While all the attention has been on Bill Belichick’s first year coaching football at Kenan Stadium, a couple of sports with prouder histories on campus started even earlier and are well into their seasons. Carlos Somoano is coming off one of the more disappointing seasons in recent program history and looking to steer the men’s soccer program back into the national picture. Meanwhile Damon Nahas, after breaking a championship drought for the most decorated athletic institution in Chapel Hill as an interim
head coach, is looking to maintain that magic now that he has the full-time job. With both of their seasons now into ACC play, let’s check in on how they’re doing.
I’ll start with Nahas and the women’s soccer team. It’s not often in any college sport that you return as many key contributors from a national championship team as the 2025 Tar Heels have. Last year’s two leading goalscorers, Kate Faasse (also last year’s Herman Trophy winner) and Olivia Thomas (of championship-winning goal-scoring fame. Did I just want an excuse to watch this video again? Maybe), are back in Chapel Hill, as are last year’s first-year standouts Bella Gaetino (defense) and Linda Ullmark (attacking midfield). Tessa Dellarose, who gave last year’s back line some much-needed veteran leadership, is also back. With all that being the case, the Tar Heels were unsurprisingly ranked #1 in the country to start the season and had to be considered strong candidates to make a repeat run.
That hype was put to bed a fair amount after the Heels’ first game, an 0-2 loss in Knoxville at the hands of Tennessee. UNC put a fair number of balls on frame, but couldn’t get a breakthrough, and at the other end, the Vols scored two goals in the second half by taking advantage of a too-aggressive defense and getting in behind. The goals were mildly against the run of play, but the mistakes on the back end were pretty inexcusable. It was a similar story in their third game, another road game against an SEC team — this time Georgia. This time, the offense struggled to generate anything and the defensive connectivity issues continued en route to another 2-0 loss. Other than those two games, they’ve done what they’re supposed to and seem to be getting a bit more on track — results include a 4-0 drubbing at home of Alabama, a 3-0 win on the road against JMU, and, in their ACC opener, a thrilling 2-1 victory at Virginia Tech. Incredibly, they haven’t drawn a game yet, leaving them at 7-2-0. Nahas seems to have settled on his preferred personnel at this point, crucially in goal — the battle to fill Clare Gagne’s shoes has been a bit of a revolving door, with Liya Brooks starting out in goal but letting in a few softies and neither of her replacements really stepping up until recently. Abby Gundry played a strong 90 against Virginia Tech, and hopefully she’ll be the one to shore up the goalmouth for the now-#19 Heels.
Offensively, the story is more or less what you’d expect. That’s where a lot of the returning experience is and despite the two shutout losses, there haven’t been a lot of offensive problems for this team, which has scored 26 goals in the other 7 games. Thomas and Faasse lead the goal-scoring charge with 8 and 5 respectively. Faasse’s 20-goal season last year was always going to be hard to replicate with the losses in UNC’s midfield from last year because she made such a great living as an elite poacher, and she’s had to play more on the ball this year instead of working her magic in space without it — but she’s still having a very good season. Ullmark has become much more of an enforcer this year, leading the team with 5 assists and ranking second with 15 shots on goal — only 3 have gone in, but the way she’s playing, more are not far behind.
The defense has been more of an adventure. The loss of superstar Trinity Armstrong is palpable — fellow standouts from her class Gaetino and Aven Alvarez return to that back line, but their communication and spacing have been a touch off a lot of the time and they, along with a whole spate of defenders alongside them, have given over possession in the attacking third far too often. Perhaps the return of Dellarose from an early-season injury will help solidify things. They’ll need it, as their next two games are against the 7th- and 6th-ranked teams in the country — Florida State and Notre Dame.
The men’s team, meanwhile, started the season unranked after last year’s early NCAA Tournament exit and losing their three top goal scorers. It’s been kind of the opposite of the women’s team’s journey, with an experienced back end led by Andrew Cordes in goal as well as Parker O’Farrel in the back and Andrew Czech playing as a defensive midfielder but question marks as to who would be able to create chances and score goals. The team was relatively untested in nonconference play, but did give up a stinker of a loss at College of Charleston (on the night of football’s TCU debacle, no less). I blame FloSports weirdness, because everything in that game just looked off. Otherwise, they dismantled opponents with less talent than them, scoring 7 goals in 3 games and dominating run of play. Even in those games, though, the offense hasn’t been as fluid as you’d like. They’ve hit another gear, however, in conference play. It started with a trip down I-40 to Raleigh to visit the #5 N.C. State Wolfpack, where the rival teams played to a hard-fought scoreless draw that saw Cordes making a couple of absolutely absurd saves. That result got the Heels into the rankings for the first time this season at #21 with their next game being a home date with #4 Wake Forest.
Against the Demon Deacons, a program that has had UNC’s number as long as I’ve been following them, the Heels let in a pretty soft early goal and things looked familiar. In the second half, though, they played some of the best attacking team soccer I’ve seen from a Somoano team, thoroughly outplaying the Deacs, getting a lot of long runs in and peppering the goalmouth. An impressive defensive and goalkeeping performance from Wake was almost good enough to neutralize it, but the Heels were not to be denied, and scored an equalizer off a set piece in the 66th minute, courtesy of the head of Jack Sandmeyer. That gave them another draw against a top-5 ACC opponent. A conference record of 0-0-2 and an overall record of 3-1-2 don’t feel all that impressive, but they’ve been playing very good soccer lately — but they will have to start adding wins to their ledger for the resume to match that assessment. A game against Memphis today will be a good opportunity to get back in the win column before games against SMU and Virginia, who are decent teams but not to the level of the conference foes UNC’s already faced.
Somoano said before the season that he didn’t really expect to have a 10-15-goal scorer like Martin Vician last year, and that he’d be happy with “six guys that have six [goals]” instead of a go-to scorer. That’s been very much the case so far; the team’s 8 goals through 7 games have been scored by 6 players. Graduate transfer attacking midfielder Nacho Abeal has been the closest thing this team has to an offensive creator, leading the team in both goals (2) and assists (3). Fellow transfer Luca Nikolai is listed as a defenseman, but with as strong as UNC’s back line is, he’s been free to play more as a midfielder and spends an awful lot of time in the attacking third. He’s been the Heels’ most skilled player on-ball and is a fun player to watch — check out this absolute screamer of a goal against Evansville earlier in the season. And freshman super-sub Ryan Dugan has 2 goals in just 204 minutes of game time. After coming on for the last 30-35 minutes in most of UNC’s games to start the year, he played 60 against Wake and appears to be on the cusp of starting on this lineup. Surprisingly, Hansen has not recorded a point yet, though he’s been driving a lot of play. This team’s going to have to score more than just over a goal a game to get back to a UNC-like level of success, though, even as good as the defense and Cordes have been.
The men’s next game will be tonight (Tuesday the 16th) at 7:00 Eastern against Memphis, as I mentioned earlier, followed by a Saturday game against SMU. The women’s next action, the always-exciting matchup against Florida State, is on Wednesday at 7:00.
