UVA’s loss to Virginia Tech in the Commonwealth Cup means the team misses bowl eligibility for the third straight year. Photo via UVA Athletics Communications.
The University of Virginia football season came to an ignominious end November 30, when the team lost 17-37 in the Commonwealth Cup game against Virginia Tech at Lane Stadium. UVA has now ceded the cup to Virginia Tech in 19 of the last 20 matchups (UVA’s victory came in 2019 at home in Scott Stadium).
But the bigger storyline is that both teams entered the night in line to become bowl eligible. Over the last few years the NCAA has become more lax with bowl eligibility requirements in reaction to the growth and popularity of college football, meaning far more “bowl” games have come into existence. Still, the achievement of bowl eligibility is seen as a milestone.
Bowl eligibility not only means the obvious—a potential invitation to a postseason matchup—but also brings a higher expected standard of play and a new level of respect to a program as a whole. Recruits who may have previously been out of reach may now be a possibility, and a team also has a chance to show its stuff (so to speak) to the nation, helping to draw additional recruiting interest. Despite the disappointing end to their season, the Hoos have made strides from the previous two seasons under Head Coach Tony Elliott. However, without maintaining a winning (or at least even) record, and eventually achieving bowl eligibility, any progress the program has begun to enjoy may stagnate.
Speaking of stagnation (and not to be totally doom and gloom here), some important things are happening this off-season for the Hoos. First, second-year quarterback Anthony Colandrea has officially announced that he will enter the transfer portal on December 9, as many had already suspected. Additionally, Tony Muskett, who started at QB in 2023 before being replaced by Colandrea for much of the 2024 season, will become ineligible to play for the team after finishing the season as a fifth-year senior. His absence leaves UVA with no quarterback on the roster with many college snaps under his belt (backup QB Gavin Frakes started five games for New Mexico State in 2022 before transferring to UVA). That’s a big problem, one that will likely need to be addressed via the transfer portal in the offseason.
Another issue: A large number of current UVA football players are either seniors or grad students. This includes standouts like wide receiver Malachi Fields, who led the team in receptions and receiving yards, the excellent safety duo of Jonas Sanker (whose praises I’ve been singing all season long) and Corey Thomas Jr., as well as much of the current offensive and defensive lines. In addition to the losses from graduation, I also expect a handful of underclassmen to opt into the transfer portal in the coming week. This leaves Elliott with a potential turnover of 40 to 50 players going into the 2025-2026 season.
On the bright side, Fields, Sanker, Thomas Jr., and others made their way to UVA and improved it over the past few years. And they did it in a program that was in far worse shape than it is now. Who’s to say that there aren’t a few new gems coming the Hoos’ way this offseason? No matter what happens, Elliott, Offensive Coordinator Des Kitchings, and Defensive Coordinator John Rudzinski will need to put the new pieces together and keep things moving in the right direction.
The University of Virginia football team suffered a tough loss to Louisville Saturday, on an otherwise perfect fall afternoon at Scott Stadium. The Cavs, whose October 12 defeat was their first in the ACC this season, had a couple of memorable special teams miscues and questionable play calls in the red zone that sank what were otherwise solid performances from many Hoos on both sides of the ball.
The highs
Quarterback Anthony Colandrea was once again solid in the passing attack with 279 yards, one touchdown pass, and no interceptions on the day. But it was his legs that kept things moving for UVA. With a season high 15 carries for 89 yards he looked dynamic scrambling out of the pocket when necessary, and picked up multiple key first downs to extend drives.
On offense, fourth-year wide receiver (and Monticello High School standout) Malachi Fields (nine receptions for 129 yards) and Harvard tight-end transfer Tyler Neville (seven receptions for 64 yards), have clearly become two of Colandrea’s preferred targets as the season has progressed. Expect to see more of Neville, especially in the offensive game plan from here on out. He has great rapport on the field with Colandrea and has been an invaluable asset in mid-range third-down situations. Just about the only thing neither Fields nor Neville managed to do Saturday was find the end zone, as UVA stalled out on multiple drives in Louisville territory.
On the defensive side, safety Jonas Sanker, a Covenant School grad, continued to impress. With 11 tackles, eight of which were unassisted, Sanker seemed to somehow be everywhere all at once. He brings an explosive energy to a UVA secondary that, to be fair, was overall pretty solid given its tall task on Saturday. It limited a strong Louisville receiving core (which includes former four-star recruit and recent Alabama transfer Ja’Corey Brooks) to just one TD and 231 receiving yards.
The lows
UVA’s control of the Louisville run game was abysmal. Louisville running back Isaac Brown ran wild all game long, picking up two TDs on 20 carries for 146 yards from scrimmage. This is something the coaching staff must address before the team’s next matchup, on October 19 at noon against No. 10 Clemson, whose fourth-year running back Phil Mafah has consistently shown he’s more than capable of doing similar damage against a porous defensive line.
Some of Saturday’s play-calling, particularly on short-yardage downs and in the red zone, was a bit suspect. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one scratching my head about a fourth-down passing attempt instead of kicking an easy field goal before the half. Perhaps the result of an aggressive coaching philosophy, or potentially a lack of conviction in the run game (or some other aspect of the offense), but there’s certainly something to be said for having the lead going into the locker room at halftime. Even if it’s only by three points instead of seven.
It’s late afternoon on a soccer field, at the tail end of summer. The sinking sun is casting long shadows, and the last of the mosquitoes are homing in on anything with blood. But the women on the field don’t notice the little buzzers; they’re concentrating on their drills.
Running, passing, tackling—but this game is played with a ball shaped like a honeydew melon, and passing is two-handed, underhand, always backward. To tackle, two arms full-body grab the ball carrier. The women also practice binding (a following teammate leans a shoulder into the ball-carrier’s hip) to drive through an opponent. Then three players use these skills to get around two opponents. “Call for the ball! Talk to each other!” yells Coach Clare O’Reilly. Water break, and some work on ruck skills before actual playing time.
No, you are not in Australia. This is Charlottesville, and you’re watching the Blue Ridge Bears, our local women’s rugby club.
Women’s rugby is having a big moment. If you paid attention to the Paris Olympics, you likely heard about the American women’s rugby sevens team beating powerhouse Australia to win bronze, with a heart-stopping last-minute full-field run to goal by center Alex Sedrick. And you probably saw a host of social media posts from Team USA’s center Ilona Maher promoting rugby, strong women, and body positivity. Not many women’s rugby players have been contestants on “Dancing With the Stars,” or cover models for Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue, but Maher has the attitude—and the killer red lipstick—to pull it off.
“As soon as the Olympics started, our email blew up,” says Blue Ridge Bears Club Administrator Angela Sorrentino. “We got a huge influx of players—we have from 20 to 30 members now.”
Charlottesville’s women’s rugby team is growing in size—and power. Photo by Tristan Williams.
But it’s not just Maher and the medal. Rugby, and women’s rugby in particular, has been among the fastest-growing sports for the last decade, both in the USA and worldwide. In 2019, World Rugby launched a global campaign promoting young female players as “Unstoppables,” and developed a toolkit called Try and Stop Us to help clubs drive recruitment. As of last year, according to World Rugby, the number of active registered female players increased by 34 percent, to just under 320,000; the number of female participants (someone who has tried rugby in school programs or clubs) grew by 52 percent, to more than 1.3 million young women and girls.
In the U.S., the growth of collegiate women’s rugby in the 1970s (helped by Title IX) led to the formation of a U.S. national team in 1987. Nicknamed the Eagles, the team won the inaugural 1991 Women’s World Cup, and finished second in the two subsequent World Cups. More recently, high-profile events like the Olympics have helped drive interest in the sport.
Another factor has been the increasing sense of empowerment among young girls and women—the feeling that they can be big, strong, athletic, and at home with it. UVA women’s rugby Head Coach Nancy Kechner, who began playing rugby at UVA and has been a volunteer coach for the club there for 27 years, calls it “the most empowering sport for women.”
“Its rules are exactly the same as for the men’s game,” she says. “It’s for women who want to do something different, and challenge themselves. This game is all about flow, about moving as one, and there’s a lot of decision-making on the fly.”
What draws players to the Bears, Sorrentino says, is the opportunity to keep playing a team sport into their post-academic lives. “It may seem kind of crazy to start with rugby—there’s a lot of misconceptions about it. But for rugby, physical attributes don’t really matter. Small players can be fast, and really good at tackling; some large players may think they can’t run, but there’s a place for everyone.”
No question, though, that rugby is a contact sport. O’Reilly stresses that many of the drills, and the laws (rugby has laws instead of rules, she says, because they are “open to interpretation”) are focused on safety. Tackling a ball player above the sternum, or shoving instead of grabbing with the arm, is a penalty. And there is no blocking or running interference like there is in football. Kechner, who has coached O’Reilly and several other Bears players, says rugby is about “contact, not collision.”
The teams form a scrum to restart play during their September 28 game (the Bears’ first win of the season). Photo by Tristan Williams.
For many players, rugby’s free-form nature is part of its appeal. Teams can play on a football field or soccer pitch, and there’s no special equipment beyond a mouth guard, cleats, and maybe a scrum cap. There are two versions: rugby sevens (seven on a side, playing seven-minute halves) and rugby 15s (15 on a side, playing 40-minute halves). Players are basically forwards or backs—with some interesting specialty names like scrum-half, hooker, and loosehead or tighthead props—but there’s no hierarchy, and any player can score. The ball is always in play, and the game only stops for penalties, out of bounds, and serious injuries—after which most players get bandaged up and go back in.
O’Reilly is a case in point. On the evening that I observe practice, she has an inch or so of stitches near her eye. “Yeah, I got injured,” she says, no big deal—apparently her eye and a teammate’s hand ended up near the ball at the same time. But none of the women at practice seem too worried about injuries.
The team is a real mix. Almost everyone here tonight has participated in sports for most of their lives, but only seven have played rugby before, four of them at UVA. They range in age from early 20s to early 50s, from tall to short, from thin to stocky. There are plenty of tattoos and a good bit of brightly dyed hair, and T-shirts ranging from “Ireland Rugby” and “Cape Fear Sevens” to “Queen City Unity” (a Staunton-based nonprofit) and “National Geographic.”
Bears player Kelly Graves, 22, participated in a range of sports in high school: cross country, track, softball. She started playing rugby at Christopher Newport University. “My sister played rugby, and I wanted to try it, but CNU didn’t have a women’s rugby team until my sophomore year,” she recalls. When she moved to Charlottesville after graduating last December, she was happy to find the Bears. “This is the most inclusive sport,” Graves says enthusiastically. “There’s a place for everybody, literally. You need sprinters, you need tacklers. Taller people can be harder to tackle, and playing the sidelines you need to be faster.”
Saoirse Teevan-Kamhawi, 23, grew up participating in tennis, karate, and rowing, and when she came to UVA, a colleague in her running club got Teevan-Kamhawi into rugby. She’s now working in Harrisonburg, where there’s no rugby club, so she was excited to find the Bears. “It’s a great group,” she says. “People who play rugby are just the nicest; they’re easy to be around. In rugby, you have to be willing to look a little silly and fall on your face sometimes—and we teach people how to fall. But you also have to be willing to put your heart into it. The whole game is about supporting your fellow players.”
Courtney Russ, 37, is a little older than her club mates but found the Bears for similar reasons. An athlete all through school—soccer in high school, field hockey in college—she says she “was looking for a team sport, and found this team just before the [August] call for new players. I’m new to Charlottesville, and was looking for a way to meet people.” (The group makes an effort to socialize—beers, bowling, group workouts.) As a beginning player, Russ appreciates O’Reilly and fellow coach Taylor Torro focusing on skill development: “They’re good about pairing a new person with a veteran.” The best part? “Rugby is a different way to use your body. Everyone finds a way to feel powerful and strong.”
UVA women’s rugby Head Coach Nancy Kechner says rugby is about “contact, not collision.” Photo by Tristan Williams.
That’s the goal of another recent recruit, Jen Truslow. At 53, she is the oldest Bear, but she’s not new to rugby. She was a high school exchange student in Australia, and learned Aussie rules rugby there, but when she came back to the United States, there was nowhere to play. “When I was a kid, women’s sports were second-tier,” she recalls. “No one encouraged me, girls weren’t trained to be aggressive.” But she kept her interest in the game, and after a recent weight loss, “I was feeling good and decided to try it—I’m not getting any younger—and these women have been kind and welcoming,” Truslow says, as she heads out for more drills after the water break. “And I’m pretty tough!”
Some athletes who started playing rugby in college found other college sports too competitive—meaning it was hard to get on a team because there were so many skilled players that coaches could afford to make cuts. After college, outlets are limited, especially for team sports. And full-time employment doesn’t leave a lot of hours for athletics. But all these women want to stay active, and enjoy the social interaction of being on a team. The club welcomes all comers 18 years and older. There’s a rookie skills clinic every month, and no one gets cut.
Sorrentino, who started playing rugby in 2017 at college in upstate New York, came to Charlottesville in 2021 for an internship at UVA (she’s a pediatric dietitian). She decided to stay, and began looking for a rugby club. At that point, just after the pandemic, the Bears were inactive, and Sorrentino took on reviving the club. Last year, she recruited another player to be social media director. As of this year, the Bears are an official nonprofit, and players will start paying dues to support the outfit.
The Virginia Rugby Football Club, Charlottesville’s men’s rugby group—founded in the 1960s, it’s “the oldest rugby club south of the Mason-Dixon line,” according to its Facebook page—has been supportive, Sorrentino says,
“When we were getting started, they invited us over to practice with them, which was nice but a little intimidating,” she says. The Bears now use the same practice field as VRFC, behind the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1827, two evenings a week.
The Bears are still in the building phase, as are other clubs in the region. The group schedules scrimmages and friendly games with the women’s teams from UVA and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as clubs from Richmond and Raleigh, North Carolina. They also play in local tournaments—the Cville Sevens last June, and the Christmas Sevens tournament in Glen Allen. O’Reilly is excited because the influx of players means the Bears may be able to field a team to play rugby 15s next year.
New players are always welcome to come out for the monthly skills session—if you’d rather watch than play, fans are welcome too. And get ready: March 2025 will see the launch of Women’s Elite Rugby, the first U.S. professional women’s rugby league, followed by the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England in August. In the meantime, Sorrentino is looking for a few good Bears sponsors. Consider having your organization’s logo on the backs of these strong women. As Kechner said about Ilona Maher, “She’s a great role model—one big gorgeous badass!”
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.
UVA women’s swim and dive team celebrated its fourth consecutive national championship win on March 23. Photo by Jamie Holt/UVA Athletics.
The University of Virginia women’s swim and dive team brought home the NCAA Division 1 championship title for the fourth year in a row. UVA is now part of a small list of Division 1 women’s swim teams that have won more than three consecutive NCAA championships, joining the University of Texas and Stanford University.
There were ups and downs (mostly ups) for the Cavaliers last week. They won the first event of the meet, but touched fourth in the 800-yard freestyle relay. This meant the Hoos stood in second place at the end of day one—but that didn’t last for long. Gretchen Walsh took three individual NCAA titles, and also considerably lowered the NCAA record in each of the swims. Alex Walsh also took gold in all three of her individual events, and Jasmine Nocentini touched first in the 100-yard breaststroke. After the fourth-place finish on the first day, UVA won every relay during the meet, ending with a gold in the 400-yard freestyle relay on night four. The team ended the meet in first place, nearly 87 points ahead of second-place finisher Texas.
Before 2020, UVA women’s swimming was not nearly the powerhouse we know today. In 2019, the Cavs finished the NCAA championship meet in sixth place (268.5 points behind the first-place team), with no records. Now, UVA owns 11 of 19 possible records in NCAA D1 women’s swimming. But the team didn’t stumble across these accolades solely by luck—the Hoos stepped up their game during practice and increased their efficiency as they swam to the top of the rankings.
During her first year swimming at UVA, Cavan Gormsen was immersed in a new training program, which she says is very different from what she did in high school. One difference is the use of a statistical analysis program the team does in partnership with a professor at the university. This more scientific use of numbers in swim training helps swimmers learn how to improve their technique and get the most out of their stroke. “There’s been a big difference,” she says. “I’m going fast times, but in a more efficient way where I’m conserving more energy.”
Professor Ken Ono began working with UVA’s swim team in 2019. Although a statistics prof helping out a Division 1 swim coach might sound like a joke set up, Ono’s work on the pool deck provides helpful feedback and analysis that swimmers and coaches can look at together. “What I do is not big data. I’m not doing machine learning, training for the average. I’m literally constructing a digital twin of everyone I test,” Ono says.
This creation of a “digital twin” is done by attaching an accelerometer and force sensor to the swimmer and using an underwater camera to capture data. This data includes information like moments of deceleration, and the force sensor measures the amount of force generated by a swimmer’s movements. “I look at the video trying to figure out what is causing [deceleration],” Ono says. “I write reports, I pass that along to the coaches, and the coaches keep an eye on that and help the athletes remove some of those sources.”
One swimmer who substantially improved over the past few years is Kate Douglass, who, since joining the team in 2019, has become an Olympic medalist, world champion, and NCAA and American record holder. Douglass was a statistics major in college, and is continuing this academic pursuit in graduate school while training with the team. She doesn’t typically do any statistical analysis like this in the classroom—she is more interested in number theory—and says she is working on an independent study with Ono, but unrelated to swimming.
Even if it isn’t her academic interest, Douglass has benefited from Ono’s analysis methods. “It definitely was super helpful to kind of pinpoint exact areas in a race or a stroke that [wasn’t] efficient, and figure out how to make it more efficient so that you decelerate less or get more out of each stroke.”
Douglass started her career at UVA as primarily a sprinter, but Ono says he quickly recognized that she would be a strong breaststroker. “I remember telling [Coach] Todd [DeSorbo], ‘I know she’s gonna score a ton of points for you in relays and sprint, but she’s really the most gifted’—and I still maintain that—‘in 200 breaststroke,’” he says.
Douglass now holds both the American and NCAA records in the 200 breaststroke, and has medaled in the event at multiple world championship meets. Some consider her a favorite to make the Olympic team in this event.
“Making everything that I do more efficient is gonna make me better. And I’ve specifically seen that in my breaststroke this year especially. We’ve kind of just been working on making my stroke and my kick as efficient as possible to be able to get more out of each stroke,” Douglass says. “And I’ve already seen, I feel like, a huge improvement in my 200 breaststroke this year because of that work.”
DeSorbo speaks to the impact of Ono’s use of statistical analysis to help DeSorbo and the swimmers; it’s effective and has contributed to the team’s ascension to the top of the NCAA, but it isn’t everything—maybe 10 or 20 percent of the cause. “I think it has contributed to the success of the program, to certain individuals within the program,” he says. “But I think that without a lot of the other 80 percent of what goes on in our program, none of it would happen.”
Del. Katrina Callsen (left) and state Sen. Creigh Deeds (right) are pessimistic about the future of gun legislation under Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Supplied photos.
Bill-ding blocks
Virginia’s state legislature adjourned on schedule March 9, with members saying they’d balanced the budget and passed a swath of bipartisan legislation.
The session—which ran for 60 days—was the first time Democrats held control of the legislature since the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The governor signed 64 bills into law, amended 12 bills, and vetoed eight pieces of legislation prior to the session adjourning. In a surprise move, Youngkin approved a bill ensuring protections for same-sex marriage. His vetoes and amendments otherwise fell along party lines.
“I am grateful that my colleagues worked hard to get hundreds of bills through to the governor with at least some bipartisan support,” says 54th District Del. Katrina Callsen. “I was not thrilled to see those vetoes and amendments, but was proud that 64 bills fully passed before the end of session.”
Youngkin is still considering a number of bills passed by the state House and Senate, and Charlottesville representatives are concerned about the future of several items.
“Honestly, I worry about a lot of the bills we passed,” says state Sen. Creigh Deeds. “I worry that the governor will reject a lot of those bills in large part because we didn’t agree to his arena plan.”
A Youngkin-endorsed plan for the construction of a professional sports arena in Alexandria using taxpayer dollars was blocked during bipartisan budget discussions. Some Democrats are concerned the governor will retaliate by vetoing progressive legislative priorities—including gun-control bills put forward by Callsen and Deeds.
Among the eight bills already vetoed by the governor is House Bill 46/Senate Bill 47, which sought to regulate the transfer of firearms by people prohibited from ownership.
“I don’t think that veto bodes well for our bills,” says Deeds. “I’d like to think that [Youngkin will] look at every one individually, but I’m afraid he’s just gonna look at the majority of the gun bills with one thing in mind and then use red ink and veto them.”
While lawmakers have the ability to override the governor’s decision, Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to bypass a veto when they reconvene in April.
“The people of the commonwealth spoke loud and clear last November, and they would like to see sensible gun violence prevention, protection of women’s health care, improving education, and protecting voting rights,” says 55th District Del. Amy Laufer. “I hope that we will see some changes in April that more align with those values.”
New to the legislature, Callsen and Laufer say they are proud of their achievements and enthusiastic about the work to come later this spring. Both junior delegates advanced multiple items of legislation to the governor’s desk, and Callsen was named Freshman Legislator of the Year by her peers.
Another major item to monitor in April is the budget, according to Deeds. The budget approved by the legislature includes a requirement for reentry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which will be difficult to line-item veto says the state senator.
“I think there’s a very real possibility that he vetoes the whole budget,” says Deeds. “I’m a little worried that we’ve got our work cut out for us in April.”
The Virginia state legislature reconvenes on April 17.
Gamemaker
The University of Virginia men’s basketball team starts its tournament run March 14 in the quarter-final round of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. In order to secure a spot in the NCAA tournament this Selection Sunday, the Hoos, who have a double-bye for the ACC tourney, need a good showing Thursday night. UVA will face off against either Boston College, the University of Miami, or Clemson, all teams the Cavs beat during the regular season.
Keyes sentenced
Tadashi Keyes was sentenced to life in prison in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 11 for the murder of Eldridge Smith. Prior to his death, Smith was a member of local violence interruption group Brothers United to Cease the Killing. Prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony called for the maximum sentence for Keyes, who was out on early release from a previous life sentence at the time of Smith’s murder. “This is a community and a commonwealth attorney’s office that believes in second chances, and sometimes even third and fourth chances,” said Antony. “Mr. Keyes was granted early release and given a second chance. But he chose to take that second chance, and his freedom, and execute Eldridge Smith in cold blood.” Over a dozen members of Smith’s family attended the hearing, and several expressed support for the sentence.
School shuffle
The Albemarle County School Board will hold a public hearing on redistricting recommendations on March 14 at 6:30pm. Current redistricting recommendations from Superintendent Matthew Haas would move 42 students from Stone Robinson to Stony Point Elementary, 88 students from Baker-Butler to Hollymead Elementary, and 59 students from Woodbrook to Agnor-Hurt Elementary.
The University of Virginia’s women’s swimming and diving team racked up 17 wins while claiming its fifth-straight Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
Photo by Jim Daves / UVA Athletics.
Last week, the University of Virginia swimming and diving team traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina, for the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. The women’s team returned to Charlottesville with 17 wins, six NCAA records, and a fifth-straight ACC championship title. The conference meet occurred about a month before the women’s Division I NCAA championship—a showdown with college swimming’s highest-performing athletes.
UVA Assistant Coach Tyler Fenwick couldn’t be prouder. “The team just works their tails off and they had big goals,” he says. “And just to be able to see those goals come to fruition this weekend and to be able to see all that hard work pay off—I mean, they performed at a really, really high level. As a coach, that’s fun to see.”
Every NCAA record broken at the meet was by either Alex or Gretchen Walsh. Gretchen, a third-year, grabbed NCAA, U.S. Open, and American records in the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly, and 100-yard backstroke.
Alex, a fourth year, lowered the 200-yard butterfly NCAA record by 35 hundredths of a second, breaking a record that’s stood for six years. She also, along with her sister, was part of the 200-yard freestyle relay that broke NCAA, U.S. Open, and American records.
“When you have people who are as gifted as [Alex and Gretchen] are, who work hard, that’s a lethal combination,” Fenwick says. “And really what we’ve come to kind of expect is every time they dive in the water, we don’t know what to expect, but we do expect them to be great, and they seem to outdo themselves every time they hit the water.”
A new ACC champion was also born over the weekend, with first-year Cavan Gormsen bringing home wins in the long-distance events—the 500-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle (dubbed the mile). While she didn’t crack three-time Olympian Katie Ledecky’s NCAA records from 2017, it’s very likely Gormsen will swim the events again next month at the NCAA championship.
But the Walsh sisters and Gormsen weren’t the only ones standing on the victory podium: Final heats were frequently stacked with multiple UVA women. The Hoos went 1-2 in the 50-yard freestyle, and 1-2-3 in the 200-yard breaststroke.
During the meet, the women scored 1,637.5 points, crushing the second-place team (Louisville) by nearly 500 points. According to SwimSwam, this makes the Cavaliers the highest scorers in ACC swimming championship history.
Fenwick is now looking ahead to March 20, when the team hopes to bring home its fourth-straight NCAA championship, something the Cavs have been building up to all year. “This is a team that knows that meet really well,” he says. “And they know what it takes to win at that meet.”
Local pickleball players participate in an open-play session at the Key Recreation Center on May 21, but you can find them practicing somewhere in town, on almost any given day of the week. Photo by Eze Amos
While this weekend’s PickleFest may sound like a celebration of brined cucumbers, it’s instead a festival centered around a sport that’s gained a massive following in Charlottesville over the last half a decade.
Pickleball, the paddle sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong, was created in Seattle, in 1965, and has been slowly making its way to the eastern side of the United States ever since.
“Unless you’re into pickleball, you might not know it, but people will drive an hour or more to come here to play,” says Teddy Hamilton, president of the Central Virginia Pickleball Club.
The group of about 325 pickleballers from Harrisonburg to Louisa spans all ages and athletic abilities. “It is truly a potpourri of people, and that’s one of the things I like best about it,” Hamilton says.
Her club hosted the Central Virginia Classic with nearly 200 registered pickleball competitors at the Boar’s Head over Memorial Day weekend, but those who missed that tournament will get a second shot at spectating, or even picking up the paddle, this weekend.
U.S. Open gold medalist and SickTrx member Ben Johns. Courtesy photo
PickleFest, founded by local pickleball- and tennis-based company Weigo, kicks off at Glenmore Country Club on Thursday, May 31, with a free exhibition match by a team of pros that includes U.S. Open gold medalists and SickTrx (pronounced “sick tricks”) team members Ben Johns, Kyle Yates, Irina Tereschenko and Brian Ashworth. They’re like the Harlem Globetrotters of pickleball, and best-known for their heavily practiced and entertaining paddlework.
Weigo co-founder Megan Charity, who came to America from South Africa on a tennis scholarship to Kentucky’s Campbellsville University in 2012, also has quite a bit of practice under her belt.
After graduating from Campbellsville, Charity coached multiple tennis teams and played pickleball on the side before moving to Charlottesville in 2016, where she started Weigo with Barrett Worthington, a University of Virginia Darden School of Business alum.
“In tennis, you have to spend months on the court to feel like you’re improving,” Charity says. “In pickleball, you just have to get out there and start playing.”
Worthington and Charity initially imagined an online business that would match tennis players with coaches and organize tournaments and clinics for the sport, but Worthington says it immediately became clear “that pickleball is almost taking over the tennis scene,” and now Weigo supports both sports.
On almost any night of the week year-round, you can find local pickleballers swinging paddles in open-play sessions at the Brooks Family YMCA, ACAC or several other designated spots around town, often playing for five hours at a time.
“You just get sucked in,” says Charity. “That happens to me, too. Sometimes in the summer, they play until three in the morning.”
“She’s not exaggerating,” adds Worthington. “I’ve never seen people so fanatic about anything in my life.”
Join in
You don’t have to play pickleball to relish the experience of PickleFest. Spectators of the Thursday exhibition match and Sunday tournament teams should register online at goweigo.com or contact barrett.worthington@gmail.com.
May 31: Free exhibition match by SickTrx, at 6:30pm at the Glenmore Country Club. Followed by a meet and greet with the pros (ticket required).
June 1-2: Sold-out pickleball camps.
June 3: PickleFest Classic starts at 8am at the Glenmore Country Club. Open to the public to play or watch, with free cider tastings, food and music.
The time of the May 31 exhibition match was corrected on May 29 at 10:30am.
Patrick Clancy (right), pictured with his brother and mother, is suing the Monticello High athletic director and a former soccer coach for allegedly not heeding guidelines that could have prevented him from suffering exertional heat illness.
Eze Amos
Patrick Clancy, his brother Ryan and nine other teens went to an 8am soccer practice at Monticello High School on an artificial turf field July 21, the second day of a National Weather Service heat advisory.
The two-hour practice ended around 10am, when the heat advisory officially kicked in. By 11:30am, Patrick was in the emergency room at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital being treated for heat exhaustion. C-VILLE Weekly has spoken to the parents of three other boys who were affected by the heat that day.
The response from Monticello High: Conditions were not adverse, the practice met Virginia High School League guidelines and Patrick should have brought more water.
His mother, Emily Clancy, doesn’t buy that response. A soccer player herself and a former soccer coach, she’s convinced VHSL guidelines were not followed and she’s on a crusade to get the word out about the dangers of practices on heat advisory days.
Because she worries that if she hadn’t been home that day, Patrick could have died.
It’s happened before in Albemarle County. In 2005, 18-year-old Kelly Watt, a recent Albemarle High grad and cross country runner, was preparing to go that fall to the College of William & Mary, where he’d been recruited. He took a run on a scorching July day and died from heat stroke.
Patrick, 16, went to the out-of-season practice because he wanted a position on the starting team. “We felt like we needed to prove it to the coach by showing up,” he says.
He brought two 32-ounce bottles of water and says on the artificial turf field, “you could feel [the heat] through your cleats.”
About two-thirds of the way through the practice, “I stopped sweating,” Patrick says. He also says he stopped feeling hot, but didn’t feel cool, either. “I was in a weird state of feeling dizzy and sick.”
“I’ve been playing soccer all my life,” says Ryan Clancy, now 18. “That day was the worst I ever felt. I felt like throwing up. One kid had to sit out because of the heat. Others said to me, ‘It’s so hot I think I’m going to die.’”
After the practice and helping put away equipment, by 10:15am Patrick was having a hard time getting into the car and he could hardly talk, says Ryan. “I thought when he was in the car, the air conditioning would help. I had to carry him into the house. He was so pale and shaking.”
Emily Clancy knew Patrick was in trouble as soon as he came in the house. He was crawling up the stairs, had stopped perspiring and couldn’t talk. “I got him in the shower immediately,” she says. “He couldn’t stand. He had to sit on the shower floor. His fingers were turning blue and he threw up.”
When he didn’t seem to be cooling down in the shower, she moved him to the bathtub and tried to give him water, but he threw up again, she says. He was having trouble breathing, and his toes and fingers were blue. That’s when she took him to Martha Jefferson.
After many IVs and several hours later, Patrick walked out of the emergency room with a diagnosis of heat exhaustion.
“I was mad,” says Emily Clancy. “Those conditions should never have happened.”
The coach, Stuart Pierson, emailed Clancy July 23 to say he’d gotten the medical note that Ryan brought July 22, was happy to hear Patrick was feeling better and reminded her that each player was supposed to bring a 2-liter jug of water to each practice.
“He blamed it on my 16-year-old son for not bringing enough water,” says Clancy, who says she’s licensed by the U.S. Soccer Federation and has coached for 11 years. “I’m very familiar with what coaches are supposed to know.”
Pierson, who is no longer coaching at Monticello High, declined to comment.
Clancy doesn’t believe the practice should have taken place outdoors during a heat advisory on a day with no cloud cover, no shade breaks and with no extra water offered to the players.
Matthew Pearman, the athletic director at Monticello, says there was an adequate supply of bottled water available in the coach’s vehicle parked inside the stadium, a water fountain available next to the stadium restrooms and water and ice available in the concession stand that students and coaches can access.
That water was never offered to the students and the concession stand was locked, says Clancy.
According to the National Weather Service, the heat index factors in both the temperature and relative humidity to measure how hot it really feels. And on days with full sun, the heat index can increase up to 15 degrees.
The artificial turf field exacerbated the problem, says Clancy, and VHSL guidelines say to add 35 to 55 degrees to the heat index if not playing on grass.
By 8am she calculates the heat index on the turf field in full sun was 108 degrees and by 10am it was at least 127 degrees—all in violation of VHSL guidelines, which says the maximum heat index should be 105 degrees for an outdoor practice.
That was not the conclusion athletic director Pearman reached.
He writes in an email that when the practice began at 8am, “the air temperature was 80 degrees with a heat index of 83.” When practice ended at 10am, “The air temperature was 88 degrees with a heat index of 92,” conditions “well within the VHSL Heat Guidelines, which recommend no outside activities when the heat index/humiture is 105 or higher.”
The discrepancy, believes Clancy, is that Pearman does not add 15 degrees for the full sun, nor did he include the artificial turf factor. Pearman says VHSL guidelines were followed that day.
He conducted his own investigation on a day in which he says the weather conditions were the same as July 21. Clancy scoffs that such a comparison is possible. “How in the world can you duplicate heat advisory conditions?”
In an email to Clancy, he says when he measured the turf with a psychrometer, it was 4 degrees warmer than grass. “Our determination remained, after this comparative reading, that the conditions on the morning of July 21 were not adverse,” he writes.
Not satisfied, Clancy appealed to the school’s principal and then filed a complaint with the Albemarle County schools administration.
And her sons began to experience bullying from other students and from the school administration, she says.
“Last year a lot of players were harassing me, saying, ‘What’s your mom doing? We’re trying to win,’” says Ryan Clancy. “I said, ‘My brother almost died.’ They said, ‘I don’t care.’”
And then Ryan found he was blocked on Pearman’s @MonticelloAD Twitter account. “I already felt bullied,” says Ryan.
Says Pearman, “@MonticelloAD is my personal, not school, Twitter account.” He’s says it’s not unusual to block “when a person responds to one of these posts with negative or inaccurate information,” a situation Ryan denies happened—and is unhappy that Pearman would make that allegation.
B.J. Morris’ son was also at the July 21 practice. “I found my son sprawled out under a tree,” she says. “He felt bad with a headache and nausea.”
Not all parents think conditions July 21 were that bad.
“My son was at the same practice,” says Gregg Scheibel. He says the coach told him his son was “huffing and puffing” and sat him down and gave him some water.
Scheibel says the practices were voluntary and the temperature was in the low 80s. “When you play in the heat, you take on certain risks,” he says. That’s why the athletes have physicals, he adds.
Scheibel started a petition to bring Pierson back, and he says the coach resigned because of Clancy’s complaints. The school has had four soccer coaches in the past few years.
“We’ve got an unhinged woman who has a vendetta against coaches at Monticello High,” he asserts.
“If I’ve seen a coach harming a child, I’ve spoken up,” says Clancy. “If that means I’m unhinged…”
Clancy says she’s been asked to meet with the county’s Student Health Advisory Board. And she appeared before the Albemarle County School Board February 8, and says she gave them information on what can be done to avoid such situations as the weather warms up, including posting signs warning about the extreme heat on artificial turf fields in hot weather.
“I didn’t just complain,” she says. “I have a deep fear of this happening again and I came up with solutions.”
She says she’s had parents blame her for allowing her sons to practice that day. And she says she’s blamed herself for trusting that the coach would not have them playing outdoors in full sun on a heat advisory day.
She’s also been reminded that her sons could have sat out if they were too hot, but both Patrick and Ryan say they wouldn’t have done that.
“Boys don’t do that,” Clancy agrees. “You think as an athlete you have to get to the next level. You push through.” And boys don’t think their coach would put them in harm’s way, she adds.
Because of the heat exhaustion, Patrick will be susceptible to heat in the future, she says.
Patrick, who was on the varsity team as a freshman last year, will not be playing soccer this spring, and he opted for the swim team over the winter. “Ryan and I really do like soccer, but with the coaching staff and what’s going on,” he says, they decided to forego the season.
He doesn’t want what happened to him to happen to anyone else. “I felt lucky,” says Patrick. “It could have been much worse.”
While denying that conditions were dangerous July 21, Pearman says the school will take additional precautions in the future. Certified athletic trainers will be present at summer practices and the school division’s Student Health Advisory Board will be reviewing the VHSL heat guidelines “to determine if we need to make the guidelines we follow more restrictive,” he says.
“Our primary focus is on providing our student-athletes a safe environment in which to represent Monticello High School while participating in the sports/activities they love,” he says. “Any team’s chances of winning are immaterial to that focus.”
That’s one thing about which he and Clancy can agree.
“I still have nightmares that I can’t wake my son,” she says, haunted by the thought, “What if I wasn’t home?”
Emily Clancy coached her sons’ SOCA team, which won the Virginia Soccer Festival tournament in Richmond in June 2014. Ryan is in the back row, second player from the left. Patrick is in the first row, third player from the left. Submitted photo
Urgent cool down
John MacKnight, medical director for sports medicine at UVA, says the symptoms of heat exhaustion—fatigue, lethargy, headache, nausea, cramping—can “absolutely” turn to heat stroke if the victim has stopped sweating, is “grossly disoriented” and loses consciousness.
If a person is no longer cognitively present—”if they can’t give facts—they’re in the heat stroke range,” he says. A rectal temperature of 104 degrees is the “catastrophic” range when one loses function because he’s too hot.
“Once you’ve lost the ability to dissipate core temperature, then the wheels really fall off the cart,” he says.
With heat exhaustion, cooling with cold towels, shade, air conditioning, shower and drinking water or Gatorade “usually perks them up,” he says. If that doesn’t turn the person around, it’s time for more aggressive treatment, he says, and that’s why cold tubs are at sporting events.
“Time is brain, time is muscle, time is heart,” says MacKnight. And while the practice used to be to call an ambulance, MacKnight says every minute counts, and cooling should start immediately because “every minute that your body is subjected to markedly high temps has a potential for damage. The longer the time, the more the damage. Try to bring the temperature down immediately.”
He also says that people who’ve been ill are more likely to be dehydrated from medications they’ve taken, which can “push you over the edge.” And for people with attention deficit disorder who are taking stimulants, that’s not good for training in heat and makes it harder for their bodies to get rid of heat.
“I don’t think there’s any question” that playing on artificial turf makes for hotter conditions, MacKnight says. “If the ambient temperature is 95 degrees, the field could be 125 degrees.”
Where he’s most likely to see heat exhaustion is at cross country and distance events. “Temperature doesn’t play as much a role as humidity,” he says. “With no cloud cover, kids are going to struggle.” And when it’s hot, humid and sunny, “the stars align.”
Says MacKnight, “Most of the time when people have an issue, it’s almost always a perfect storm condition.”
Any way you slice it, there’s a lot to love about Charlottesville. That’s why, every year, we ask readers to tell us their favorite things about our city—burgers, bike shops and homebuilders alike. And while we respect the answers you’ve given, you’re not the only ones with opinions. In honor of Best of C-VILLE’s 20th year, we decided to take a stab at some “bests” of our own, from food trends to music stores, even borrowing a few categories from the magazine’s two-decades-long history (like Best Chain Restaurant and Best Place to Work). Of course, as with anything, you have to take the good with the bad, so we’ve also cooked up a few complaints (it wasn’t as hard as we thought) relating to traffic, Trump and where you rest your head. There’s no telling what the next 20 years will bring—for Best of C-VILLE or Charlottesville—but we can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.
