Dear Old U.Va.

Spring Sports Update: Why I Do This

Friday, February 27 2009 by Tim

I get a lot of questions from people about why I put so much effort into documenting what goes on in the Virginia Athletics world with my game stories and photographs. I enjoy it. You really have to look no further than the records and rankings of some of the teams playing right now to see why. We’ve got one of the best overall athletics programs in the country and I live within a couple of miles of the stadiums and arenas in which they play.

• #1 Men’s Tennis (15-0, 3-0 ACC): They’ve already won a national title, winning the ITA National Team Indoors championship earlier this month. They’re well on their way to another ACC title and a deep run into the NCAAs
• #2 Men’s Lacrosse (5-0, 0-0 ACC): They will be the #1 team in the country on Monday after defeating current #1 Syracuse at the Carrier Dome just moments ago. This team will go far.
• #4 Women’s Lacrosse (4-0, 1-0 ACC): They’ll be at least the #3 team in the country on Monday after defeating #3 Syracuse at the Carrier Dome earlier today. This team has a chance to go undefeated until a late match with #1 Northwestern that may decide the #1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
• #5 Women’s Golf: The spring season hasn’t started yet, but they had a solid fall season finishing 3rd, 4th, 4th and 7th. I’m looking forward to a good season from them.
• #11 (Women), #13 (Men) Swimming & Diving: The women just won their second consecutive ACC championship. The men are on track to win their second consecutive (and 10th in 11 years) ACC championship. Mei Christensen is breaking records on the women’s side,  Matt McLean and the relay teams are breaking records on the men’s side. I don’t know how they’ll do in the NCAAs (they never seem to get that far) but they’re as dominant in the ACC as ever.
• #19 Women’s Basketball (22-7, 8-5 ACC): With the ACC’s two leading scorers in Monica Wright and Lyndra Littles, this team can do some serious damage in both tournaments to end this season. With a win over Georgia Tech on Sunday, they should be ranked a couple slots higher after beating current #11 FSU on their own court.
• #29 Women’s Tennis (6-2, 0-0 ACC): This team seems to be in a better groove this year than last year. I’m expecting them to actually compete this year. Both of their losses have come against #22 Tennessee. We’ll just have to wait and see how things go as we get into ACC play.
• Baseball (7-0, 0-0 ACC): While currently unranked, this team isn’t going to stay that way. The competition so far hasn’t been too fierce, but they’ve outscored their opponents 64-9 through 7 games. I’m going to enjoy watching this team.
• Softball: This isn’t exactly a team that is lighting things up, but they seem to be doing considerably better than in recent years and look like they can do some damage in the ACC for a change.
• Rowing: The season hasn’t started yet, but you can bet they’ll be competitive again, as the 9-time defending ACC champions.

That’s a lot of good sports going on right there. Four of those teams have a combined record of 31-0. Four top-five teams, six top-25 teams. On Monday we’ll have two #1 teams. How many other schools can say that?

Do I wish the men’s basketball team was doing better? Sure. But how can you not be excited about the talent we have on grounds right now in all of our sports?