Virginia

The University of Virginia first fielded a varsity men's soccer team in 1941 as a member of the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association. In their first season, the team posted a winless record, losing all nine of their matches. The Atlantic Coast Conference added soccer in 1955, followed by the first NCAA Men's Division I Soccer Championship in 1959. The team made their first appearance in the NCAA tournament in 1969.

Bruce Arena became Virginia's soccer and assistant lacrosse coach in 1978, moving exclusively to soccer in 1985. The Cavaliers' first tournament victory, over William and Mary in 1983 (a team featuring future comedian Jon Stewart), sparked a run to their first College Cup appearance.

The Cavaliers have qualified for the NCAA tournament every year since 1981; those 39 appearances are a record for men's soccer and one of the longest streaks in any NCAA sport. Their apex came in the late 1980s to early 1990s under Arena, when the team won five national collegiate championships in the span of six years. Future U.S. men's national team stars such as John Harkes and Claudio Reyna were members of these championship teams.

Virginia's first championship, in 1989, came in one of the most famous games in the history of college soccer. Played at Rutgers University on December 3 against Santa Clara, the wind chill was ten degrees below zero at kickoff and fell further during the game. Virginia led the defensive slugfest 1–0 before a rare mistake from Curt Onalfo in the 84th minute allowed Santa Clara to send the game to overtime. As NCAA rules had recently changed to limit games to one 30-minute overtime followed by a 30-minute sudden-death period – after the 1985 final required eight 10-minute extra periods – and did not allow penalty kicks in the final, Virginia and Santa Clara were declared co-champions when the game remained tied 1–1 after 150 minutes.

The Cavaliers went on to win the 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994 editions of the tournament, and as the first overall seed were upset in the semifinals in 1995. The four consecutive championships remains an NCAA record; no other team managed even three in a row until Stanford did so in 2017.

Arena departed for the new men's professional league Major League Soccer in 1996, where he led D.C. United to three MLS Cup titles, two Supporters' Shields and a CONCACAF Champions League title. He was replaced by longtime assistant George Gelnovatch, who remains the coach today. Gelnovatch returned the team to the 1997 final, where they lost 2–0 to UCLA.

After a string of early-round exits in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the team returned to the College Cup in 2006 and the national championship game in 2009. Playing against the upstart Akron Zips that year, the Cavaliers were able to prevail in a penalty kick shootout to claim their sixth NCAA title, and their first national championship since the Arena years. Virginia added a seventh NCAA championship by defeating UCLA in a shootout in the 2014 tournament.