Transfers Take Road from Nashville to Charlottesville

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — It feels like weeks have passed since the sun has been out in this college town, but having to practice in dreary conditions hasn’t soured Hayes Wood or Nick Dang on life at the University of Virginia.

“Other than the rain, it’s been good,” Wood said on a soggy weekday morning on Grounds.

Wood and Dang joined the UVA men’s soccer program this year as transfers from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. They share an apartment in Charlottesville, and they’ve been welcome additions to the Cavaliers’ program, Virginia head coach George Gelnovatch said.

“I don’t think I could pick two better guys from a leadership standpoint,” Gelnovatch said. “They’ve been through it, played in the NCAA tournament, they’re hard-working, humble guys. I couldn’t pick two better guys character-wise.”

Wood, who came to Virginia as a graduate transfer, is a 6-foot-2, 200-pound forward, and Dang, who arrived on Grounds with two years of eligibility remaining, is a 6-foot-2, 180-pound center back. Each is expected to be in the starting lineup Friday when UVA (2-2-3 overall, 0-1-2 ACC) hosts second-ranked Stanford (7-1-1, 2-0-1) in a 7:30 p.m. match at Klöckner Stadium.

At Lipscomb, they were part of a program that has made three straight trips to the NCAA tournament, and Dang’s performance against Indiana in the first round last year was a major reason Gelnovatch pursued him in the transfer portal.

The Wahoos played the Hoosiers in the NCAA tournament’s third round last season. In preparing for that game, Gelnovatch had reviewed videotape of Indiana’s 2-1 win over Lipscomb, and when the transfer portal opened later last fall, he remembered having been impressed by Dang.

“I got a close look at him in a really good game against Indiana,” Gelnovatch recalled.

Hayes had suffered a season-ending knee injury in Lipscomb’s 2023 opener and so didn’t play against Indiana, but his résumé spoke for itself. He scored 21 career goals for the Bisons and was named All-Atlantic Sun three times.

“He had enough credit in the bank, so to speak, with his performances over the years and his accolades over the years, for it to be a no-brainer for us,” Gelnovatch said.

Dang, who grew up near Nashville in Brentwood, Tenn., entered the transfer portal not long after the 2023 season ended at Lipscomb. Wood, who’s from Chattanooga, Tenn., about 135 miles southeast of Nashville, followed suit shortly thereafter.

“I wanted to try something new,” said Wood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from Lipscomb. “I’d been there so long, I was just kind of like, if I’m going to play another season, I want something else.”

Dang had similar motivation. “I’d been around Nashville for, like, 20 years of my life, so I wanted something different,” he said, “and then obviously I have aspirations to play at the next level, so then there’s that name recognition of a school like Virginia versus a school like Lipscomb.”

UVA has captured seven NCAA titles in men’s soccer.  Only Saint Louis (10) and Indiana (eight) have won more.

Wood and Dang became close friends in Nashville, but they weren’t a package deal. As he weighed his options, though, Dang was well aware that had Wood committed to the Cavaliers.

“It played into it a little bit,” Dang said, “just because it’s always nice to have a familiar face in a new environment that you’re going to. But at the end of the day, it was like, I want to do what’s best for me and he wants to do what’s best for him. And if we end up at the same spot, it’s great.”

Wood said: “Once we were both in the portal, we were like, It would be good if we were at the same place, but it wasn’t like we had to do that.”

Wood, who graduated from Lipscomb in December, stayed in Nashville during the spring semester, rehabbing his surgically repaired left knee. Dang, who redshirted at Lipscomb in 2021, enrolled at UVA in January and trained with the team in the spring.

Dang is majoring in economics, and Wood is taking classes in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

On the field, Dang is tied for the team lead with three goals. Wood has scored only once, against Saint Joseph’s in Virginia’s third game. He wasn’t cleared to play until this summer, and it’s taken him a while to round into form.

“It’s not just the injury,” Gelnovatch said. “I think he’s fully over that and not thinking about it. It’s your sharpness, your touch, when you haven’t done anything like that for a year.”

After being cleared, Wood said, “I was still just kind of working through it, because I hadn’t played in so long. It takes a while to get back to the best you can be, but I definitely feel like I’m just getting closer and closer to that every day.”

At Lipscomb, Wood played on the wing, and Virginia is using him as a striker. “So it’s a little bit different,” he said. “I’m still getting used to some of the different positions I’m in, but I think I’m starting to figure out just the right spots to be in a little bit more as the season goes along.”

Dang played right center back at Lipscomb, too, but Virginia’s defense “has little nuances that are different,” he said. “I have a little bit more leeway to go forward with the ball than at Lipscomb, I think.”

The ACC is perennially the strongest conference in men’s college soccer, and the level of competition has impressed Wood and Dang.

“We would definitely have some really hard games at Lipscomb,” Wood said. “We would go play these bigger schools, and we were that team coming in that was the underdog and really wanted to win, but here, we’re never the underdog and everybody’s coming in to beat us, so it’s a little bit different dynamic.”

The Wahoos’ defense has generally been stout this season. Opponents have scored only five goals, one of which was a penalty kick. The Hoos, though, have scored only 11 goals, and eight of them came in shutout wins over Rider and Saint Joseph’s.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” Wood said, “because we feel we’re doing what we need to win [more] games. But I think we know what’s going to come eventually. We’ve just got to keep doing the right things, and we’ll get there.”

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