After a challenging road trip in which the fourth-ranked Virginia women’s soccer team lost its first game of the season, the Cavaliers hit the road once again this weekend to take on another difficult opponent: the No. 14 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Virginia (10-1-0, 2-1-0 ACC) experienced a long period of success to begin the year, starting 10-0-0 and outlasting all other teams to remain the final unbeaten/untied team in the nation. The Cavaliers go into Sunday’s matchup against Notre Dame (7-3-1, 2-1-0 ACC), however, coming off a hard-fought 1-0 loss to then-fifth-ranked Florida State which dropped the Cavaliers one spot and brought the Seminoles to second in the nation.
“I think it’s definitely disappointment to lose a game like that,” senior midfielder Danielle Colaprico said. “But it’s just motivation for us to come out and get the next one and learn from that and maybe a little bit of a wakeup call, and realize that not every game is going to be handed to us, and that we have to come out and play for a full 90 minutes.”
Through 11 games, Virginia boasts the seventh-highest scoring offense in the nation, tallying 3.72 goals per game while allowing just .455 goals, good for 15th in the country. These are reassuring statistics for the Cavaliers, who are headed for their second-straight matchup against a ranked team — a game which will certainly push the team to perform at its best.
“I’m really glad we’re playing ND — such a tough opponent — after this loss, because I think it’s going to make us perform even better,” junior forward Makenzy Doniak said. “I think playing a good team makes you want to play your best, because it adds credibility to your team if you win.”
As if playing two ranked ACC opponents in a week was not enough of a challenge for a Virginia team with an already taxing travel schedule, complete with trips to Michigan and Alabama, the Cavaliers were stranded in the Charlotte airport for nine hours on their way back from Tallahassee, arriving home nearly 14 hours after they departed Monday morning.
“I think it’s definitely tiring, and we’re not happy about it — but it’s just another obstacle we have to get through,” Colaprico said. “We’re coming out [this week] and we’re going to work hard and put that behind us and get ready for this weekend.”
Though travel problems can set a team back, this particular roadblock may end up being a positive for a Virginia team which added nine new players this season.
“It was a really tough day, but we all went through it together, so I think it brought us a little closer,” Doniak said.
As the Cavaliers prepare for Sunday’s game, the focus among the upperclassmen leaders and the coaching staff is on improving their own play rather than harping on the opposition’s style.
“We don’t have any control over Florida State’s tactics or Notre Dame’s tactics,” coach Steve Swanson said. “So we have to be able to control … what we can do as a team, and that’s what we’re focusing on this week — and how can we get our performance better for 90 minutes on both sides of the ball.”
Though the Cavaliers may be focusing on their own play, it will be tough for them to avoid game planning for Notre Dame’s modern-day Rudy, 5-foot-9-inch sophomore goalkeeper Kaela Little, who is second in the ACC in shutouts and was named the ACC women’s soccer player of the week last week after extraordinary play during a two-game road trip, in which the Irish shut out Virginia Tech — a team which came in with a 38-3 aggregate goal advantage — and Wake Forest, who had played UCLA close just a week earlier.
And for fans of the Cavaliers, a game against Notre Dame should conjure up memories of last season’s epic, rain-soaked Thursday night game which went into double overtime — when then-junior midfielder Morgan Brian knocked in a golden goal in the 101st minute to give Virginia its 13th win of the season.
Kickoff for the second-ever regular season ACC matchup between the two historic programs is at 1 p.m. Sunday at Alumni Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.
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