Parker Sloan led his team in scoring for three straight years at Powhatan High School. He also, for three straight years, led everyone in scoring in the Club Champions League.
His senior year of high school? Thirty-five goals. More than enough to stoke expectations for his arrival at Virginia.
“I thought I was going to be scoring goals from the minute I got here,” Sloan said.
That was five years ago. Sloan, a forward who converted to center back in college, who this season converted to outside back, had zero goals.
Then on Tuesday night against Gardner-Webb, Sloan got the ball where midfield intersects with the sideline. Back to the sideline, he opened his body and drove forward, all the way to the edge of the box, where he cut in and shoveled the ball to fourth-year AJ Smith.
Smith returned it with one touch, and Sloan, blowing past three motionless defenders, took the pass on the outside of his right foot, following his momentum across the face of goal. Then he blasted the ball into the left side of the net.
“Five years later is a bit longer of a time frame,” Sloan said, smiling. “Just excited to finally get one in.”
It was the first of his career but his team’s second of the night, and that turned out to be only half the tally. After Sloan’s 23rd minute goal and Smith’s own in the fifth minute, fourth-year Brendan Lambe added the third in the 74th minute, and first-year Zeus Rankin poured in the fourth in the 82nd minute, capping a 4-0 win for the Cavaliers (7-5-1, 3-2 ACC) over the Bulldogs (6-4-1, 3-1 Big South).
The win marked the third in a row for Virginia. But really, to ask Virginia, it marked the second step in their resurgence after they surrendered a flurry of uncouth goals against Queens.
The win over California on Friday? That started the reset for Virginia.
“We put six games in front of us,” Coach George Gelnovatch said.
California was the first. Then Gardner-Webb on Tuesday, Duke this Friday, then Syracuse and Pittsburgh to close the regular season. That’s five. The first game of the ACC Tournament makes six. Beyond that, there is nothing guaranteed.
“We’re taking it one at a time, and that’s our season,” Gelnovatch said. “If we take care of that, we’ll be in good ACC Tournament shape, and we’ll be in good NCAA Tournament shape.”
One way to stay in shape for the postseason is to rest. Virginia’s starting lineup, slogging through a stretch of four games in 10 days that ends Friday with Duke, sorely needed a reprieve. Virginia is averaging just 106 minutes off the bench across its last four games — nine players went the full 90 against California.
Gelnovatch, he said after that game, cannot afford to rest players — “whatever I have to do in that game for the win, I’m going to do it,” he said. But that doesn’t mean the minutes are not huge when they come.
After Virginia’s second, fourth-year Marco Dos Santos came off, and Lambe sat to start the second half. Once the goals started pouring on, more players came off.
Virginia made nine substitutions in all, meaning players saw the field who rarely have this season. Gelnovatch knows what it means to them, and how huge it is for the team to get those guys on the field, even for a couple minutes.
Rankin, a first-year originally from Japan, was one of the players substituted in, making his second appearance of the season. Two minutes into coming on, he shimmied down the right and, as eyes in the stands flickered across the face of goal, he instead lowered his head and laced a shot into the bottom left corner.
The bench beat him to the corner flag. In the mayhem, third-year Arnold Matshazi and second-year Bacary Tandjigora gleefully whaled on Rankin’s neck.
He did enough, Gelnovatch said seriously, to buy “himself some consideration.”
“I’m going to be looking at him,” Gelnovatch said.
It is a moment, a first career goal, Sloan waited five years for. He has become known as Mr. Reliable, and against California, he submitted a steadfast performance as an outside back in Virginia’s 3-5-2.
“He's playing in just about any position,” Gelnovatch said then. “He just brings stability and leadership. He's playing more than he's ever played in terms of minutes.”
Tuesday’s game marked Sloan’s ninth start of the season, up from six last season, three the year before and one the year before that. His presence has been massive.
“Always gonna put in a shift, always gonna try his hardest,” Dos Santos said.
Mr. Reliable has increasingly threatened to score over the last few games.
“I’ll tell you why,” Gelnovatch said. “Because he's getting used to being a wingback. He's been playing as a center back, right? … By nature, he's an attacking player. He was a forward in high school. Off the dribble and around the goal, he’s got some good instincts.”
Sloan most often ends up on the left side, because the right belongs to third-year Alex Parvu. But he can play on either side — or in any position.
“Over the years, I’ve played every position but goalkeeper,” Sloan said.
He laughed.
“I'm still waiting for that opportunity to play goalkeeper,” he added.
Sloan is the only player on the team that has been here for five years. He grew up an hour away in Cartersville, Va., and played for FC Richmond. But his time is coming to a close.
“It's bittersweet,” Sloan said. “Grew up coming here, and it's been a great journey. I've really enjoyed it. Just making the most of every moment here.”
In the 23rd minute on Tuesday, Mr. Reliable made his moment.
Michael Liebermann is a senior associate on the sports desk and formerly served as a sports editor for the 136th term of The Cavalier Daily. He is a fourth-year College student, majoring in English in the literary prose concentration. Michael is from Westfield, N.J., and enjoys writing about men’s soccer, basketball and lacrosse. Outside of The Cavalier Daily, Michael is involved in Men’s Club Soccer and the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.
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