It’s that time of the year again, when I attempt to convince you to vote for one of five nominated clubs for Protagonist Soccer’s Club of the Year. We’ve done this four times before. In 2018, Inocentes FC from Ft. Worth, Texas won with an amazing story of immigrants finding success on the fields of the UPSL. In 2019, Pensacola FC won the WPSL title and the Club of the Year award. In 2020, one of the strangest of years due to the spiking pandemic, the Maryland Bobcats, fresh off a UPSL title and an announced move to becoming a professional club, took home the hardware. Last year, KC Courage were chosen as the Club of the Year for their heroic approach to supporting their players during the pandemic.

As always, our award is chosen by our readers. Our goal, as a staff, is to work together to narrow the field to 4-5 clubs in the lower league ranks, both men’s and women’s, and offer our choices to the readers of our site. It has yielded interesting results, honestly. Clubs seen as favorites have been passed over and dark horses have certainly surged across the finish line to take the silver. This year offered the first, in three years of pandemic, full seasons for all clubs nominated. In the end, it will be up to the readers to decide. Here’s to an amazing season of lower league stories. And here’s to our fourth nomination,Northern Virginia FC.

Hard to argue that any club we’ve picked for nomination for this award could match the run of success Northern Virginia FC (NoVa FC) has been on in 2022. The club has been competitive in every league it participated, cruising the trophy after trophy. The run has been so impressive that we even wrote about how the team won three trophies over eight days in June of this year.

The first trophy for this club would come on Saturday, June 18th, when the team captured the USASA Region 1 Championship. It was a match to remember between NoVa FC and Newtown Pride FC. NVFC players Luke Campbell and Jhonny De Souza scored in regulation, but NPFC equalized and sent the title to be decided by penalty kicks. NoVa’s keeper, Chris Palacios, won man of the match, stopping two of Newtown’s PKs to win the battle 6-4. In October, the club faced Milwaukee Bavarians in the USASA Championship final. Bavarians would take home the title 1-0.

In EPSL league play, NoVa won the league championship in late June against powerhouse Pancyprian Freedoms. Aj Sheta and Vagner Marques scored in the match and NVFC won the league title 2-0. For Coach Kareem Sheta, the club were confident heading into the season. “Expectations are to win for any club and any coach. I think for us this year things are going well and our ‘older’ guys are paving paths for the next upcoming crop of talent for NVFC.”

The club also won the Major Arena Soccer League 3 (MASL3) title in April. MASL3 is the third tier of the MASL system.

The club was less successful in its USL2 league play, finishing just outside of playoff qualification in the top-heavy Chesapeake Division. With behemoth clubs Lionsbridge and Christos FC demolishing competition this season, Northern Virginia was the only other divisional club to finish with a positive record and goal differential, however it was not enough to get the team into the playoffs.

In the NISA Independent Cup, Northern Virginia beat both of its amateur foes. Against professional NISA side, Maryland Bobcats, the club scored twice but still fell 5-2. In its qualifying run for the 2023 US Open Cup, the team has been on a stellar run of form, knocking off Steel Pulse, Germantown City, and DCFC (Washington, D.C.). This Saturday, the team heads into its Qualifying Round 4 match against West Chester United (USLP). The winner of that match will qualify for the First Round of the 2023 Cup proper.

Last month, Protagonist reported that the club would be partnering with Elite US Academy to hold trials in London in December. Coach Sheta talked about the decision to look beyond the border as a natural extension of what the USL2 club already did. “We've always had foreign players in and out of the program and we always keep the door open for future projects with former players. Tyrone and Ethan both played for us previously and that's how the idea came about.” It’s a power move by a club looking to continue to grow.

Northern Virginia FC is a club on the move, growing its footprint around the world, one trophy at a time. 2022 was an amazing year and deserves to be recognized. Voting for NoVa FC is voting for on-the-field accomplishments by a deep team who competes across multiple leagues. It’s what we so often want from clubs and so rarely get. NoVa FC delivered in 2022.

- Dan Vaughn