Twenty-one minutes into the contest last October, UMBC women’s soccer was in full control.
Three goals — within seven minutes of each other — put the Retrievers comfortably ahead of their America East rival Binghamton with a clear view of victory. But the Bearcats had different plans at Retriever Soccer Park that night.
When the final whistle blew, Binghamton celebrated its first conference victory of the season, scoring four unanswered goals, including three in the final 5:21, to shock UMBC, 4-3.
Delainey Varela-Keen, a 5-foot-7 senior midfielder from Lancaster, Pa., recalled the lasting effects the defeat had on the team.
“Being up 3-0 and losing was tough,” Varela-Keen said. “We carried it with us. Even this year, we have been stressing that we can’t relax, we have to keep playing.”
That defeat, one of seven straight UMBC losses to close out the season, was emblematic of the team’s 2024 campaign: A team with talent and drive that was unable to finish games against tougher competition. They finished 1-6-1 in the America East and 5-12-1 overall.
Named a co-captain this summer, Varela-Keen hopes to use the difficult experiences of last year as motivation entering her final season of college soccer. She is one of a handful of upperclassmen left from the 2024 team, which graduated 13 players in the spring. The defensive midfielder made 12 appearances (11 starts) last fall before her season ended with an ankle injury in early October. Overall, she has 37 career starts and 46 appearances and will be a critical piece for head coach Rick Stainton, who is entering his third season leading the team.
“Delainey has been an impactful player since her freshman year,” Stainton said. “To quote what I say to her is, we’re better when Delainey is on the field. And what she’s experienced, even in her own growth, is that she’s kind of a slow starter and then gets herself into the flow and then has a major impact. So, we’ve been working with her to stay consistent and keep that level.”
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Varela-Keen was finishing her senior year at Conestoga Valley High School when she was being recruited to the Retrievers by former head coach Vanessa Mann. The COVID-19 pandemic was still ongoing, which made an official visit to UMBC impossible. Still, she chose to stay close to home and give the program a chance.
She was rewarded in her freshman year under Mann, starting all 18 games, playing more than 1,300 minutes and scoring her first career goal in just her second career game, a sweet header in the box against Longwood.
“As a defensive player, I don’t get a lot of opportunities. Any time a corner comes in, I get super excited,” Varela-Keen said. “I remember getting in the box. I knew I was going to get my head on it. As a freshman, it was super exciting, using my head, scoring a goal.”
Despite her breakout performance, the Retrievers stumbled to 5-8-4 and 1-5-2 in the America East, resulting in Mann’s departure after five seasons. Two months later, Stainton was hired following three seasons as an assistant with Georgetown women’s soccer.
From the early stages of his tenure, Stainton signaled his intention to keep the current roster intact rather than encouraging transfers, which is increasingly common in modern college soccer.
“Him doing that just showed us right off the bat that he truly cared about the program,” Varela-Keen said. “Personally, I think if I wasn’t with the team I have now, I would have struggled a little bit with the change, but because we got to keep our teammates and we had each other to go through this change and kind of know where we were at the time and where we wanted to grow with this new coach, it really helped.”
After starting every game as a freshman, Varela-Keen has suffered injuries and illnesses that have kept her from playing at her peak. She made just eight starts — appearing in 18 games across 739 minutes — as a sophomore. Last season, she made two appearances off the bench to open the season and then started 11 straight games before suffering an ankle injury against Vermont on Oct. 6.
The tough luck continued in the spring when she developed benign paroxysmal positional vertigo and was unable to play in any of the team’s spring games. For several weeks, she was forced to stop playing soccer while her body recovered from the dizziness and spinning she felt when she would move around.
“It was difficult because it wasn’t that my body itself couldn’t do it, but my head was so off that I couldn’t tell where the ball was and where my body was positioned,” the senior said.
By this summer, she was healthy again, just in time to be named a co-captain. Stainton hopes the last few months of intense training and summer league soccer will translate to high-level performances through a full season.
“She is one of the hardest working, most reserved and quiet people you’ll ever meet,” Stainton said. “She’s one of those who literally leads by example.”
The key to the 2025 season will be finding offensive production from new sources after nearly all of last year’s goal-scorers, who accounted for 15 of UMBC’s 19 goals, graduated.
Varela-Keen will have some reinforcements thanks to a deep 2025 class led by Iona transfer Payton Foster, a junior forward who scored six goals last season. The group also has a local flavor, with seven of the nine new additions hailing from Maryland.
Stainton will look to Varela-Keen to be his midfield enforcer, breaking up passes and disrupting the run of play while winning 50-50 balls in the air and on the ground. Her job is critical to prevent the onslaught of possession that often leads to an opposing goal if enough consistent pressure is applied.
The defensive-minded Varela-Keen has shown a nose for scoring, notching a goal in each of her first three seasons. Last year, she earned UMBC Athlete of the Week honors after she headed home a cross with a little more than five minutes remaining against Longwood to give UMBC a 2-1 come-from-behind victory.
“Her preferred position is definitely the holding center mid, she’s got a good range of passing, but we do encourage her to get higher up the field because she can shoot from distance,” Stainton said. “She’s a big target, powerful in the air. She’s scored some great headers, so free kicks, set pieces and stuff, she’s definitely got opportunities in and around the box.”
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During their late-season skid in 2024, the Retrievers still showed fight.
Against Princeton on Oct. 22, UMBC found itself leading the eventual 14-win Ivy League champions in a close 1-0 battle. Reminiscent of the Binghamton collapse, the Retrievers conceded two goals in the final 16 minutes to squander a signature win against the NCAA Tournament-bound Tigers.
Looking back, Stainton sees the positives of those close losses. It’s a sign that his team is competing and learning and growing, that his plan of building up a program is slowly coming to fruition.
“It was expressed to us by the team leaders who said they’ve never been in these situations before,” Stainton said. “So to me, those were just further opportunities for us to grow and saying like, ‘Hey, we’re competing against these teams now, we’ve got to mentally and physically find ways to close the deal.'”
For Varela-Keen, this is her last season in college soccer. She hopes the influx of new players, a run of good health and the experience of the last three years can translate to more on-field success.
“Stressing that if we’re winning, we can’t just sit back and relax. We have to keep playing,” she said. “I don’t want to experience that kind of loss again. One game can be the determining factor for the rest of the season and every second counts.”
Photo Credit: UMBC Athletic Communications