Safradin Stands Tall as Last Line of Defense

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — For University of Virginia junior Victoria Safradin, summer break was no vacation. After the spring semester ended at UVA, she trained with two National Women’s Soccer League teams as well as the United States’ U20 national team before returning to Grounds late last month.

All that soccer meant Safradin wasn’t able to spend much time at home with her family in Eastlake, Ohio, near Cleveland. Still, for someone who’s been consumed by sport since she was young, it was a summer to remember.

Safradin has dreamed for years of playing professional soccer after college, and her stints in training with the North Carolina Courage and the Seattle Reign gave those NWSL teams an opportunity to evaluate her.

“If you perform well, they’re going to remember you,” Safradin said.

UVA is well-represented in the NWSL, and Safradin was able to reconnect this summer with three alumni of the program: Talia Staude, who plays for NC Courage; and Phoebe McClernon and Veronica Latsko, who play for the Reign.

“It’s nice being with old UVA players,” Safradin said. “It gives you more of a homey feeling.”

Her third college season officially starts next week, when No. 15 UVA visits West Virginia. But the Wahoos played an exhibition against ACC foe Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Wednesday night, and they’ll be at Klöckner Stadium on Saturday.

In an exhibition doubleheader that’s free to the public, the 17^th-ranked Cavalier men face VMI at 5:30 p.m. and the Virginia women take on DC Power, a pro team, at 8 p.m.

Safradin, who stands 5-foot-10, is in her second year as the Hoos’ starting goalkeeper. As a freshman in 2023, she backed up Cayla White, who was a graduate student. Safradin took over in goal last season and helped Virginia reach its customary postseason destination.

After missing the NCAA tournament in 2023—the only time that has happened in Steve Swanson’s long tenure as head coach—the Cavaliers came into last year determined to earn a spot in the field of 64, and “throughout the entire season that was our goal,” Safradin said. “We kept fighting to get to that spot. So it was just a really good feeling to have been a part of that process and journey.”

Safradin did her part, making 42 saves in her 18 appearances, and the coaching staff believes her potential is unlimited.

“She’s got all the tools and she applies herself,” Swanson said. “The best thing about Viki Safradin, though, is who she is as a person. She’s an amazing leader. She’s just got a great work ethic.”

In the recruiting class that graduated from high school in 2023, Sadrafin was ranked No. 1 among those at her position.

“I’ve never seen a goalkeeper make the kinds of saves she made at the youth level,” said Swanson, who’s in his 26^th year at UVA. “She gets to things that not a lot of goalkeepers could even fathom getting to. She has a great combination of size, height, explosiveness, desire, agility, and she’s got great hands.”

Assistant coach Sam Raper works with the Hoos’ goalkeepers. Raper, who’s from England, joined Swanson’s staff in the spring of 2022. Safradin was still in high school then, but Raper had coached her on U.S. youth national teams, so he was familiar with her skill set when she arrived on Grounds in the summer of 2023.

“Viki’s special quality is her explosiveness,” Raper said. “She is such an athletic goalkeeper.”

Playing behind White in 2023 allowed Safradin to “just be able to worry about herself a little bit more,” Raper said. “She didn’t have to worry about the results and doing it on the field. She was able to focus on, ‘OK, how do I develop myself to make sure I’m ready to be an ACC-caliber keeper?’ Which she already was. We were just in a fortunate position where that year we had three goalkeepers that could have played for the majority of ACC teams. So that year really allowed her to develop, focus on what she needed to do to really be as efficient and effective as possible. And she learned a lot about leadership. Cayla was one of the captains on the team, so Viki was able to see how a goalkeeper can help lead a team.”

That’s always been Safradin’s position. “I just got put in goal when I was younger, playing rec league, and I did well, and my dad said from there on, ‘You’re gonna be a goalkeeper.’ ”

It’s a position where mistakes are especially costly and often magnified, but Safradin said she loves the challenge that presents, as well as “the leadership role that comes with being a goalkeeper. I feel like it’s just like a natural thing you take on, just being in charge of your team. You get to see the whole field at the end of the day too. I really love the leadership piece. That for me is a big thing has kept me going for a long time.”

Swanson said Safradin has “always been a great leader, but I think she’s in a real position now to run our defense and to be a real vocal person as well as someone who’s gonna keep the ball out of the net and protect us. So I would imagine her leadership will continue to grow this season. I think a lot of players now are looking to her, which wasn’t always the case. Obviously, when you initially come here your first year, that’s not the case. But we have 10 first-years”—including two goalkeepers—“and I think she sets a great example every day.”

Safradin’s parents were born in Croatia, as were her two siblings, Izabela and Dejvid. War broke out in the 1990s after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and her family “just wanted to escape that and start a better life somewhere,” Safradin said. One of her aunts was living in the Cleveland area, which has a large Croatian population, and the Safradins settled there.

“I’m the only person in my family born in America,” said Safradin, who turned 20 in April.

She speaks Croatian with her parents, Safradin said, and English with her siblings. She loves visiting Croatia, but her soccer schedule can make that challenging.

“When we go, we want to stay for a month,” she said, “but I can’t do that because I have to go back and train [in the U.S.].”

When Safradin began looking at colleges, she sought out schools “that would challenge me both academically and athletically,” she said, “and obviously UVA is known as a program that gives you both of those.”

A government major, Safradin plans to minor in business and in health & wellbeing. Many members of her family work in health care, she said, and she hopes to one day find employment in that field. First, though, she wants to play soccer professionally.

“The sky’s the limit for her, no doubt,” Swanson said. “I think she could be as good as she wants to be.”

Raper feels the same way.

“I think Viki has all the qualities to become one of the best goalkeepers in the world,” he said. “Her shot-stopping qualities are unbelievable. There’s not many female goalkeepers that move and cover the goal the way that she can. And of course ultimately, what’s the major role of the goalkeeper? It’s to keep the ball out the back of the net, and she does it to a degree that I haven’t seen another goalkeeper in the college game do. I think she’s going to be a name that’s going to be known in a lot of households.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.