The No. 3-ranked Virginia Cavaliers did not enter the 2025 season with elite expectations. Sure, they made it into the preseason top 25, but that’s typical for the Cavaliers. They’re historically one of the best women’s soccer programs in the country and the former home of notable alumni Emily Sonnett, Veronica Latsko, and Diana Ordonez, just to name a few.

So, to receive a No. 15 ranking at the beginning of the season didn’t quite sit right with the team. It’s not unlikely that the lowball in expectations was due to the departure of Yuna McCormack, a midfielder and USWNT U-20 member who departed Virginia after two seasons to play with fellow ACC powerhouse Florida State. Perhaps Virginia’s future was seen as a big question mark without its star player.

“We didn’t get ranked as high as we wanted to,” junior goalkeeper Victoria Safradin told 29 News Virginia in a preseason interview. “But if anything,” she continued, “that gives us more fire.”

And firepower is exactly what the Cavaliers found, as Virginia has soared up the NCAA women’s soccer rankings with a 10-1-3 record. The team has fared just fine without McCormack, and has relied heavily on both power from the forward line and reliable, precise goalkeeping to earn the top spot and keep it. In the team’s 10 wins and three ties this season, forwards Maggie Cagle and Lia Godfrey have scored 15 combined goals, while Safradin has saved over 44 shots. The Cavaliers are scoring 2.27 goals per game and making 18 shots per game, and they’ve already received all-conference honors - Safradin with ACC Defensive Player of the Week and midfielder Ella Carter with ACC Offensive Player of the Week.

“I think we’re hungry,” head coach Steve Swanson said to 29 News Virginia earlier this summer. “We’re hungry to show what we’re capable of.” And this team has shown how much more they are capable of than one sitting in 15th place.

But, their top three spot is, of course, not guaranteed. As the season moves further into conference play and competition heats up, the Cavaliers will have to fight against top seeds to keep their crown.

And sometimes, it’s not even the top seeds that can get in your way. The Cavaliers dropped a 2-0 lead late in a game against the California Bears, going home with a 2-2 tie, a result that seemed out of the question for most of the game. Virginia certainly looked sluggish to start out the match - this is the tax of the newly-aligned ACC, where teams now have to cross the country for conference games every other year - but they got on the board early by the likes of Godfrey and Cagle, unsurprisingly. California put up a heavy fight for the rest of the game, and a combination of good luck and great goaltending kept the score sheet clean. But Cal was able to tie the game up with just a handful of minutes to go, and Virginia went home with a tie against an unranked opponent.

How the Cavaliers will handle the final slate of the season is unclear. The team lost a close match-up to Stanford 2-1, and followed it by drawing against Louisville This could be the beginning of a downfall for a Virginia team that knew it was defying expectations, and perhaps didn’t know how long it would hold on. Or, this could be a blip on the radar, barely scathing the Cavaliers’ streak of excellence in an unexpectedly successful season. They’ll finish the season with Florida State, Pitt, and Boston College. None of those games are straightforward, but Coach Swanson said - they’re hungry.