The Virginia Cavaliers are national champions once again.
Fourth-seeded Virginia men’s tennis defeated second-seeded Texas 4-3 on Sunday afternoon in Athens, Georgia, winning the 2026 NCAA Men’s Tennis Championship and securing the seventh national title in program history. For a program that has spent the last decade and a half establishing itself as one of the sport’s modern powers, this title was both familiar and remarkable. Familiar because Virginia has made a habit of winning in May, remarkable because of the way the Cavaliers had to fight to get there.
This was not a championship won by avoiding the sport’s heavyweights. Once Virginia reached Athens for the final three rounds, there were no soft landings left. The Cavaliers had to beat the No. 5 seed, No. 1 seed, and No. 2 seed in succession, taking down Mississippi State 4-1 in the quarterfinals, Wake Forest 4-3 in the semifinals, and Texas 4-3 in the championship match. Add in earlier NCAA Tournament wins over Rider, Columbia, and South Carolina, and the ‘Hoos finished off a six-match title run that demanded both dominance and resilience.
Sunday’s final against Texas followed the same script that had defined much of Virginia’s run: early adversity followed by a Cavalier response.
Texas took the doubles point, handing UVA a 1-0 deficit before singles play began. It was the third time during the NCAA Tournament that Virginia had dropped the opening point, and the second day in a row that the Cavaliers had to win four singles courts after falling behind. In a championship match against the No. 2 seed, that is usually a fatal problem. For this Virginia team, it became just another opportunity to prove their metal.
No. 21 Keegan Rice started things off for the Cavaliers, beating No. 41 Kalin Ivanovski 6-1, 6-3 on court two to tie the match at 1-1. Texas briefly moved back in front with a win on court four, but Stiles Brockett answered with a 6-4, 6-4 victory on court five, evening the match at 2-2. The Longhorns then won court six to take a 3-2 lead, leaving Virginia once again one point from defeat.
From there, the championship turned to No. 114 Jangjun Kim and No. 1 Dylan Dietrich.
Kim, who had taken the first set on court three, needed to close his match in straight sets to keep Virginia alive before all attention shifted to court one. He did exactly that, surviving a wild second-set tiebreaker to beat No. 35 Sebastian Eriksson 6-1, 7-6 and tie the overall match at 3-3. That left the national championship on Dietrich’s racket.
Facing Texas’ No. 3 Sebastian Gorzny, Dietrich dropped the opening set in a tiebreak. But in the lone singles match of the final to go three sets, Virginia’s No. 1 player responded with back-to-back 6-4 sets, clinching the championship with a 6-7, 6-4, 6-4 victory. Dietrich finished the NCAA Championship 5-0, went 24-1 on court one during the spring season, and was named Tournament MVP.
The final point gave Virginia its seventh NCAA team championship, its first since the back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, and the 37th NCAA team title in UVA athletics history. It also moved the Cavaliers into fourth place all-time in NCAA men’s tennis team championships, breaking a tie with Georgia.
But as dramatic as Sunday was, the emotional centerpiece of this championship run came a day earlier.
Saturday’s semifinal against Wake Forest was the kind of match that turns a great season into program lore. Wake Forest entered as the No. 1 seed, the No. 1 team in the ITA rankings, and the defending national champion. The Demon Deacons had already beaten Virginia twice during the season, including a 4-2 win in the regular season and another 4-2 victory in the ACC Championship final. For two months, Wake had been the team Virginia could not solve.
For much of Saturday’s semifinal, that looked like it would continue.
Wake Forest entered the match having not dropped a doubles point all season, and that streak continued as the Demon Deacons jumped out to a 1-0 lead. Virginia’s court-one doubles pairing of Måns Dahlberg and Dietrich saved multiple match points while serving down 2-5, but Wake ultimately closed out doubles anyway. Then the Demon Deacons carried that momentum into singles, taking five of six first sets.
After Dietrich came back to win on court one, Wake Forest answered with straight-set victories on courts two and six, pushing the overall score to 3-1. The defending champs needed just one more point. Virginia needed everything.
Then the comeback began.
Brockett, who had dropped his opening set on court five, forced a second-set tiebreaker, won it 7-2, and carried that momentum into the third for a 3-6, 7-6, 6-3 victory. Kim followed on court three, beating No. 28 Luca Pow 7-5, 5-7, 6-2 to tie the match at 3-3. Then freshman Andres Santamarta Roig finished the job on court four, rallying from a first-set loss to defeat No. 125 Aryan Shah 3-6, 7-6, 6-4.
That final point completed one of the greatest comebacks in Virginia tennis history. The Cavaliers had trailed 1-0 after doubles, watched Wake take five of six first sets, fallen behind 3-1 overall, and still found three consecutive three-set wins from Brockett, Kim, and Santamarta Roig to knock off the No. 1 team in the country.
It was also the kind of win that revealed the depth of Virginia’s lineup. Dietrich was the star and eventual tournament MVP, but this title run was not built on one player alone. Rice delivered a critical point against Texas and led the team with a 34-6 record. Kim won under enormous pressure in both the semifinal and final. Brockett provided crucial points on court five in back-to-back 4-3 matches. Santamarta Roig clinched both the Mississippi State quarterfinal and the Wake Forest semifinal. By the end of the weekend, Dietrich, Rice, and Kim were all named to the NCAA All-Tournament Team in singles.
The quarterfinal against Mississippi State should not be forgotten either. In the cleanest of Virginia’s three matches in Athens, the Cavaliers beat the fifth-seeded Bulldogs 4-1 behind doubles wins from Santamarta Roig and Kim on court two and Dahlberg and Dietrich on court one. In singles, Rice beat No. 13 Petar Jovanovic, Dietrich beat No. 9 Benito Sanchez Martinez, and Santamarta Roig clinched the match with a 6-2, 7-6 win on court four.
That result sent Virginia to the NCAA semifinals for the 13th time in the last 19 championships, another absurd marker of consistency for a program that has become one of college tennis’ defining dynasties. The Cavaliers have now won NCAA team titles in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2022, 2023, and 2026. They have reached the NCAA final nine times in the last 15 championships and have won three of the last five NCAA tournaments.
There are plenty of ways to describe what Virginia men’s tennis has become. A powerhouse. A dynasty. One of the most reliable postseason programs in college athletics. All of those labels fit.
But this championship may be remembered less for the historical résumé than for the manner in which it was won. Virginia did not cruise through Athens. They beat three of the top-five teams in the country back-to-back. They were pushed to the brink against the top two ranked teams in the country and found a way to prevail.
Head coach Andres Pedroso called it a “never say die attitude” after the final, and that might be the simplest way to frame the weekend. Virginia’s didn’t always start well. But again and again, when the season was on the line, the Cavaliers found one more point.
Seven national championships now belong to Virginia men’s tennis.
And after one of the most dramatic championship runs the program has ever produced, the ‘Hoos are back on top of the sport.