Virginia Cavaliers
The Virginia Cavaliers, also known as Wahoos or Hoos, are the athletic teams representing the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville. The Cavaliers compete at the NCAA Division I level, in the Atlantic Coast Conference since 1953. Known simply as Virginia or UVA in sports media, the athletics program has twice won the Capital One Cup for men's sports after leading the nation in overall athletic excellence in those years. The Cavaliers have regularly placed among the nation's Top 5 athletics programs.
Virginia leads the ACC with 23 NCAA Championships in men's sports. The program has added 12 NCAA titles in women's sports for a grand total of 35 NCAA titles, second overall in this major conference of fifteen programs. In "revenue sports", Virginia men's basketball won the NCAA tournament championship in 2019, won ACC tournaments in 1976, in 2014 and in 2018, and have finished first in the ACC standings 11 times. College Football Hall of Fame coach George Welsh retired with the most wins in ACC history after leading Virginia football for nineteen years.
Other prominent NCAA Championship winning programs include Virginia men's lacrosse, Virginia men's soccer, Virginia men's tennis, and Virginia baseball. Virginia women's rowing has added two recent NCAA Championships while Virginia women's lacrosse won NCAA Championships in 1991, 1993, and 2004. Women's cross country won repeat NCAA Championships in 1981 and 1982. Virginia men's lacrosse repeated in 2019 and 2021 and Virginia women's swimming and diving won the Cavaliers' most recent NCAA championships with a 2021–2025 "five-peat". Non-NCAA national championships include six national titles in indoor men's tennis, two USILA titles in men's lacrosse, and one AIAW title in women's indoor track and field. UVA men's boxing was a leading collegiate program when boxing was a major national sport in the first half of the 20th century, completing four consecutive undefeated seasons between 1932 and 1936, and winning an NCAA Championship in 1938.
The Cavalier mascot represents a mounted swordsman, and there are crossed swords or sabres in the official logo. Another moniker, the "Wahoos", or "Hoos" for short, based on the university's rallying cry "Wah-hoo-wah!" is also commonly used. Though originally only used by the student body, both terms—“Wahoos” and “Hoos”—have come into widespread usage with the local media as well.
Origins and history
The school colors, adopted in 1888, are orange and navy blue. The athletic teams had previously worn grey and cardinal red but those colors did not show up very well on dirty football fields as the school was sporting its first team. A mass meeting of the student body was called, and a star player showed up wearing a navy blue and orange scarf he had brought back from a University of Oxford summer rowing expedition. The colors were chosen when another student pulled the scarf from the player's neck, waved it to the crowd and yelled: "How will this do?"The team's name was selected in reference to the historical Virginia Cavaliers, Royalists of the English Civil War said to have fled to the Colony of Virginia for protection.
Pop Lannigan was one of the "most noted athletic trainers in the East" during his tenure at Virginia from 1900 until his death in 1930. He came to the University of Virginia after previously serving as a trainer at Cornell University for 14 years. During his early years at Virginia he founded the college basketball and college boxing programs, and in track and field trained the "Arkansas Flash" James Rector to within six inches of winning the 100 meter dash at the 1908 Olympics while still a UVA student. When boxing was a major collegiate sport, Virginia's teams boxed in Memorial Gymnasium and after Lannigan's sudden death managed to go undefeated for a six-year run between 1932 and 1937, winning the NCAA Championship in 1938.
On December 4, 1953, the University of Virginia joined the Atlantic Coast Conference as the league's eighth member. Its men's basketball team won its first NCAA Championship in 2019. The baseball team won the College World Series in 2015 and has appeared in the CWS five times. The men's lacrosse team has won nine national titles, while the women have claimed three. The football team has twice been honored as ACC co-champions. The men's soccer team has won seven NCAA Championships, four consecutively. Women's swimming and diving won its first NCAA Championship in 2021 and repeated in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Women's cross country won national titles in 1981 and 1982. The men's tennis team won NCAA Championships in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2022, and 2023.
In both 2015 and 2019, the University of Virginia and Stanford University were honored for fielding the nation's top athletics programs for NCAA men's and women's sports, respectively, by virtue of winning the Capital One Cup.
Mascot
The team's eponymous mascot, known informally as the Cav Man, is a fanciful depiction of a swashbuckling Virginia Cavalier as popularized in the Cavalier fiction of the Antebellum South, armed with a sword and dressed in an orange and navy cloak and plumed hat.Fight song
is the University of Virginia's fight song. The song was a result of a contest held in 1923 by the university. The Cavalier Song, with lyrics by Lawrence Haywood Lee, Jr., and music by Fulton Lewis, Jr., was selected as the winner. Generally the second half of the song is played during sporting events. The Good Ole Song dates to 1893 and, though not a fight song, is the de facto alma mater. It is set to the music of Auld Lang Syne and is sung after each victory in every sport, and after each touchdown in football.Sports sponsored
Basketball
After partial funding from benefactor Paul Tudor Jones with naming rights, John Paul Jones Arena opened in the Fall of 2006 and is the current venue for the men's and women's basketball teams. JPJ is the largest ACC arena outside of major metropolitan areas and the fifth-largest in the conference overall. The men's team won the NCAA Championship in 2019 and the women's team finished as Runners-Up in 1990. The men's program is one of only two to have earned a No. 1 seed in all four regions of the NCAA tournament. The Cavaliers have been ranked in the Top 5 of the AP Poll a total of 96 times in the past four decades, ranking the program 9th since 1980. In the 18-game era of ACC play Virginia had four of the five teams to go 16–2 or better. UVA was also the only ACC program to finish a season 17–1. Men's coach Tony Bennett has won the prestigious Henry Iba Award three times, second only to legend John Wooden.Football
sits across from the first-year dorms along Alderman Road and is home to the University of Virginia's football program.The press box at Scott Stadium was a gift from an alumnus in honor of Norton G. Pritchett, the admired athletic director at UVA from 1934 until his death in 1950. Funding from benefactor Hunter Smith created the foundation for the 320-piece Cavalier Marching Band in 2004, replacing the Virginia Pep Band at athletic events.
The late Cavalier head coach George Welsh is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and retired as the winningest head coach in ACC history.
The current head coach is Tony Elliott, who replaced Bronco Mendenhall in December 2021.
Baseball
With the departure of head coach Dennis Womack to the front office, the arrival of head coach Brian O'Connor from Notre Dame in 2004, and the opening of Davenport Field in 2002, the UVa baseball team experienced a rebirth. Since the inception of baseball at the university in 1889, the team has reached the NCAA baseball tournament nineteen times, once each of the past three decades, but most recently fourteen years running and again in 2021 and 2022. The 2009 season of the Cavaliers saw them through to the CWS with a 49-15-1 record. The team made a return trip to Omaha two years later in 2011, where they lost to eventual national champion South Carolina in the semi-final round. In 2014, the team made a third trip to the CWS, beat Ole Miss and TCU to advance to their first ever CWS finals, but lost the three-game series to Vanderbilt 2–1. The following year, both they and Vanderbilt returned to the CWS finals in a rematch. On June 24, 2015, Virginia won in three games for their first NCAA championship in baseball and the first ACC team to win since 1955.Soccer
is home to several successful programs, including Virginia men's and women's soccer. More years than not, the University of Virginia fields one of the best squads in the country, and the program has, by far, the most successful history in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference. Since ACC Tournament play began in 1987, Virginia has played in 21 out of 33 ACC Tournament championship matches, winning eleven ACC titles, to go with their seven NCAA tournament championships. Head Coach Bruce Arena compiled a 295–58–32 record before leaving in 1995 to coach D.C. United to their first two Major League Soccer championship seasons, and later the United States to their best FIFA World Cup showing since 1930.The women's soccer team has produced three FIFA Women's World Cup winners for the U.S. women's national team, Morgan Brian Emily Sonnett and Becky Sauerbrunn, and three Olympic gold medal winners, Sauerbrunn, Angela Hucles, and Sonnett.
Lacrosse
The men's and women's lacrosse teams play their home games at Klöckner Stadium, or occasionally Turf Field or Scott Stadium. The men's program has won nine national championships and the women's program has won three national championships.The 2006 lacrosse season was noteworthy for the men's team as it established the best record in NCAA history with a perfect 17–0 season en route to winning the 2006 national championship. On the season, the team won its games by an average of more than eight goals per game and drew comparisons to some of the best lacrosse teams of all time. Senior attackman Matt Ward won the Tewaaraton Trophy as the nation's best player, was selected as a First Team All-American and the USILA Player of the Year, and was named the Final Four MVP. He also broke the record for the most goals in the NCAA tournament with 16 goals. Eight Cavaliers were named All-Americans—three on the First Team, three on the Second Team, and two on the Third Team. Five Cavaliers were selected in the 2006 Major League Lacrosse Collegiate Draft. Matt Ward, Kyle Dixon, and Michael Culver were selected in the first round, Matt Poskay in the second, and J.J. Morrissey in the third.
On March 28, 2009, the men's team played in the longest game in the history of NCAA Division I lacrosse—a 10–9 victory over Maryland in seven overtime periods.