AJ Smith stood at the party, scrolling. He refreshed, again and again, a website on his phone that displayed a simple table, lines and boxes.
Smith did not watch the 2025 MLS SuperDraft, because nobody did. The results reached the world Dec. 20, 2024 through updates on that website.
So there was the men’s soccer forward, then a sophomore, at a Christmas party over winter break in Denmark. He was following the draft. But not for himself.
Nick Dang, his teammate at Virginia, seemed due to get drafted, after a junior year as a goal-scoring, defense-anchoring centerback. Smith waited for him to get drafted, viewing the other names rattling off the board with interest. Eventually Dang’s second-round selection popped up on that screen, exciting Smith and his friends.
Later in the night, a friend asked Smith if his name, too, would appear.
“Nah,” Smith said. “Maybe next year, if I have a good season. I haven’t played that much.”
That phone screen soon proved him wrong, taking a second player, this time unexpectedly, from Virginia. Losing Dang and Smith was a big blow to the team’s roster. But ultimately, after largely differing processes, both players ended up back on the roster this season.
Their presence is proving crucial. No. 8 Virginia’s eight-game unbeaten run has stoked visions of overdue postseason triumph. For them to come true, the two returning draft picks will likely be at the center of it.
“To have them both back was unlikely,” Coach George Gelnovatch said, “and you have two guys that are a handful.”
Five minutes after the friend’s question, Smith refreshed his screen again, and there was his name. Teams almost always call the player they’re drafting before the selection becomes public. But New York City FC had called his American number, not his Danish number.
The website was his first sight of it. Third round, 18th pick, 78th overall pick. And suddenly celebration engulfed the stupefied soccer player.
“It was just, it was crazy,” Smith said. “Because everyone just started celebrating, and they started jumping on me. It was a funny day. I definitely didn't expect it.”
Dang’s selection unfolded with less drama. The defender getting drafted that night seemed prepackaged, a result of a season containing six goals, second-team All-ACC honors and countless cathartic roars after heroic tackles.
“Nick had six [goals] off of restarts,” Gelnovatch said. “I don’t know that there’s a center back in the country that had six goals.”
Dang went to Real Salt Lake as the 49th overall pick. But that did not mean for him — or, in the same way, for Smith — that he was joining the team immediately.
When a club drafts a player, the club retains the exclusive right to sign him for two years. Many players return to school to first exercise more of their NCAA eligibility, and Dang and Smith, now a senior and junior, both chose to return.
Smith and NYCFC knew he was returning almost from the moment he got drafted. He played in only eight games last season, riding the injury rollercoaster. He sprained his MCL in preseason, then recovered to play four games, then re-injured it when a goalkeeper fell on his knee.
He wooed draft scouts, though, when he returned for the ACC Tournament, a 6-foot-4 target man with legs like a gazelle’s, scoring in a quarterfinal upset of No. 1 seed Pittsburgh. Then he played the hero in Virginia’s opening NCAA Tournament game, delivering a goal and an assist in a bitter 2-1 home win against West Virginia.
But those represented Smith’s only contributions in Division I after transferring before last season from Tyler Junior College. NYCFC wanted to give him more time to develop.
“They talked about my potential, because they hadn't seen a lot, because I didn't play that much,” Smith said. “So we both agreed that another season at U.Va., playing a bit more, so they could see me, would be better.”
NYCFC called Gelnovatch right away to tell him they wanted him to get his forward back. Dang’s scenario, though, was less clear.
“I would have said he wasn’t coming back,” Gelnovatch said. “I thought he was going to get signed.”
But Dang played with a sports hernia last season, and when he went to Real Salt Lake in January for a tryout, he struggled.
“I felt like I was 80, 85 percent of my normal self from who I was in the fall,” Dang said. “So that's also part of the reason that led me to be like, I'm just gonna get surgery, fix my body up and go again.”
The Real Salt Lake coaches agreed, and Dang decided to return to Charlottesville. He got the sports hernia surgery in March. His recovery took him through the summer, all the way up to the start of this season.
He returned Sept. 13 in a trip to No. 6 Louisville. Virginia, only two weeks removed from getting eviscerated 4-1 by George Mason, could really have used a result.
Gelnovatch planned to start Dang and take him off after 45 minutes. But at halftime, the game stood at a scoreless deadlock.
Gelnovatch leaned over.
“He goes, ‘You feel good, right?’” Dang said. “I was like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’”
The plan was still to pull Dang after another 20 minutes. But freshman centerback Zach Ehrenpreis exited with a cramp, and Dang soldiered on for the full 90 minutes, contributing a couple of his vintage roars, anchoring the back line next to graduate center back Sebastian Pop.
Dang has played this year alongside Pop and Ehrenpreis at the back of Virginia’s 3-5-2 — one graduate transfer from Norway’s third tier, one precocious freshman, one draft pick. Virginia has kept clean sheets in three of the six games since Dang’s return, against No. 6 Louisville, North Carolina and No. 2 NC State. Dang has not scored yet this season, but he has gone the distance in five of his six games back.
Smith, though, registered his first goal of the season Oct. 1 against Milwaukee. Before that, he had played a secondary role for the first month of the season, coming off the bench and averaging around 30 minutes behind freshman forward Nick Simmonds, the ACC’s joint-leading scorer.
“I'm not starting,” Smith said a couple weeks ago, “but I feel like I contribute every time I come in. Obviously it’s frustrating as a striker, if you haven't scored a goal yet. But I definitely know it's coming.”
It came in the 3-2 win against the Panthers. Smith assisted the opening goal and, five minutes later, leveled a bouncing ball on the turn to give the Cavaliers the lead. He started his first game of the season the next game, against No. 2 NC State, playing 66 minutes. He played alongside Simmonds for the first time, Gelnovatch electing to use them in tandem rather than alternatingly. It paid off with a 1-0 win.
A game later, against Notre Dame, Smith doubled his season tally. Simmonds picked the ball up near midfield, turned and arrowed a pass into the run of sophomore defender Alex Parvu. Parvu slotted a ball across the box. Smith, from inside the six-yard box, roofed it.
Like Smith and like Dang, Virginia has rounded into form recently. The Cavaliers sit three points back in the conference table, and with Dang healthy and Smith peaking, they have all the tools they need to finally get over the hump this postseason.
“Everything is like day by day, like game by game,” Smith said. “But we're able to achieve something big this season, if we just stay focused and don't get too ahead of ourselves.”
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