When the Virginia Cavaliers kick off the season Sept. 2, much of the college football world will be tuning in — and not just because they’re playing Tennessee in one of the season’s marquee openers.
The game will also be the Cavaliers’ first since they canceled the final two games of last season after defensive end D’Sean Perry and wide receivers Lavel Davis Jr. and Devin Chandler were killed in a shooting aboard a charter bus in an on-campus parking garage. Running back Mike Hollins, who was injured in the shooting, is on the roster and planning to play this season.
Speaking at ACC Media Days in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday, Virginia coach Tony Elliott said coming back from the tragedy — and trying to use it as a positive force this season — has been a focus in the offseason.
“These guys accepted the challenge,” said Elliott, whose team finished 3-7 last season, his first in Charlottesville. “They understood that they have a responsibility to Lavel, Devin and D’Sean to move forward in the right way. Not moving on. There’s a difference. That was a big message within the program is we’re not moving on. We’re never going to forget this. We’re not going to put this to the side and act like it didn’t happen.”
Davis, Perry and Chandler were shot and killed Nov. 13 of last year after returning to campus from a field trip to Washington, D.C. A former Virginia player, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. was charged with three counts of second-degree murder.
Defensive end Chico Bennett Jr., a graduate senior, acknowledged Wednesday that the tragedy played a role in his decision to come back this season to play.
“As Coach Elliott likes to say turn tragedy into triumph,” Bennett told the media. “Surely we embodied that as a team and then us in our individual lives. As we grieve alone and then we grieve together as a unit, I think it was definitely important for me to come back.”
Elliott took it further, saying that he wants the entire program to make honoring the legacies of Perry, Davis and Chandler a focus on and off the field.
“Hopefully anybody that has a connection to our program will see that it’s bigger than us and ultimately as we all chase purpose in life, we realize that purpose is not about me, it’s about what I can do for others,” Elliott said. “We can take something that is unexplainable, unprecedented, and very, very difficult — you wouldn’t want to wish it on anybody — and we can find the beauty of it and use it to inspire others going forward by the way that we respond, the way that we play.
“By the way that they live, by the way that they go forward in the future, and the individual ways that they decide they want to honor the legacies of Lavel, Devin and D’Sean.”
The game against Tennessee will be played in Nashville. The Cavaliers play at home the following weekend, hosting James Madison on Sept. 9.
–Field Level Media
