Virginia athletics is coming off one of the best years in program history. The Cavaliers finished fifth in the 2025-26 Learfield Directors’ Cup with 1,148.75 points, behind only Texas, Stanford, UCLA and North Carolina. It was the third top-five finish in the last four years, after fourth in 2022-23 and fifth in 2023-24. Women’s swimming and diving won a record sixth straight national title, men’s tennis won its seventh, rowing finished fourth at the NCAA Championships, and football won a program-record
11 games.
The fall teams set the tone for that run. When the fall Directors’ Cup standings were finalized in January, Virginia sat third in the country. Men’s cross country won the ACC and finished seventh nationally. Men’s soccer went unbeaten in ACC regular-season play and earned the No. 2 overall seed. Women’s soccer was a No. 1 seed. Field hockey went 16-3.
This fall has been a different story. Several of those teams began the season ranked and have since slid, and the football team that was ranked in September is now 3-2. But it is not all bad news, and there is still plenty of season left. With most teams around the midpoint, here is a pulse check on every Virginia team in action this fall.
Football: Season at a crossroads
Three weeks ago, Virginia was 2-0, ranked No. 25 in both polls and looking every bit like the team that won 11 games in 2025. Since then, it has lost to West Virginia in Charlotte and been blown out 38-7 at Florida State, where it gave up 10 sacks. At 3-2 and 1-1 in the ACC, the Cavaliers are unranked and received no votes in either poll this week.
The split is hard to ignore. Beau Pribula has completed 84.9 percent of his passes at Scott Stadium and 53.8 percent away from it. In both Power Four losses, Virginia took an early lead and then got outscored 69-13 the rest of the way. Opposing quarterbacks have scored all nine rushing touchdowns Virginia has allowed.
The good news is that all seven remaining games are ACC games, and Virginia controls its own path. The bad news is that the next stretch is the hardest on the schedule. After Syracuse comes to Charlottesville for Homecoming on Saturday, Virginia goes to No. 24 SMU, hosts Duke on a Friday night in a rematch of last year’s ACC Championship Game, and visits Wake Forest. Virginia needs three more wins to reach bowl eligibility. By Halloween, we will know whether this team is playing for a return trip to Charlotte or for a bowl game and the Commonwealth Cup.
Men’s soccer: Trying to find form
No Virginia team has fallen further from its preseason expectations than men’s soccer. George Gelnovatch’s 2025 team went 12-2-5, won the ACC regular season without a loss and earned the No. 2 national seed before falling on penalty kicks in the second round. This year’s team opened at No. 11 in the United Soccer Coaches poll. It is now 4-5-1 (2-2 ACC), unranked and outside the top 50 in the RPI.
The losses have come in frustrating fashion. Virginia lost to FGCU after finishing the game with nine men following two red cards, then lost at Wake Forest on a handball penalty with 14 seconds left. Most recently, Virginia Tech won 2-1 in Charlottesville on Oct. 2 for its first win over the Cavaliers since 2021. Still, this team has shown what it can be. Despite being outshot 26-4, Virginia won 3-2 at No. 6 Stanford on Sept. 25. AJ Smith, a NYCFC draft pick who returned for another season, and co-captain Marco Dos Santos each have five goals. Gelnovatch sits at 399 career wins, one shy of becoming only the second men’s soccer coach in ACC history to reach 400. His next chance is Tuesday against Queens. All 15 ACC teams make the conference tournament, but sitting outside the RPI top 50, Virginia’s NCAA hopes likely hinge on a run in November.
Women’s soccer: A contender, but the results against the top have not followed
Steve Swanson’s team is 6-2-2 (2-2 ACC) and ranked No. 15 by United Soccer Coaches, a few spots below its No. 11 preseason ranking. The underlying numbers are better than the ranking suggests. Virginia is eighth in the RPI, and UVA played on of the toughest schedules in the country. Both losses came against top-three opponents: 1-0 at No. 3 Wake Forest, after an 85th-minute equalizer was waved off for offside on video review, and 3-1 to No. 1 North Carolina.
Sophomore forward Addison Halpern has been one of the best attackers in the country, with eight goals and three assists. She has scored or assisted in eight of Virginia’s 10 games. Behind her, goalkeeper Victoria Safradin is on the Hermann Trophy midseason watch list and keeps climbing the program’s career shutout and win lists. Here is the catch: only six teams make the ACC Tournament this year, and Virginia is tied on points for ninth. Four of its last six games are on the road, including trips to No. 12 Notre Dame on Thursday and No. 6 Duke to close the regular season. Virginia’s NCAA Tournament spot looks safe. Those two games will decide whether it plays in the ACC Tournament, and whether it is hosting in the NCAA Tournament.
Field hockey: Close, but not yet the team it was picked to be
Field hockey entered the season ranked No. 5 and was picked second in the ACC preseason poll, coming off a 16-3 season that ended with an ACC Championship Game appearance and a painful first-round NCAA loss as the No. 4 seed. Ole Keusgen’s team is now 6-4 (2-3 ACC) and No. 11 in the NFHCA poll, a ranking likely to drop after Sunday’s 2-1 overtime loss to No. 20 Cal.
This team has not been far off. Three of the four losses were by one goal, and the 2-1 win at North Carolina, the ACC preseason favorite, showed its ceiling. It was Virginia’s first win in Chapel Hill in 20 years. The Cal loss summed up the season so far: Cal outshot Virginia 25-6, and the game reached overtime only because goalkeeper Nilou Lempers, last year’s ACC Goalkeeper of the Year, made a career-high 15 saves, the most by a Virginia keeper since 2009. Senior Mia Abello leads the team with six goals, and freshman Caitlin Connell, who scored 223 goals in high school, has added three goals and two assists. What has been missing is offense against the best teams. Virginia was shut out by both Duke and Syracuse. With trips to Boston College and No. 5 Wake Forest and home games against No. 18 Monmouth and No. 16 Louisville left, Virginia has four games to move up the ACC standings and strengthen its at-large case.
Volleyball: A new (old) home and new faces to build around
Volleyball was picked 11th in the ACC this preseason after a 13-17 season in 2025, and the start has matched that projection. Shannon Wells’ team is 5-8 (1-3 ACC) and has lost three straight, most recently at No. 13 Stanford. The highlight so far was the ACC opener at Clemson, where Virginia came back from down two sets to one to win in five, with four players reaching double-digit kills for the first time since 2024.
The transfers have carried the team. Ohio State transfer Reese Wuebker leads Virginia in kills and entered last weekend averaging 2.98 per set, and Coastal Carolina transfer Emily Fowler is hitting .361, fifth in the ACC, while averaging 1.43 blocks per set, a pace that would be the fourth-best single season in program history. Freshman Ella Brodner has led or shared the team lead in kills in each of the last two matches. After playing home matches at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and John Paul Jones Arena since January 2025, Virginia moves back into a renovated Memorial Gymnasium, its traditional home, which closed in January 2025 for renovations. The first match back is Friday’s ACC home opener against Duke, followed by North Carolina on Sunday and a home-and-home with Virginia Tech the next week. An NCAA bid is unlikely, but a push toward .500 in league play is a realistic goal.
Cross country: The women are rising while the men rebuild
Virginia’s cross-country programs are now led by interim head coach Trevor Dunbar, after Vin Lananna left in July to become CEO of the USA Track & Field Foundation. The two teams are heading in opposite directions this fall.
The women returned all five of their scorers from last year’s NCAA team and added Furman transfer Carly Wilkes, the 2024 SoCon Runner of the Year. They finished one point behind North Carolina at the Virginia Invitational, then won the Loyola Lakefront Invitational in Chicago over 16 teams, with just eight seconds separating their first and fifth runners. That run pushed Virginia back to No. 15 in the USTFCCCA poll, its preseason spot, after a brief dip to No. 20. The men won their first ACC title since 2008 last fall and finished seventh at the NCAA Championships, their best finish since 1984. But all five scorers from that team are gone, including All-American Gary Martin, and the Cavaliers are unranked nationally and 11th in the Southeast region. Both teams run at the ACC Championships in Blacksburg on Oct. 30, the women looking to improve on last year’s fifth-place finish and the men looking to extend their streak of NCAA Championship appearances to five.
Other quick hits
Men’s basketball: Ryan Odom’s team opened its preseason on Sept. 27 with an 82-73 exhibition loss to Vanderbilt, played outdoors in Charleston, S.C., with Chance Mallory and Christian Harmon sitting out (my takeaways are here). Virginia hosts Richmond at John Paul Jones Arena on Oct. 9 and visits Villanova on Oct. 22 in its final two exhibitions before the Nov. 3 opener against Drexel.
Swimming and diving: The women opened the year as the unanimous No. 1 team in the CSCAA preseason poll, fresh off a sixth straight national title, a record in women’s swimming. They won all 13 of their races against Navy in an unscored meet on Oct. 3. The men opened at No. 10. Olympic medalist Claire Curzan and Thomas Heilman were named swimmers of the meet at the season-opening College Swimming League meet.
Men’s tennis: The defending national champions are not playing team matches until the spring, but their individuals are already winning. Dylan Dietrich, the tournament MVP who clinched last May’s title, is ranked No. 1 in the ITA preseason singles rankings. Keegan Rice reached the final of the ITA All-American Championships, which earned him a spot in the NCAA Singles Championship.
Women’s tennis: Katie Rolls and Martina Genis Salas won the consolation doubles title at the ITA All-American Championships, which qualified them for the NCAA Doubles Championship, set for Nov. 17-23 in Athens, Ga. Rolls also won the singles title at the ITA National Summer Championships in August.
Women’s golf: Virginia won the Canadian Collegiate Invitational by 17 strokes. Jaclyn LaHa took medalist honors at five under, which earned her a spot in the LPGA’s 2027 CPKC Women’s Open.
Men’s golf: The two-time defending ACC champions lost Ben James, who earned his PGA Tour card through PGA Tour University, along with Paul Chang and Bryan Lee. With first-years filling out the lineup, the Cavaliers have finished near the bottom of the field in their first two events. Expect growing pains this fall.
Rowing: Coming off a fourth-place NCAA finish, its best since 2016, Virginia heads to the Head of the Charles on Oct. 18.
Baseball: Chris Pollard’s second fall in Charlottesville includes an exhibition against JMU on Oct. 24.
What’s next
The next month will shape how this fall is remembered. A few dates to circle:
- Oct. 6: Men’s soccer vs. Queens, Gelnovatch’s next shot at win No. 400
- Oct. 8: Women’s soccer at No. 12 Notre Dame
- Oct. 9: Volleyball returns to Memorial Gym vs. Duke
- Oct. 17: Football at No. 24 SMU
- Oct. 23: Football hosts Duke on Friday night, and field hockey closes the regular season against No. 16 Louisville
- Oct. 30: ACC Cross Country Championships in Blacksburg, and men’s soccer vs. No. 10 Pitt
- Nov. 5: Women’s soccer at No. 6 Duke
- Nov. 28: Football at Virginia Tech
Last fall carried Virginia to third in the midseason Directors’ Cup standings. This fall will not get there. But women’s soccer and women’s cross country still have the profiles of teams that can make noise in November, and swimming and diving and men’s tennis are positioned to carry the load again in the spring. The fall season may be a down year, but it is far from a lost one.
