On a warm night in November, 17 games into what had clearly become the only college season for freshman forward Nick Simmonds, time was dripping low in a deadlock. No. 1 seed Virginia and No. 9 seed North Carolina, ACC Tournament quarterfinal, knotted 1-1.
Simmonds delivered a cracking volley winner in the 78th minute. It marked the ninth goal of the season for the eventual ACC Freshman of the Year and first-team All-American. Dec. 18, five weeks later and the day after his 19th birthday, FC Dallas drafted Simmonds with the third pick in the 2026 MLS SuperDraft.
It all happened rather fast.
Simmonds arrived in Charlottesville last spring and failed to score a single goal in the unofficial spring season. So after the Nov. 9 win against North Carolina, a question arises. Two months prior — before the season and the goals and the mounting hubbub — would he have had the confidence to take on that volley against the Tar Heels?
The coach is amused by the question. He throws back his head and laughs.
“I actually would say probably he shoots more than anyone, so I don’t think he’s ever lacked confidence,” Coach George Gelnovatch said.
The father, still in the stands, is earnest. He trusts in the process.
“Oh, definitely, yeah,” Greg Simmonds said. “Whatever you see he is doing now, he’s been doing that a lot throughout his youth career, a lot of extra training outside of his team setting. So everything that you see, he’s had a million reps of that already.”
Still, practice reps are not the same thing as having the conviction to — in a tied quarterfinal — take a floated ball down off the chest, maintain stride and, the angle closing down, the ball bouncing, strike it despite the open teammates trailing the play.
The player thinks for a second about the question and gives a half smile. He has the real answer.
“I want to say yes,” Simmonds said. “But, you know, obviously confidence builds over time, and I think scoring some goals gives me the room to take shots like that. So yes and no.”
If this sounds similar to perspective, like wisdom at such a young age, that is probably exactly what it is. Simmonds looked and spoke like a professional from the day he started the season-opener over a fusillade of older talent. Quickly it became clear that, before too long, he was going to officially become one.
His rise happened with the speed of that volley. People who played with Simmonds in his youth in Richmond say there was nothing remarkable about him for a while, he was just a kid playing club soccer with the rest, and then all of a sudden, in the span of a season, maybe two, he was off. Big and fast. A lethal forward.
That is the tale from down I-64 in Richmond. Already, it has passed into myth.
As a player, Simmonds is far from those days. He scored 10 goals this year in 19 games, two of them from outside the penalty area, thunderous strikes. He can be a target man — at 6-foot-4 — big enough to hold off defenders and win balls in the air, and also a distributor, frequently dropping in to receive and play on the way to five assists.
“You don’t find nines like that, that have his ability to play back to goal but also create his own shot,” California Coach Leonard Griffin said this season. “And then his ball-striking is elite.”
Virginia this season was a team stocked with talent, like a net had gone into the sea and pulled up a batch of luminescent fish. Virginia had three other forwards — senior Triton Beauvois, freshman Bacary Tandjigora and sophomore AJ Smith — that played meaningful minutes at the top of the 3-5-2. Smith, a returning draft pick, managed six fewer goals than Simmonds, who attracted the spotlight both up top and across the field.
Against North Carolina, Simmonds assisted the equalizer late in the first half before scoring the winner. He galloped onto a through ball, his blue shirt punching through two white-shirted defenders like a stone through paper. His first touch pushed the ball across to Beauvois, who thumped it home.
Three minutes later, Simmonds lifted his head from the corner of the box and pummeled a swerving, dipping shot that dinged the top of the crossbar, as if to say hello. The winner came roughly an hour later.
Then a curious thing happened in the goal celebration. Simmonds’ shirt divorced his back. He launched it into the night sky, flinging it over the onrushing crowd of teammates — and with impressively tight form, as far as shirt removal goes.
This time, Gelnovatch took issue with the celebration. Two weeks prior against Clemson, the first time the shirt was flung, had been one thing. The game was basically over. Long decided. Simmonds had just capped a hat trick, for crying out loud, the program’s first since 2012 and first by a freshman since 2009. Gelnovatch that time even offered Simmonds a hug.
But now? In a quarterfinal, separated by one goal?
There was no explaining this one.
“Early to do it,” Simmonds said, a little sheepish. “But thankfully we got it over the line. So I didn’t look dumb.”
He looked a little abashed. But only a little. Simmonds, after all, just turned 19. He is still a kid.
Gelnovatch kept that in mind as the chatter climbed. He wanted to keep the player insulated, keep him in the moment. There was plenty of time after the season to focus on the draft.
“He's got a lot of things going for him,” Gelnovatch said this season. “Big body, athletic, yet technical, can come back for the ball. He can hold the ball up. He's good off the dribble. Good engine. Tremendous, really, really good work rate. Great, coachable kid. Also a technical finisher…. He's only going to get better.”
Simmonds had his misses this season. He failed to convert in the 1-0 ACC final defeat against SMU, the loss that broke a 14-game unbeaten run. Then, despite converting from the penalty spot in regular time against UNC Greensboro in the NCAA Tournament, Simmonds’ penalty in the opening round of penalty kicks struck the crossbar. Virginia, the tournament’s No. 2 seed, dropped out after one game.
Simmonds, as he begins at FC Dallas, is fortunate to have his whole family with him on the journey. It helps that his father, Greg Simmonds, played in the MLS. He was at every game this season — along with a mini section of family, a few rows up the stands to the left of the bench.
“To have their support means the world to me,” Simmonds said. “I wouldn’t be here without them. Truly my strength. My mom, my dad, Aunt Rachelle, Uncle James.”
After every goal, Simmonds performed some celebration, often running to the corner to slap hands with the kids lining the fence. Then, at some point on the walk back to midfield, the disarray melting back into the order of kickoff, he’d raise his hands in a heart toward that mini section.
At the final buzzer against North Carolina, Greg Simmonds rotated a circle in the stands, phone out, videoing the scene.
It was a moment he wanted to remember. Things, for his son, have been moving so fast. He wanted to make sure not to forget.
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