addition to a victory in the 100-yard freestyle and a role in four of the Cavaliers’ five relay triumphs, helped the Virginia women’s swimming & diving team win its third consecutive NCAA championship on March 19.
The rest of the Cavaliers’ six individual titles went to Walsh’s training partner, senior Kate Douglass, who set American records in the 200-yard individual medley, 100-yard butterfly and 200-yard breaststroke, and Walsh’s sister, junior Alex Walsh, who claimed a title in the 400-yard medley.
Both swimmers have been instrumental in pushing Walsh since she arrived at UVA last year. Like Walsh, both have set American records. And like Walsh strives to do, both medaled at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Now, Alex is waiting to get her Olympic rings tattoo until Gretchen gets hers, too.
Walsh has dreamed of the Olympics ever since she and Alex swam together as children. In fourth grade, when the class was told to create self-portraits, Walsh drew herself standing on the Olympic blocks.
Her performance in the 2020 Olympic trials, the summer before her first year at UVA, fell short of qualifying. She thinks that could be different in 2024.
“Since coming into UVA, having this change and this new environment, I feel a lot more confident going into next summer, in my abilities and my training, all around,” says Walsh. “I think it’s definitely feasible.”
Next season, Walsh has a long list of individual goals. She wants to hit 20.5 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle and 47 seconds in the 100-yard backstroke, both events in which she has already set the national standard. She wants to add another American record by beating 45.56 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle. It’s a lot of numbers to keep track of, but that’s no problem for a finance major and math minor.
“I always find myself counting my strokes, or my kicks, or how many breaths I have to take,” says Walsh. “I think a lot of swimming is numbers, and that’s one of the reasons I probably liked math—and swimming, too.”
Most of all, Walsh wants to help UVA become the first school to win four straight NCAA swimming & diving titles since Stanford did it in 1995.
“I think we can do it again, so we’ll see,” says Walsh. “We’re creating a legacy, and that’s one of the coolest things about this whole experience.”