'Sky's the Limit' for UVA Second-Year

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The All-America midfielders Steve Swanson has coached at the University of Virginia include Lori Lindsey, Sarah Huffman, Noelle Keselica, Sinead Farrelly, Morgan Brian, Danielle Colaprico, Alexis Shaffer and Lia Godfrey, many of whom went on to represent the United States on its senior national team. Addison Halpern?

“I think she’s well in that lineage,” said Swanson, who’s heading into his 27^th season leading the Cavalier women’s soccer program. “I think Addy can be as good as any player that’s ever played here. I think that's how talented she is. She's just got a good sense of the game, and there's not a lot of things she can't do in terms of her overall skill set.”

Halpern’s sophomore season starts Wednesday night, when No. 11 Virginia hosts Northwestern in a 7 o’clock game at Klöckner Stadium. In 2025, she contributed four goals and three assists and made the ACC’s All-Freshman team. Halpern started 21 games for a team that finished 14-3-5.

Had the Wahoos’ 2025 lineup not included about a half-dozen players now on professional contracts, Swanson said, Halpern’s statistics would have been more impressive.

“I think the biggest thing for her was to, like so many club players, they're playing with their same age group, and all of a sudden now they jump up four years [in college soccer],” Swanson said. “And that can be tough for everybody. Now, I think she had a really good year last year. She contributed an enormous amount. But I think there's some things that last year taught her, which the game teaches. Now it's whether or not you react to that, it's whether or not you adjust, it's whether or not you adapt. And I've already seen a huge change.

“She's a different player this year already. I think she deserves a ton of credit for that. Physically, she's come in in great shape. She's making runs out of the midfield. She's showing for the ball. She's getting on the ball more. And I think just in terms of one particular realm, the physical side, she's made great progress.”

Our 2026 schedule is out with an exciting slate of games that features 11 home contests and 10 matches against 2025 NCAA Tournament teams.

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— Virginia Women's Soccer (@UVAWomenSoccer) June 22, 2026

In her first season at UVA, Halpern said, “I definitely left some things out there. I know I had a ton of chances to score a bunch more goals, but I think that just comes with experience. So that's why I'm super excited for this year. But again, we had a great season. I was just happy to be on the field playing, getting minutes, the experience in itself.”

She’s made countless friends through soccer. Her sport of choice also allows her “to kind of just forget about the things that are happening outside and play freely and with my friends and enjoy it,” Halpern said. “I think it's a good outlet for the stress of everyday life, especially at a prestigious school like UVA. So I think that's like a really big part of it.”

Her schoolwork helps a lot in that regard, too.

As a first-year, Halpern said, “I spent a lot of time studying with friends, which was great, and in the libraries and going to class, which I enjoyed. It was kind of a disconnect from the constant soccer, soccer, soccer. And another big part of my decision was being happy in a place without soccer. If something happened and I couldn’t play soccer, being able to be happy.”

Halpern scored 180 career goals during her record-setting career at Rutgers Preparatory School, and she was named Gatorade’s national player of the year for 2024-25.

When she arrived at UVA, Halpern said, “I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to kind of live up to that a little bit. I think I wanted to prove myself as that Gatorade national player of the year. But all my teammates were great about it. Nobody ever kind of made me feel like I wasn't living up to that name, and Steve made it very clear throughout last season that he was really proud of what I was doing on and off the field, so that really helped.”

Swanson said he’s focused on “trying to get Addy more confident on the field, make sure she understands that I think there's times she can just take over games. The amount of times she got in really good positions as a first-year was incredible. And I think it's just a matter of a little bit here, a little bit there, in terms of maybe making those goals instead of misses or near misses.”

Halpern has represented the United States at the U16, U17, U18, U19 and U20 levels. For all of her accolades, though, “there’s no arrogance about her,” Swanson said. “It’s not that doesn't believe in herself and her ability and those kinds of things, but I think she's very humble and she's a very good team player.

“She knows what every situation demands. That's what I like about her, She knows when she needs to take on [defenders], she knows when she just needs to play a simple pass to an open player. She's smart that way. And I think she's creative. She can beat players off the dribble. She can score goals with her right foot or left foot. She can score with her head. I think the sky's the limit for her.”

Halpern, who was born and raised in Middlesex, N.J., about 10 miles from New Brunswick, has soccer in her bloodline. Her mother, the former Melissa Gaitka, totaled 40 goals and 23 assists in her four seasons at Radford University, which inducted her into its athletic hall of fame in 2012. Addison’s aunt—her mother’s twin sister, Nadine—also played for Radford.

“My mom was a center forward and my aunt was a center back,” Halpern said. “So they were kind of a little dynamic duo, and they both had a really successful career there.”

Her father, Eric, is “a soccer junkie, too,” Swanson said, “so Addison grew up in a culture of soccer.”

Halpern committed to UVA in the fall of her junior year of high school. She didn’t rush her decision.

“I really took my time,” she said, “because I didn't want to have any what-if moments of regretting not going somewhere. So I did take all my visits that I had originally scheduled. But overall, it just came down to the connection that I had with Steve and the staff here. I could really tell that they were super genuine. And I say this all the time: If talked to another coach maybe twice or four times, let's say, I talked to Steve 12 times to that four. He just put in a lot of effort to really communicate and let me know that I was wanted here. I really appreciated that, and that connection was kind of the final push over the line.”

Before returning to Charlottesville this summer, Halpern added an unusual item to her soccer résumé. She played on team called Sneaky FC in TST, a seven-on-seven tournament held in Cary, N.C.

Sneaky FC’s roster included her UVA teammate Carrie Helfrich, as well as multiple current and former professional players, Landon Donovan among them. TST holds tournaments in three divisions: men’s, women’s and mixed, in which Sneaky FC competed. The winning team in each division received $1 million.

After landing a spot with Sneaky FC through one of the the other women on the team, Mana Shim, Helfrich invited Halpern to join, too.

“Carrie was like, ‘I don't really want to do it alone, would you like to play, too?’ ” Halpern recalled, “and I was like, ‘Yeah, it sounds fun.’ And so we kind of just went [to Cary] three or four days early, trained a little bit and got to know like the rules and stuff, because a lot of us had never played. And then we kind of just jumped right into it, and surprisingly it ended up going really well.”

In the mixed division, women and men alternate four nine-minute periods, Halpern said, after which the format changes. Sneaky FC lost in the championship game of the mixed division. In Cary, Halpern learned “different tactics and style of play and different ways of playing the game, but mostly it was just a really good and fun experience, with no pressure,” she said. “We got to meet so many different people and see so many famous people that were playing, which was really cool. It was so amazing.”

From a team that advanced to the NCAA tournament’s second round last season, Virginia lost considerable proven talent, and Halpern knows her role in the program has changed.

In her second year, she said, “I want to be able to produce more as a player, but I think the team is going to utilize anybody who's going to make a difference and make an impact in the game, whether that's me or anybody else on the field. For us, it doesn't matter who's producing, as long as we are producing as a team. Personally, I have that standard of wanting to produce more and wanting to be able to impact games more, but I don't think necessarily people are going to be like, ‘Oh, Addy's the star player.’ I don't it's like that at all.”

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