Simmonds Performing Well Beyond His Years

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In the first round of the 1997 NCAA men’s soccer tournament, Virginia hosted Howard at Klöckner Stadium. It was George Gelnovatch’s second season as head coach at his alma mater, “and that Howard team scared the hell of me,” he recalled this week.

The Bison’s stars included Greg Simmonds, who would graduate as the program’s all-time leading scorer. But the Cavaliers shut down Simmonds and his teammates that day, winning 3-0, and ended up reaching the NCAA championship game.

Nearly three decades later, another Simmonds is frightening opponents on the pitch: Greg’s son Nicholas, a freshman at Virginia.

A 6-foot-4, 195-pound forward, Simmonds has a team-high 20 points this season for the fourth-ranked Wahoos. With eight goals, he’s only the player on the team with more than four, and seven have come in ACC play.

Simmonds, who was born and raised in the Richmond area, is one of only two freshmen on the midseason watch list for the Hermann Trophy, which is awarded annually to the top player in college soccer.

“I still want to continue to do the things I’ve been doing and not get too caught up with that stuff,” Simmonds said, “but it genuinely feels amazing to see things like that. I’ve gone through ups and downs in my career like anyone else, and it feels nice to have your hard work recognized. But I also have to understand that there’s so much left in the season to go and so much more to achieve.”

As the ACC’s regular-season champions, the Hoos earned a first-round bye in the conference tournament, which started Wednesday. Top-seeded Virginia (10-1-4) hosts No. 9 seed North Carolina (9-4-4) in the ACC quarterfinals Sunday at 4 p.m. This is a rematch of their Sept. 27 game at Klöckner, where the longtime rivals played to a scoreless draw.

In the Cavaliers’ penultimate regular-season game, they crushed Clemson 4-0 at Klöckner, and Simmonds turned in an unforgettable performance. He became the first UVA player since forward Will Bates in 2012 to score three goals in a game. Moreover, his hat trick was the first by a UVA freshman since Bates in 2009.

“I was super stoked for him,” said Bates, who congratulated Simmonds on Instagram when he learned of his feat. “What an accomplishment, and obviously we hope he keeps it going, especially this time of year.”

They’ve known each other for years. Bates is also from the Richmond area, and as a boy he played on a travel team coached by Greg Simmonds. After his playing career ended, Bates moved into coaching. The players on one of his teams, a U15 squad for Richmond United, included Nick Simmonds.

“It’s a funny little circle there,” said Bates, who coaches in the academy of the Atlanta United FC, a Major League Soccer club.

Greg Simmonds played professionally after graduating from Howard, and also for the Jamaican national team, and Nick Simmonds naturally gravitated to his father’s favorite sport.

“It was a definitely a soccer household through and through, because with my dad, especially being Jamaican, it’s always been soccer for him,” said Simmonds, 18, who has dual citizenship.

“But I think also because of my mom and her American influence, I tried a couple other sports when I was really young. I tried T-ball for a season. I tried basketball for a season. I had fun, but neither of them stuck, and neither of them gave me the joy that playing soccer gave me. So I’d say from a young age, it was always soccer.”

Simmonds was around 9 years old when Bates first saw him play. “Nick is a great example of how kids will all kind of peak and find their own way at different times,” Bates said.

From an early age, Simmonds clearly had the potential “to be a really, really strong player,” Bates said. “But at the end of the day, a lot of development is based on does the player maximize his time outside of team training, does he put the work in, does he put the effort in, and there’s clearly been something that’s clicked for Nick. He’s taken that step over the line from where he was previously.”

Growing up, Simmonds said, “I loved soccer, but in all kids, I think there’s a clicking moment and there’s a switch where it’s like you really realize that this is what you want to do. And to do that to the best of your ability, you have to give it everything.”

In his early teens, Simmonds said, he “realized that to be the best I can be, I have to put in extra work. So it was a bit of me being a little behind my peers because I wasn’t quite giving it everything yet, and then also growing into my body. I grew in size, and then my athleticism caught up a little bit.”

Greg Simmonds is a prominent coach in the Richmond area, and the Cavaliers’ staff stayed in touch with him over the years, Gelnovatch said. When it became obvious that Nick Simmonds was a Division I talent, UVA made him a recruiting priority.

He was already familiar with Virginia’s program. Former UVA assistant coach Mike Behonick is a family friend, “so we would come up and spend time with him and watch games,” Simmonds said. “And then also throughout the 2019 season when Daryl Dike was here, I came up to a good amount of games that season.”

Simmonds committed to UVA in December 2023, midway through his junior year at James River High School.

“I kept my process pretty narrow,” Simmonds said. “I kind of knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted ACC, and I knew I didn’t want to be too far from Richmond, and I also knew that I wanted academics. So UVA was kind of just the best of everything I was looking for.”

After graduating from James River last December, Simmonds enrolled at UVA in January and began training with his new team. “I’m having a great time,” he said of his college experience.

His parents and his grandmother are regulars at Klöckner, Simmonds said, and “having them there is that extra boost.”

Simmonds said he believes his decision to enroll at Virginia midyear is “the whole reason why I’m able to have success right now. Going in early allowed me to get acclimated with the area, the classes. All the things outside of soccer that would be on my mind right now in the fall are already second nature, because I’ve been through that in the spring. So that allowed me to focus on the field even more and in terms of just actual game play, being able to learn the coaches, learn their system, learn what they like, what they don’t like, learn the players, learn the culture. Having all of that and going through a full semester of that was amazing, and it’s what set me up for success.”

It’s been a gradual process, Gelnovatch said.

“The first six weeks of our spring—half of January, all of February—he was actually very good,” Gelnovatch said. “And then we started playing our [spring] games and he didn’t score a goal. We played five games, and three of them were ACC games, North Carolina, Wake and NC State.”

Simmonds kept applying himself, though, and by the time Virginia’s season opener arrived in August, he’d earned a starting job. He hasn’t relinquished it.

His first college goal came on the road against George Mason on Aug. 28, and he scored another on Sept. 5 to help UVA rally for a tie against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. On Sept. 19, Simmonds collected a brace in Virginia’s 6-3 win over then-No. 1 Wake Forest.

He scored the game’s only goal in UVA’s Oct. 5 win at NC State. Three weeks later, against Clemson, he equaled Bates’ accomplishments.

Gelnovatch, who played for Bruce Arena at Virginia, holds a share of the program record for goals in a season by a freshman. He scored 16 in 1983, and Alecko Eskandarian matched that total in 2000.

Simmonds may not surpass them before the season’s over, but he’s had a remarkable first year for a team looking to win the program’s eighth NCAA title.

“He’s in the gym all the time,” Gelnovatch said. “He’s taking care of his body. He wants to always train more. He stays after training. This is an 18-year-old kid, and he’s such a young pro. I don’t know how else to say it. He’s light years ahead of [the average freshman] in terms of his professionalism, and it’s one of the reasons he fits in so well here. If you’re that kind of guy, you are a pretty good fit into what we’re doing.”

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