The Shadow
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (VR) — The Virginia Cavaliers are happy to be back home at Scott Stadium this weekend, but football will be secondary in some ways Saturday night. The occasion is the annual UVA Strong game, which honors the lives and memories of Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry.
“It’s a big, big day for our program,” head coach Tony Elliott said during his weekly media availability at the Hardie Center.
The 2022 season was Elliott’s first at Virginia, and it ended prematurely after a tragic shooting on Nov. 13, 2022, took the lives of three of his players: Davis, Chandler and Perry. They were killed after returning to Grounds from a class field trip, and two other UVA students were injured in the shooting, including running back Mike Hollins.
“Everybody knows what happened back in November of ’22,” Elliott said Tuesday, “and it’s something that, as a program, we carry forward every single day. As I said back then, we were going to turn tragedy into triumph, and we were not moving on, we were moving forward. And here we are, almost four years forward, and still it’s a very, very big component of our program.”
Seven players from the 2022 team are still on the roster, including kicker Will Bettridge, who wears jersey No. 41 in remembrance of Perry. They were close friends who came to UVA from Gulliver Prep in Miami.
Bettridge, who was a first-year in 2022, said current Cavaliers who weren’t on Grounds that season ask him and other players from that team about Davis, Chandler and Perry, who wore jersey Nos. 1, 15 and 41, respectively.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with a bunch of guys on the team about what D’Sean meant to me and how all three of them were on and off the field, which has been great,” Bettridge said. “And I think the coaching staff does a great job obviously in just describing them as individuals, not just as football players. And it just really helps all the guys just kind of understand that you’re playing for something bigger than yourself and that this program is going to carry this weight for a long time.”
