June 7, 2024 By Andrew Ramspacher, fpa5up@virginia.edu Andrew Ramspacher, fpa5up@virginia.edu
Left to right, UVA head football coach Tony Elliott, Director of Athletics Carla Williams, President Jim Ryan, UVA Rector Robert Hardie and Hardie’s wife Molly officially open the new football operations center.
On Thursday morning, well ahead of the ceremonial ribbon-cutting, University of Virginia football players were invited to get their first glimpses of their new home.
“It was crazy,” junior kicker Will Bettridge said, “everything I expected and more.”
Veteran Cavaliers such as Bettridge have been anxiously waiting the completion of the 93,000-square-foot operations center since construction began two years ago.
That wait officially came to an end Thursday as the doors opened to a dazzling building located next to the George Welsh Indoor Practice Facility off Massie Road.
Members of the Board of Visitors, donors, football alumni, athletic department coaches and staff, and media members toured the operations center in the evening.
The night began with a ceremony featuring comments from UVA President Jim Ryan, Director of Athletics Carla Williams, Rector Robert Hardie, head football coach Tony Elliott, senior football player Elijah Gaines, head men’s lacrosse coach Lars Tiffany and Virginia Athletics Foundation executive director Kevin Miller.
Along with christening the football operations center, Thursday’s festivities included a symbolic step toward completion of another UVA Athletics construction project, the Harrison Family Olympic Sports Center, scheduled to open next summer. The final steel beam was placed atop the building, which neighbors the new football facility.
“Our teams are a perfect example of what I mean when I say we should be a university that is both great and good,” Ryan said. “Our teams compete at the very highest level and they compete to win, but to win in the right way. That will never change. And that’s why I’ve been 100% behind Carla’s vision and the Athletics Master Plan from the very start.
“These buildings are a critical part of that plan and they’ll offer new and important opportunities to our student-athletes, who work incredibly hard all year to succeed both in athletics and in all that they do inside and outside of the classroom.”
Jim Daves
Assistant Athletics Director for Media Relations
jimdaves@virginia.edu 434-243-2467
June 11, 2024
