Del. Katrina Callsen introduced a bill this year that would raise annual salary caps for city councils statewide up to $37,000 for the mayor and $34,000 for councilors.
Supplied photo.
Few people get into politics for the salaries, but for local and state representatives this rings especially true. Whether they’re on city council, serving in the House of Delegates, or a longtime member of the state Senate, most of Charlottesville’s legislators have a second job.
To find out more about compensation for elected officials, C-VILLE asked local legislators for their comments via email. Across the board, every member of council and state representative who responded is either working or has recently held a job outside of their elected position.
On city council, pay starts at $18,000 a year, with the mayor’s salary slightly higher at $20,000.
When he’s not attending meetings as the mayor of Charlottesville, Juandiego Wade works for Albemarle County as a Career Center Coordinator. Other councilors are also locally employed, with Natalie Oschrin working for Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyard, Brian Pinkston in facilities management at the University of Virginia, and Lloyd Snook serving as a lawyer at his own firm.
“I manage both jobs by carrying three phones everywhere I go: personal, UVA, City,” said Pinkston. “I have a degree of flexibility at my day job, which is very helpful. That said, I end up using several weeks of leave every year so that I can attend official City meetings.”
Other councilors shared their creative time-management skills for juggling multiple jobs. Oschrin splits her day, limiting her time for council-related responsibilities to before and after the work day. Still, it’s not perfect.
“I do miss out on some daytime activities, including certain boards and commissions, ceremonies, and conferences,” she said.
Private practice lawyer and city councilor Lloyd Snook makes it all fit by working late hours. “I manage by not sleeping much; I tend to go back to the office and work until 2am or later,” he shared.
In the state legislature, salaries aren’t any higher; delegates receive a base pay of $17,640 annually, with state senators earning $18,000.
Both Del. Katrina Callsen and state Sen. Creigh Deeds were in the local law scene until this April. While Deeds continues to practice, Callsen stepped down from her role as Charlottesville’s Deputy City Attorney to spend more time with family.
“At this time, I can say, happily of course, that my only other job is being a mom,” said Callsen.
While Callsen is able to hold only her elected office, she acknowledges the current salary caps are prohibitive for others. “By deliberately keeping the pay for elected officials low, we are locking out folks like single working mothers or civil servants who would otherwise make fantastic additions to the table but can’t because they simply can’t afford to serve,” she said.
“My work as a legislator makes me a better lawyer, and my work as a lawyer makes me a better legislator,” said Deeds about his jobs. “I have always thought that compensation was on the low end of fair.”
According to income guidelines for Housing and Urban Development programming in 2022, current salaries for local legislators qualify as “extremely low income.” Charlottesville’s area median income as of 2024 is $124,200 for a family of four.
Discussions of compensation for elected officials in Virginia have been a point of contention for years, with a bill introduced by Callsen this year that would raise salary caps for city councils statewide. Under House Bill 456, Charlottesville’s salary caps could increase to $37,000 annually for the mayor and $34,000 for other councilors.
Among proponents of the current compensation rates for local legislators, one justification for the pay is that both Charlottesville City Councilors and state legislators are considered part-time roles, despite the demands of the position.
“It is sometimes argued that raising pay for City Councilors will make it possible for more different kinds of people to serve; I’m not sure that that is true,” said Snook.
Other local leaders acknowledged both the positives and negatives of holding multiple roles.
“I think my roles definitely influence one another,” Wade said. “I constantly have a strong pulse on what is going on in the community.”
“Serving on Council is an honor and a privilege; it’s not the sort of thing you would ever do ‘just’ for financial reasons. That said, it is incredibly time-intensive,” said Pinkston. “More than that, you end up ‘carrying’ things for the City and its residents around with you—their concerns, struggles, hopes, fears, and so on—pretty much all the time. So while it’s an honor to do these things, it would be lovely to have a bit more stipend to go along with it.”
At the state level, compensation for legislators remains comparatively low. In contrast to other states whose legislative positions carry similar time commitments—which have an average compensation of $41,110 annually, according to Ballotpedia—Virginia’s compensation for its delegates and state senators is strikingly little.
Compared to the salaries of legislators, gubernatorial compensation averages at a much higher rate. Gov. Youngkin’s salary, for example, is $175,000 per year—even higher than the average of $148,939.
The decision to reinstate resource officers in city public schools has been put off until 2025, as decided by the Charlottesville School Board.
Photo by John Robinson.
Delayed vote
The Charlottesville School Board voted on Thursday, May 30, to delay a decision on reinstating School Resource Officers in city schools until 2025. Now referred to as “Youth Resource Officers,” SROs (YROs) have not served in Charlottesville schools since they were replaced with Care and Safety Assistants in 2020.
Several teachers, students, parents, and community members appeared at the Charlottesville School Board meeting in opposition to these cops returning to schools, including members of the Charlottesville Education Association, the union representing the faculty and staff of Charlottesville City Schools. It was the Association’s Representative Assembly that recently voted unanimously to send a resolution opposing the return of YROs to the school board.
Shannon Gillikin, president of CEA, read the resolution at the meeting. “[The resolution] opposes the employment of police officers in [Charlottesville] schools,” arguing that their presence would not promote safety, instead citing “restorative justice and community outreach programs” as alternative ways to use the money that would be spent on employing YROs.
Other speakers at the meeting advocated for similar causes. Christine Esposito, a gifted program specialist at Walker Upper Elementary School, questioned how the school board has the funds to employ officers while so many staff positions go unfunded. According to the Charlottesville Police Department, the addition of YROs would cost nearly $600,000 for the first year. Esposito expressed that this is not a conversation to be had “until we can fund our desperately needed instructional positions.”
Many pleaded for transparency from the school board in making this decision, given the rigorous process to remove YROs in the first place.
About face
Thanks to a petition signed by more than 1,000 community members, Piedmont Community College nursing student Mustafa Abdelhamid will continue his studies at UVA Medical Center. The nursing student’s externship was rescinded following an arrest at the UVA encampment earlier this month, but on Wednesday, May 29, Police Chief Tim Longo modified his No Trespassing Order (NTO) to allow Abdelhamid back on Grounds.
The decision was made after the University was met with action by community organizers.
The UVA Chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a petition following the University’s denial to reconsider their decision to ban Mustafa from University property. The petition describes the decision as “prejudicial to his minority status” and raises concern for the supposed infringement on the student’s rights.
It’s a start
A $9 million settlement between the University of Virginia and the families of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry—the three students who were killed in a shooting on Grounds on November 13, 2022—was approved on Friday, May 31, by a judge in Albemarle County Circuit Court. The settlement grants $2 million to each of the families and $3 million between Mike Hollins and Marlee Morgan, two students who were injured in the shooting.
Saying goodbye
Beloved local restaurateur Mel Walker passed away on Tuesday, May 28. His eponymous West Main Street restaurant was one of the oldest Black-owned businesses in the city, having opened in 1984. Walker was a fixture in the community, born in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood and earning his restaurant chops in a variety of local kitchens. His absence leaves the future of Mel’s Cafe hanging in the balance. Visit gofundme.com/f/help-keep-mels-cafe-open to donate to the family’s fundraiser.
Mel Walker. Photo by John Robinson.
Standing O
The second round of grants for the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2024 fiscal year included a $20,000 award to Live Arts, the first for the local theater in its 33-year history. According to a press release, the grant will “advance the theater’s multi-year effort to diversify the stories on its stage” by supporting its third annual WATERWORKS festival.
In total, 20 grants were awarded to organizations in Virginia, four of which were in Charlottesville.
Is the experience of coming out today different than 10 years ago?
Photo by Tristan Williams.
Sitting on the floor of his bedroom, Carter cracked like an egg.
It was December 1, 2020, the doldrums of a Covid year; technically Carter was in a Zoom class, but attending his sophomore year of Charlottesville High School from home had long lost its novelty, so Carter was scrolling through Instagram when a simple square of black text on a white background caused him to pause.
It was a post by the actor and producer Elliot Page. “Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot,” Page wrote. “I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life.”
“I felt an immediate panic,” said Carter in a March 2024 interview. “Something in me was just like, that’s what I need to do.”
In the parlance of some trans communities, an ‘egg’ is a person who is trans, but hasn’t realized it yet. The egg ‘cracks’ at the moment of self-insight—the gender epiphany. For Carter, that moment occurred as he read Page’s words.
Three and a half years later, Carter is 19, a second year at UVA, and a trans man. His real name isn’t Carter; he asked to be identified by a pseudonym because many people don’t realize he’s trans, and he appreciates being able to choose whether or not he shares that part of himself with others.
Carter has a quiet but intense energy. His initial email offering to participate in this article was concise; still, it was clear that its emotional current cut deep.
“I would be excited and honored to be considered for an interview,” Carter wrote.
Each recent generation of U.S. adults has had about twice as many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or Queer members as the preceding generation, according to Gallup surveys. A 2021 CDC survey of U.S. high school students found that one in four identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual—and the CDC didn’t ask students about gender identity, so the actual number of LGBTQ+ students is likely even higher.
Queer kids (this article, in keeping with many young LGBTQ+ people, uses LGBTQ+ and capital-Q Queer interchangeably) are also feeling more accepted in the school environment than they have in the past. The 2021 GLSEN School Climate Survey found that the rates of harassment experienced by Queer students based on sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender are the lowest they’ve been in the 20 years the survey has been given.
Yet at the same time, there’s a paradox: Teens are Queerer than ever, but they are also sadder than ever—and Queer teens are especially sad. The 2021 CDC survey also found that 75 percent of LGBT high-school students feel persistently sad and hopeless, a 15 percent increase since 2015, and 20 percent higher than the overall teenage population.
Sydney Walther came out as a girl in eighth grade and, pretty immediately, started being bullied by her classmates at Albemarle High School, who taunted and dead named her until she switched schools. Photo by Tristan Williams.
When she was in eighth grade, Sydney Walther decided to come out as a girl. It was 2011, and Walther, who at the time attended Albemarle County Schools, started by telling her close friends, who were overjoyed for her. Her parents were also supportive, though worried about her becoming a target for bullying.
Unfortunately, Walther’s parents’ worries proved founded: When Walther entered ninth grade at Albemarle High School in 2012, she was bullied relentlessly. Her classmates did not use her new name and desired pronouns, and to make matters worse, the administration at AHS refused to allow Walther to use the girls’ bathrooms.
So in 2013, Walther transferred to Charlottesville High School. (This writer was also a student at CHS in 2013, but knew Sydney only in passing.)
“For the time, CHS was fairly accepting and progressive,” said Walther. She was allowed to use the girls’ bathrooms, and her new classmates were generally accepting.
“At least to my face, most people used my correct pronouns and name. There were a few times that I was misgendered or dead-named on purpose, but only a couple of instances,” said Walther.
Walther made new friends at CHS. Meanwhile, encouraged by her parents, she began the medical gender transition process. By the time she was 16, Walther was taking testosterone blockers and estrogen.
But “whether I was at Albemarle or Charlottesville, I was on my own,” said Walther. “I felt like the only openly trans person that had at least started their transition. I didn’t really feel like I had anyone that I could relate to.”
For the most part, Walther said she encountered fewer incidents of harassment at CHS than at Albemarle High school, but the ones that did occur were particularly disturbing. Walther recalled that there was a period of a few weeks when, while walking to her car at the end of the day, another student would shout threats of violence at her in the parking lot.
“I remember being legitimately scared. My mind was in so many other places that it was hard for me to keep up with my schoolwork,” Walther said.
“What used to happen is people would come out to themselves in high school but not tell anyone, tell their friends when they were in their 20s, and only by the end of their 20s tell their parents,” said Dr. Charlotte Patterson, a professor at UVA who studies the psychology of sexual orientation and has worked with LGBTQ+ families and teenagers for decades.
“Today, the average age of recognizing yourself is around 14, telling friends around 16, telling family and parents by 17. Lots of kids are talking about LGBTQ+ issues with their friends when they’re in high school now, which never used to happen,” Patterson said, adding that this shift to coming out younger makes the school environment all the more important for Queer youth.
Logan Hall told a friend in eighth grade that he was gay. That friend told everyone else. “It was not ideal for him to break my trust,” Logan says, “but in the moment, and even in retrospect, it didn’t feel dramatic to me.” Photo by Tristan Williams.
In 2008, while an 8th grader at Tandem Friends School, Logan Hall told a friend he was gay. That friend then told the rest of their classmates.
“I wasn’t that mad about it,” said Hall. “I wanted to be out, but didn’t want to go through the process of telling everyone individually. It was not ideal for him to break my trust, but in the moment, and even in retrospect, it didn’t feel dramatic to me.”
Hall went to CHS for high school and graduated in 2013, and he now looks back on the antics of his adolescent self with amusement, but also respect.
“At the time, I just felt like I really had to put on a display as an act of resistance. Like no matter how homophobic people are, my clothes are going to be as tight as I want, and I’m going to wear makeup if I want to. I feel like I just got a huge dose of self-possession in eighth grade. I was kind of a passive kid, I was bullied a little bit when I was younger, I was quiet and sensitive … Maybe it was fury, but I just suddenly was like, ‘I’m going to be who I want to be and I’m going to get what I want out of life,’” said Hall.
“I think I was just blindly confident,” said Tamara Starchia, who came out as a stud (a masculine Black lesbian) before high school and graduated from CHS in 2014.
“Everyone already thought I was gay,” said Starchia. “So by the time we got to high school, it was like, whatever. I was always sporty. It just kind of made sense.”
Starchia said that she doesn’t remember there being a particularly active Queer community presence at CHS, and even if there had been, she feels that it’s unlikely that she’d have been able to attend any community meetings: Between school, sports, and working at Raising Cane’s, her schedule was booked.
Fortunately, Starchia said she didn’t encounter much bullying at CHS. When she did need support, she went to her guidance counselor, another Black woman, or her basketball coach. Other than her guidance counselor, Starchia doesn’t recall ever taking an issue to the CHS administration, saying, “I kept a pretty low profile.”
And though her family was not immediately supportive of her Queer identity, Starchia credits the trajectory of her coming-out experience to the values instilled in her growing-up.
“I think my experience was as positive as it was because I grew up being told to not care about what people think about me,” said Starchia. “Your family loves you, and you love you. What other people think doesn’t matter.”
“The thing I’m noticing, especially in the last two or three years, is that kids are really flexible with the changes their peers are making with regards to their identities because they’re probably doing a little changing themselves,” said Will Cooke, who’s been the director of the CHS choirs for the past 16 years.
Jason Bennett, an assistant principal at CHS, said, “I think students and, you know, youth and people as a whole are seeing themselves more in the world that they’re living in, and I think that inevitably opens up to people living as their true selves.”
“When I think back even—Lord have mercy—20 years ago when I was in high school, it was a completely different world than probably when you were here in high school, right?” Bennett added.
Sisters Cora and River are almost exactly 10 years apart in age: Cora, the second of four kids, is 28, and River, the youngest, is 18. Cora graduated from CHS in 2014–River, in 2024. Both of the sisters’ names have been changed at their request. Both sisters are thoughtful, reserved in crowds, and more comfortable joking with small groups of friends in large gatherings.
Both are Queer: Cora came out as bisexual during her final year of college; River has been out as Queer since her freshman year of high school and has recently come to identify as a lesbian.
River is grateful to have had the space while still a teenager to contemplate her identity.
“I’ve had the privilege to be self-reflective,” she said, naming the support of Queer family members, friends, and teachers as crucial to allowing her to come to terms with her Queer identity in her own time.
But for Cora, despite growing up in the same family and going to the same high school, coming out in high school just didn’t feel like an option that was available to her.
“There’s a grief for that missing experience, of not experiencing coming of age while having a full sense of my identity,” said Cora, adding that she’s happy that River and her friends get to “explore and learn so much at a younger age.”
“Whereas for me and my friends, we were just not aware,” Cora added.
Every year, more Queer kids find self-acceptance, which seems to make it easier for other Queer kids to “catch” self-acceptance from their peers. Often, a Queer high schooler no longer has to be willing to be the only Queer kid they know in order to come out. They can simply be a regular kid who happens to be Queer.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, every year since 2015 has seen more attacks on the rights and identities of LGBTQ+ teens in the U.S. via bathroom bills, book bans, “don’t say gay” legislation, and barriers to accessing gender-affirming healthcare.
“A lot of these strategies have a long history in authoritarian lore,” said Charlotte Patterson, who has been tracking social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people for decades. “For many older people, I think when you say the word book ban, it conjures images of Nazis burning books in World War II. And many of the books they burned were about LGBTQ issues.”
Tamara Starchia, who identifies as a stud (a masculine Black lesbian), came out to little fanfare before starting high school at CHS. “I think my experience was as positive as it was because I grew up being told to not care about what people think about me,” she said. Photo by Tristan Williams.
By early 2021, Carter knew that he was trans. Even so, he took his time coming out to his friends and family.
While Carter’s parents were supportive of his decision, his dad was hesitant to allow Carter to medically transition. One time during his senior year, Carter and his parents sat down to talk about Carter starting hormone replacement therapy, and his dad pulled out a stack of papers. He’d printed out a number of studies about the risks of hormone replacement therapy and a few articles from the New York Times featuring concerned parents of trans children.
Carter ended up having to wait until he was 18 to start hormone replacement therapy—which meant that, over the span of three months in the summer of 2022, he started hormone replacement therapy, had top surgery, and began college at UVA.
“I got cut open. I had major surgery in order to feel at home in my body,” said Carter. “I make the intentional choice every week to inject myself [with hormones] in order to grow and be who I want to be … I think that the journey lends a perspective and an understanding of the world that’s valuable.”
“Students have always known the teachers they could talk to, but everyone’s very open about it now. I cannot tell you a teacher in that building who does not have a safe space sticker on their door,” said Cooke, the current CHS choir director. “Everybody has one, and they genuinely mean it. It’s not a signifying thing.”
A few years ago, the CHS GSA sold t-shirts and hoodies featuring a black knight (the CHS mascot) against a rainbow background.
“I have never ever seen a fundraiser that sold actual t-shirts. Everybody, everybody, everybody has that shirt. I don’t think there’s a single teacher, unless they’re new this year, that does not have one,” said Cooke.
“Had there ever been CHS LGBTQ+ pride gear before?” I asked.
Cooke paused, then said, “I don’t think so. Not that I can recall. So there it is.”
It only took a few days after Hestia, 17, told the Renaissance School her new name and pronouns until “all the teachers were using them, and even other students,” she said. Hestia, along with her friends Zina, Quinn, and several of their classmates, recently founded Safe Open Queer Space for Teens, or SOQS4Teens (pronounced “‘socks for teens”). SOQS4Teens’ goal isn’t to improve the community for Queer students at Renaissance School—they don’t need to. It’s already thriving. (Hestia, Zina, and Quinn are being identified by first name only because they are minors.)
But despite their supportive school environment, the founders of SOQS felt detached from the larger Charlottesville Queer community due to the lack of spaces for Queer teens.
“I was 13 when Covid started, so that really affected my ability to make friends,” Hestia said.
“I see SOQS providing a welcoming and nurturing peer environment that will help increase the mental health and wellbeing of Queer teens throughout Charlottesville and Central Virginia,” said Welford L. McLellan Jr., a dean at Renaissance School who teaches a class on civic engagement. “Marginalized people tend to feel physically and emotionally safer when gathered with marginalized people from the same group. Teens are often marginalized in our society and we know that being Queer has a stigma, as well. Queer teens often feel more ostracized than straight teens. I see SOQS as a safe haven for Queer teens,” McLellan added.
Nowadays, Carter’s busy with two majors and a number of UVA student groups, but still, he hasn’t forgotten about the wider Charlottesville LGBTQ+ community. He is a board member for the Charlottesville Gender Expansive Network, and the leader of a new support group for trans men and transmasculine people in Charlottesville.
At first, taking on the role of organizer felt unnatural to Carter, but he felt that the community need was too great to go unattended.
“I saw that it was mine to do because no one else was doing it,” said Carter. “It was more work than I thought. I feel like a lot of the time the people who need the support group the most are the people who are not going to be able to come to the support group.”
As a first step, Carter sent out a preliminary interest form to ask people what could keep them from attending the support group. Carter said he got a number of responses from people about things that could keep them from attending like a lack of childcare or transportation.
“When you try to be compassionate and inclusive in your work, it makes it harder,” said Carter. “But I’m glad I’m taking such an approach.”
Charlottesville Blues FC are off to a hot start this summer.
Photo by Tristan Williams.
Local soccer fans considering making the trip to New York or Los Angeles for the 2026 World Cup or 2028 Olympics needn’t go that far for a fix.
In fact, they’ll only have to travel as far as St. Anne’s-Belfield, where Charlottesville Blues FC is looking to seize on the growing popularity of American soccer by introducing United Soccer League-affiliated amateur men’s and women’s teams to Charlottesville.
“We will never see this level of injection into U.S. soccer history ever again,” co-owner Brian Krow says. “This is an unprecedented five years. That’s what really motivated us. Let’s get in, let’s start to build a fan base, build a community, build the sponsors, because our vision is to go full-time pro.”
The men’s club competes in the USL2, which expanded to a league-record 128 teams for the 2024 season, while the women’s team is taking on the 80-team USLW division.
The Blues’ inaugural season, which began in May and will conclude in July, pits the brand-new Charlottesville team, comprising college-age players and aspiring pros, against well-established pre-professional clubs with a history of sending players to the USL or international professional leagues.
The men’s team took on one of those pre-professional powerhouses on May 26 when they traveled to Newport News to face Lionsbridge FC, a club with 20 professional alumni that went to the USL League Two Championship game last season.
Fans watched at St. Anne’s-Belfield as both the men’s and women’s teams of the Charlottesville Blues FC faced opponents on Saturday, June 1. The men crushed the Shenandoah Marauders FC 5-0. Photo by Tristan Williams.
The Blues entered the game as consensus underdogs. Lionsbridge had not lost at home since 2019, marking 41 straight victories on their home field, and Charlottesville had yet to win a match.
But a goal from Princeton midfielder Samuel Vigilante and penalty kick from Mary Washington forward Josh Kirkland, combined with a strong Blues defense that limited Lionsbridge to two shots on goal, allowed Charlottesville to pull off a 2-0 shutout win.
“For us to secure this win at the start of our inaugural season truly sets the tone for what Charlottesville has to offer,” Krow says.
The Lionsbridge upset is the kind of result Krow was hoping for when he joined local co-owner Brian Kuk, as well as fellow co-owners John J. Kuk and Jim Kupec, in purchasing the rights to the teams in August, two years after beginning the process of bringing USL affiliates to Charlottesville.
The introduction involved consulting with other local clubs about how best to fit into the local sports landscape. The Charlottesville Tom Sox of the Valley Baseball League contributed advice about summer league business models and the logistics of hosting players with local families, while University of Virginia soccer provided local attendance analytics.
UVA soccer games are attended by an average of more than 1,800 fans on both the men’s and women’s sides, a statistic Krow says gave the Blues owners confidence the clubs could fill the 1,500-person stands at STAB.
The Charlottesville Blues FC mascot. Photo by Tristan Williams.
“This is a family-friendly, community-based sporting event,” Krow says. “It’s going to be a different business model than probably most have seen, but it’s all about the matchday experience. It’s really about a community.”
The Blues logo—which features a Virginia Fox, the color of the Blue Ridge mountains, and a font inspired by the Paramount Theater—accordingly integrated the city.
“It’s all about tying in the community of Charlottesville on that one little crest,” Krow says.
The Blues also stayed local in their leadership search. The clubs hired two Virginia-based coaches in Carolyn Warhaftig, a teacher at Tandem Friends School whose previous coaching roles include an administrative operations role with the UVA women’s soccer team, and Tommy DiNuzzo, head coach of men’s soccer at Hampden-Sydney College since 2017.
Warhaftig and DiNuzzo were tasked with building rosters that both followed league rules, which only allow five players to join from each NCAA program, while featuring players with the drive to succeed in a program the USL describes as “pre-professional.”
“I have an understanding of the USL, and the level and soccer IQ of players playing at this level is tremendous,” Warhaftig says. “So, I knew we were not searching for just any player who wanted to play competitively. These are players who have aspirations to play in the National Women’s Soccer League, to play professionally in the States, or to play internationally at the pro level. It’s not your average player. It’s not just about your skill level and your athleticism anymore, but it’s about your tactical understanding and awareness and how well you can translate that onto the field.”
Fans watched at St. Anne’s-Belfield as both the men’s and women’s teams of the Charlottesville Blues FC faced opponents on Saturday, June 1. The women’s side lost 0-3 to the Northern Virginia FC. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Luckily for the two coaches, the Blues were able to draw on the UVA soccer program to fill out their summer rosters with precisely that kind of player.
“Charlottesville is such a great location. UVA is absolutely the starting point, because they’re probably the most historic men’s college soccer program in the country,” DiNuzzo says. “I know there’s such a great soccer following, and great players come out of Charlottesville constantly, so we have a really strong base of local Charlottesville guys.”
That local pull means the Blues are offering Virginia soccer fans a first look at two UVA transfer defenders who led their respective teams in playing time last season. Luc Mikula, who is joining the Cavaliers following three seasons with Coastal Carolina, and Moira Kelley, an incoming transfer after four years with Kansas, will each be starting out their Charlottesville careers with the Blues.
Some of Mikula and Kelley’s summer teammates will also come from in-state schools, including William & Mary, Liberty University, University of Mary Washington, Longwood, Washington and Lee, University of Richmond, VCU, and Christopher Newport; others have traveled to Charlottesville from places as far as Japan, New Zealand, and Saint Lucia.
In return for the trip to Charlottesville, players get the chance to work under coaches with experience coaching at the college level, as well as the opportunity to play against high-quality competition.
An early-season men’s scrimmage pitted the Blues roster against a few DC United professionals, which is the kind of chance Charlottesville local and Longwood midfielder Joshua Yoder was hoping for when he signed up to play for DiNuzzo this summer.
“It’s just a good opportunity to see what’s at the next level, and not compare ourselves, but see the differences,” Yoder says.
Carolina Chao, a Charlottesville High School student and Blues defender, said playing for the Blues is the first time she has found a local opportunity to compete locally at a pre-professional level.
“To be honest, there’s not been a lot of soccer opportunities in Charlottesville that are the bridge between club and college,” Chao says. “There’s a lot of those opportunities in Richmond, and of course NOVA, D.C. … I’m super grateful that this has become a thing and I’m able to take advantage of the Charlottesville Blues because it’s so unique to have that right near me, only 15 minutes away.”
Blues players aren’t getting paid, so many are juggling the season between summer jobs in a bid to step up their games before the college season begins in the fall.
Some are also taking on the busy schedule because they want to be an inaugural member of the new club, DiNuzzo said.
“We have guys on the roster that are doing this to play at a great level, be a part of a first-year team, which I think is something special, and go and then really hit the ground running going into their college soccer season in the fall,” DiNuzzo said.
The Blues’ impact on these players could potentially last past college. After all, the USL designates these clubs as a potential pipeline into getting paid to play soccer.
Warhaftig, a former Colgate player who competed professionally in Iceland, wants her players to know a pro career is more possible than ever.
“Some of them may not have the belief in themselves yet that it really is a possibility,” Warhaftig says. “But my hope is that by surrounding themselves with players who are of that mentality, they will learn that they are very capable of playing professionally and gain knowledge that just because maybe they’re not going to play professionally in the U.S., doesn’t mean that there’s not a place for them to play abroad.”
Professional opportunities are now even greater for players on the women’s team thanks to the launch of the USL Super League, a professional women’s league kicking off their inaugural season in August.
“As a female soccer player, seeing this opportunity in Charlottesville has helped me,” Chao says. “And I think for the younger females playing the sport, it’ll be super helpful to see how there’s this opportunity, not just for soccer to go beyond college, but a different kind of thing that is available to them. It’s really been eye-opening to me about where the sport can go, especially on the female side.”
While players consider their own future careers, the Blues’ ownership is already looking at the next step in the rapid growth of the Charlottesville soccer landscape.
Krow said the team’s goal is ultimately to bring professional soccer to Charlottesville by launching a men’s USL League One club and women’s USL Super League team, which would hold games throughout the majority of the year rather than squeeze them in between college seasons.
Bringing these clubs to Charlottesville would require more than just renting out a high school field, however. League guidelines require that these teams play in stadiums capable of seating at least 5,000 fans, and even UVA’s Klöckner Stadium can only fit about 3,500 viewers in traditional seating.
Fans watched at St. Anne’s-Belfield as both the men’s and women’s teams of the Charlottesville Blues FC faced opponents on Saturday, June 1. Photo by Tristan Williams.
But that lack of a suitable venue might not be an issue in a few years. Krow says the Blues’ owners are already looking at purchasing land where a stadium of that size could potentially be constructed.
For now, the possibility of professional soccer matches taking place in Charlottesville will have to wait, at least until the Blues prove they can succeed as a pre-professional summer league.
But Krow already believes the next step is possible, in part because of local sponsors like Three Notch’d Brewing, which created a beer collaboration with the teams, and the Boar’s Head Resort, the brand displayed on players’ sleeves.
These companies started collaborating with the Blues even before the clubs’ season-openers kicked off, Krow said.
“The community support here is unbelievable, once you start to go around and meet everybody,” Krow says. “The amount of community sponsors that we have brought into the mix is crazy.”
Soccer fans can watch both Blues teams play in one of five doubleheaders taking place at St. Anne’s-Belfield. The teams’ full schedules, and live streams of every home game, can be found at charlottesvillebluesfc.com.
