A weight off his shoulders

More than a month has passed since Virginia captured its sixth NCAA men’s soccer championship.

That moment is frozen in UVa coach George Gelnovatch’s mind, and with good reason. It was the day the 800-pound gorilla was finally removed from his back.

From 1989 to 1994, UVa owned college soccer, claiming five NCAA titles in a six-year span under the direction of former coach Bruce Arena. Gelnovatch, who had played for Arena from 1983-86, was right there by his side.

When Arena moved on to coach in the professional ranks in 1996, he gave the keys to the Cavaliers’ program to his most trusted partner, a young, 30-year-old Gelnovatch.

For the next 13 years, Virginia did not win another national soccer title. Oh, the Cavaliers came close, losing to UCLA in the 1997 final and again to the Bruins in the ’06 semis. But no trophy.

Until last Dec. 13, when the Cavaliers won a 3-2 penalty-kick shootout against top-seeded Akron.

Gelnovatch, now 45, carried that burden well. All the pressure, mostly self-inflicted, was kept inside. Never did he exhibit the anxiety created by such a long championship drought.

While putting together an incredibly impressive “body of work,” as he prefers to describe his reign of the program, what finally validated him was the title. No wonder he firmly grasped the national championship trophy and clutched it to his chest as if it were a coconut to a shipwrecked sailor.

“Yes, it’s a wonderful and powerful feeling to put the cherry on the top of a 14-year body of work that we’re proud of,” Gelnovatch said.

The work includes 14 straight NCAA tournament appearances under his leadership, four ACC championships, two regular season ACC titles, 10 conference finals appearances, three College Cup berths, the highest winning percentage of any team (.700-plus) in the soccer-rich ACC over that span and 42 players sent on to the pros (second only to UCLA) out of 205 schools in Division I soccer.

Everyone always knew that Virginia had a strong soccer program, but the title further validates all those facts listed above.

Pressure? You bet there was pressure. Certainly the success prior to Gelnovatch taking over placed incredible, but unrealistic expectations on a program just when the college soccer world was turned topsy-turvy by the evolution of the professional game in the U.S.

All of a sudden, star underclassmen in the college game were being plucked away by Major League Soccer, often dashing the plans of successful programs such as UVa’s.

“The pressure is mostly what I’ve put on myself,” Gelnovatch explained. “I never thought I did it to any unhealthy extent. I never felt any pressure from the [UVa] administration. I never felt my job was in jeopardy.”

Still, the internal pressure from one’s own soul can summon demons named second-guessing one’s self, doubting one’s self, paranoia derived from public perception and myriad other questions.

“There are points that if you don’t catch yourself, it can drive you crazy,” Gelnonvatch said. “Like a stretch of three years making it to the ACC championship and losing, that feeling of losing in overtime on a goal in sudden death and all of a sudden you’ve lost a championship.”

Or that haunting feeling from the ’97 title loss to UCLA in nearby Richmond.

“That feeling of emptiness ... you can’t let it overwhelm you, and it’s not easy at a place like this, where, let’s face it, the expectations are high,” the Cavaliers’ coach confessed. “It could make you paranoid. It could get you off track and to a different route that you’re doing something wrong.

“I’m not going to lie — I think any good coach would tell you there are points in their career where you take a good look in the mirror and wonder if you’re in the right business,” Gelnovatch said. “When we lose a game, one game, I don’t sleep at night. This coaching business is tough ... winning is tough.”

When the glorious moment came — the presentation of the national championship trophy, there in the chill of Cary, N.C. — Gelnovatch struggled to keep his emotions in check.

Down deep, this wasn’t just about George Gelnovatch, it was for everyone associated with Virginia soccer, the trials and tribulations of the program, those haunting moments, those 13 long years without THE trophy.

“I feel like I’ve been here so long as a player, an assistant coach and a head coach,” he said. “I never won a national championship as a player. We were ranked No. 1 the whole season. But, I know what Bruce went through for a few years while I was here, where they were losing in the first and second round.

“I know what this championship means to the players, to the former players, and to everybody that supports the program,” Gelnovatch exclaimed. “That’s the first thing in my mind now that it has all sunken in. There’s this unbelievably proud feeling that I have to thank and kind of give back to the guys I played with, the guys that I coached as an assistant coach and to the guys who in my 14 years here who have really been close. To share this with them is the most powerful thing.”

While Arena has reminded him throughout the years — and Gelnovatch was as aware as anyone — that Virginia’s five titles over those six years, will likely never happen again, many outside the game don’t realize that times have changed.

“Those championship years, those teams would have never stayed together in this day and age,” Gelnovatch reflected. “There’s no chance Claudio Reyna [1991-93, and two-time national player of the year] would have been here all that time. He might not have even made it here. Claudio might have gone straight [from high school] to the pros this day and age.”

It was a different time with essentially no pro soccer to tamper with college stars. No way UVa would have been able to keep its best players around had there been the lure of a sure-fire successful pro league.

“If you have a good team now, you’re probably going to lose one player, maybe even two or three underclassmen,” said Gelnovatch, who just lost sophomore midfielder Tony Tchani to the MLS draft.

“In ’91, ’92, ’93, ’94, everybody came back. There was no professional soccer,” Gelnovatch said. “Jeff Agoos, A.J. Wood, Claudio all came back. Otherwise, after the ’91 championship we would have lost two, maybe three guys. Whatever was still around in ’92, we would have lost if we had even made it to the championship. It would have been a completely different time.”

And when times changed, Gelnovatch said he struggled mightily to adjust to losing players early to the pros.

“My second year when we went to the championship game, a week later I got a phone call and Ben Olsen was gone, Scott Vermillion was gone and Brian West was gone, all in one phone call,” the UVa coach said.

It was too late in the recruiting process to replace them.

“This whole dynamic was thrown in that I wasn’t prepared for and it made it very tough for me,” Gelnovatch said. “I’ll be very honest, it was very tough. It’s still tough, but more manageable because I have a better grasp of it now.”

Just like that grasp he had on the championship trophy that gray-skied day in Cary, and no gorilla in sight.