Most of the world over, the sport of "football" is played with no pads, no helmets, no cheerleaders and certainly no pigskin. The balls are round, the tackles are sliding and Americans call it "soccer." My apple pie upbringing usually makes me partial to football as Americans know it, but this week I find myself wishing that football were more like soccer -- Virginia football and Virginia men's soccer, specifically.
While many of us were busy healing our frostbitten hands and damaged pride after Virginia football's 27-17 loss at Maryland, the otherwise unimpressive Virginia men's soccer team snuck into the ACC championship and shocked Maryland by winning the conference in a 7-6 penalty kick shootout. With Virginia football at sixth place in the ACC, coach Al Groh and his Cavaliers can only dream of a conference title. With Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech standing between Virginia and its bowl hopes, the football Cavaliers would do well to learn from their brothers in orange and blue.
Take the win however you can get it
Remember Billy McMullen's game-winning last-second grab at Clemson two years ago? The catch caused all sorts of controversy --- even though officials maintained that McMullen had not pushed off the defender in front of him, the Cavaliers' win was not untarnished. Still, it was a win, and McMullen's catch became one of the highest highlights of Groh's first season.
This year, Virginia soccer's journey to the ACC championship was about as ugly as they come. A single tournament loss would have left the Cavaliers' season under .500 for the first time in the program's history. Lo and behold, the Cavaliers hung with Clemson for 90 minutes in the quarterfinals and won on penalty kicks, 3-1. In the semifinals an own-goal by Wake Forest gave the Cavaliers a 1-0 win and a ticket to the championship game. The championship came down to a golden-goal shootout, and when the Cavaliers piled on top of goalkeeper and tournament MVP Ryan Burke, the team's relief was obvious. It wasn't pretty, but Virginia had managed to get the job done.
There have been plenty of ugly moments on the field for Virginia football this season: Punts my grandmother could kick and snaps that our basketball team couldn't catch, but rather than using these frustrations to fuel the team's fire, they marked the beginning of the Cavaliers' crumble. To win these next two games, Virginia will have to turn that attitude around. Maybe Groh should hang a sign in the locker room: "Make the best out of every bad situation."
Win when it counts
Virginia men's soccer was 8-9 coming into the ACC tournament, reeling from their first-ever loss to VCU a week earlier. They had been written off as a team and were expected to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time in 23 years. By all accounts, the team was a shambles, and expectations were low as the team traveled to Cary, N.C. for the quarterfinals.
Any athlete will tell you that the only opinion that matters is the opinion a team or a player has of itself. The Cavaliers refused to live down to expectations and their attitude added up to a conference championship and an NCAA berth. Virginia will face another test this Friday when they host Seton Hall in the first-round of the NCAA tournament. Seton Hall beat Virginia in the regular season opener this year and in 2001, and the last time the two teams met in NCAA play, the Pirates took home a 1-0 victory.
Even so, I wouldn't bet against the Cavaliers. They seem to have picked up on an adage that could make another excellent locker room lesson for Groh and his team: "It ain't over 'till it's over."
I'm not normally superstitious, but I don't think it would hurt to congratulate this year's ACC men's soccer champions at halftime of the Virginia-Georgia Tech game this weekend. Throw them up on 'Hoovision between downs. Or, if the Cavaliers are down in the third quarter, maybe Burke should simply suit up for the Virginia defense. However it happens, I hold out hope that Virginia football can find what it needs to make the Cavaliers two-sport comeback kids.
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