The South's Oldest Rivalry is the name given to the North Carolina–Virginia football rivalry. It is an American college football rivalry game played annually by the Virginia Cavaliers football team of the University of Virginia and the North Carolina Tar Heels football team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both have been members of the Atlantic Coast Conference since 1953, but the Cavaliers and Tar Heels have squared off at least fifteen more times than any other two ACC football programs. Virginia and North Carolina also have extensive rivalries in several other sports.
Anthony Guy Bennett is an American former professional basketball player and college basketball coach. From 2009 to 2024, he was the head coach of the University of Virginia men's team, with whom he won the NCAA Championship in 2019. Bennett is a three-time recipient of the Henry Iba Award, two-time Naismith College Coach of the Year, and two-time AP Coach of the Year. He is one of three coaches in history to lead his program to 10 or more consecutive winning ACC records—retiring with a streak of 13—and is one of three coaches to be named ACC Coach of the Year four or more times. He coached 500 games at Virginia, winning 364 (72.8%) of them, edging out Pop Lannigan (72.7%) to hold Virginia's highest winning percentage in school history; he also holds that record at Washington State. He is the all-time wins leader at Virginia and holds or shares the single-season wins record at both UVA and WSU. He led the Virginia program to two of its three ACC Tournament championships and one of its three Final Four appearances.
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.
The Virginia Tech Hokies are the athletic teams representing Virginia Tech in intercollegiate athletics. The Hokies participate in the NCAA's Division I Atlantic Coast Conference in 22 varsity sports. Virginia Tech's men's sports are football, basketball, baseball, cross country, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, and wrestling. Virginia Tech's women's sports are basketball, cross country, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, golf, and volleyball.
The Maryland Terrapins, commonly referred to as the Terps, consist of 19 men's and women's varsity intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Maryland, College Park in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I competition. Maryland was a founding member of the Southern Conference in 1921, a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1952, and a member of the Big Ten Conference since 2014.
The North Carolina Tar Heels are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The name Tar Heel is a nickname used to refer to individuals from the state of North Carolina, the Tar Heel State. The campus at Chapel Hill is referred to as the University of North Carolina for the purposes of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Since the school fostered the oldest collegiate team in the Carolinas, the school took on the nickname Carolina, especially in athletics. The Tar Heels are also referred to as UNC or The Heels.
The Virginia Cavaliers football team represents the University of Virginia (UVA) in the sport of American football. Established in 1887, Virginia plays its home games at Scott Stadium, capacity 61,500, featured directly on its campus near the Academical Village. UVA played an outsized role in the shaping of the modern game's ethics and eligibility rules, as well as its safety rules after a Georgia fullback died fighting the tide of a lopsided Virginia victory in 1897.
The Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball team is the intercollegiate men's basketball program representing the University of Virginia. The school competes in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Virginia has won the NCAA Championship, two National Invitation Tournaments, and three ACC tournament titles. The team plays home games at the on-campus John Paul Jones Arena (14,623) which opened in 2006. They have been called the Cavaliers since 1923, predating the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA by half a century.
Brian Patrick O'Connor is an American college baseball coach who is currently the head baseball coach of the Virginia Cavaliers. Previously serving as an Associate Head Coach at Notre Dame, he was hired on July 8, 2003, to replace the retiring Dennis Womack. O'Connor has taken the Virginia baseball team to fourteen NCAA baseball tournaments during his 15 seasons in Charlottesville, including the 2009 College World Series, the first in school history; the 2011 College World Series, as the No. 1 national seed; the 2014 College World Series, as the No. 3 national seed; and the 2015 College World Series, which they won and became National Champions for the first time in school history.
The Virginia–Virginia Tech rivalry is an American college rivalry that exists between the Virginia Cavaliers sports teams of the University of Virginia and the Virginia Tech Hokies sports teams of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The Cavaliers and Hokies had a program-wide rivalry first called the Commonwealth Challenge (2005–2007) which UVA swept 2–0 before ending the series in a show of sportsmanship following the Virginia Tech massacre. A second series called the Commonwealth Clash (2014–2019), under revised rules and sponsored by the state's Virginia 529 College Savings Plan, was again won by UVA, 3–2. A third series, also called the Clash (2021–present) and sponsored by Smithfield Foods, emerged two years after the previous series was concluded and is currently led by UVA, 2–1. The Cavaliers lead the rivalry series in the majority of sports.
The Virginia Cavaliers men's lacrosse team represents the University of Virginia in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's lacrosse. The Cavaliers compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and plays home games at Klöckner Stadium, or occasionally Turf Field or Scott Stadium, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The team is coached by Lars Tiffany, who led the team to back-to-back national titles in the 2019 NCAA Lacrosse Championship and 2021 NCAA Lacrosse Championship.
George Gelnovatch is the men's soccer coach at the University of Virginia. He played professionally in the Major Indoor Soccer League and American Professional Soccer League. As head coach, he has led Virginia men's soccer to the College Cup Final Four in 1997, 2006, 2009, 2013, 2014, and 2019. Under his leadership, Virginia won its sixth and seventh NCAA National Championships of the sport in 2009 and 2014.
The Virginia Cavaliers women's soccer team represents University of Virginia in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) of NCAA Division I women's college soccer. The team has won three regular season conference championships, in 2013, 2015 and 2021. The Cavaliers have also won the ACC Women's Soccer Tournament twice, in 2004 and 2012. The team has advanced to the NCAA Women's soccer tournament thirty three times. Their best appearance is runner up in 2014.
The Maryland–Virginia men's soccer rivalry, sometimes referred to as the Tydings Cup, is a rivalry between the University of Maryland Terrapins men's soccer team, and the University of Virginia Cavaliers men's soccer team. When both teams competed in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the rivalry was considered one of the most intense college soccer rivalries in the United States. Much of this is due to the program's long-standing rivalries across other sports and competing for recruits in the Mid-Atlantic, as both programs participated in the ACC for over 60 years before Maryland left for the Big Ten Conference.
The 2018 Virginia Cavaliers men's soccer team represented University of Virginia during the 2018 NCAA Division I men's soccer season. The Cavaliers were led by head coach George Gelnovatch, in his twenty-third season. They played home games at Klöckner Stadium. This was the team's 78th season playing organized men's college soccer and their 66th playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The 2018–19 Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball team represented the University of Virginia during the 2018–19 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The team was led by head coach Tony Bennett in his tenth year, and played their home games at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Virginia as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The 2019 NCAA Division I men's soccer championship game was played on December 15, 2019, at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina and determined the winner of the 2019 NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Tournament, the national collegiate soccer championship in the United States. This was the 61st edition of the oldest active competition in United States college soccer.
The 2019 Virginia Cavaliers men's soccer team represented University of Virginia during the 2019 NCAA Division I men's soccer season. The Cavaliers were led by head coach George Gelnovatch, in his twenty-fourth season. They played home games at Klöckner Stadium. This was the team's 79th season playing organized men's college soccer and their 67th playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They had entered the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed and were the runner-up.
Lars Tiffany is an American lacrosse coach. He is the current head coach of the Virginia Cavaliers men's lacrosse program at the University of Virginia. Tiffany has led Virginia to back-to-back national titles. He was named 2019 ACC Coach of the Year. As with his predecessor Dom Starsia, Tiffany came to Virginia after coaching his alma mater at Brown. There, he was the 2015 and 2016 Ivy League Coach of the Year. On November 1, 2022, he was named as the head coach for the Haudenosaunee men's national lacrosse team for the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship.
The Maryland–Virginia lacrosse rivalry is an intercollegiate lacrosse rivalry between the Virginia Cavaliers and Maryland Terrapins. The teams first met in 1926 and have met 96 times, the second-most for UVA and third-most for UMD against any opponent. The two are some of the most historically successful intercollegiate programs, combining for twenty-one national titles, ten of which have come in the NCAA era. The Cavaliers and Terrapins were league foes in the Atlantic Coast Conference from 1954 to 2014, before Maryland joined the Big Ten the following year. The teams ceased their annual matchup until a meeting five years later in the 2019 NCAA Lacrosse Championship, won by Virginia on the way to their sixth NCAA championship. The 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but games have resumed since.
