A Final Farewell To University Hall
Posted on Saturday, May. 25, 2019, 8:32 pm
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By Jerry Ratcliffe
Photos courtesy UVA Sports Media Relations
Warning sirens interrupted the silence of a calm Charlottesville morning on Saturday, signaling the impending end of University Hall.
A large group of former Virginia players, coaches, administrators and families joined media from a perch at Klöckner Stadium to view the implosion of the storied basketball arena. With sirens blaring, demolition expert Mark Loizeaux communicated with crewmates on his walkie-talkie to prepare for the blast.
“Tell me when you’re in the red,” Loizeaux said as 550 pounds of explosives were poised to bring down a huge part of Charlottesville history.
“We’re in the red,” a voice responded on the other end as the crowd began a countdown to the appointed moment.
Ralph Sampson, Dawn Staley and Robert Hardie, a Board of Visitors representative, listened as the crowd rattled off “Five, four, three, two …”
Collectively they ceremoniously pushed down on the plunger as a series of booms roared through the spring air. And it all came crashing down.
It only took about 15 seconds for the famous clam-shelled roof, a fixture in the Charlottesville skyline, to collapse into a massive pile of rubble as a dust cloud formed over the blast.
“Ralph’s House” was no more.
“There was a certain sense of sadness,” said Staley, the greatest women’s player in UVA history, after watching the arena come tumbling down. Virginia’s women were 56-6 at UHall, including three Final Fours over a four-year span during Staley’s playing days under Coach Debbie Ryan. Now the head coach at South Carolina and the coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team, Staley was sporting a Virginia shirt as a salute to UHall.
Sampson reckoned it to a funeral. The building was nicknamed for him during his official recruiting visit to the school as Virginia was locked in a mortal recruiting battle with powerhouses North Carolina and Kentucky for his services. It was a name that stuck throughout four decades.
Playing for Coach Terry Holland, Sampson and teammates posted a 50-2 record, a Final Four, an Elite Eight, and an NIT title during his time, putting Wahoo basketball on the national map.
The two Hall of Famers watched along with former UVA players as a large piece of their history vanished. Some cheered, some had a tear in their eye, and others were silent and speechless as they experienced the moment.
Legendary Barry Parkhill, who brought the Cavaliers their first national notoriety with his “Shot Heard Round the World,” that stunned No. 2 South Carolina in 1971, must have had bittersweet emotions. He gave UVA basketball everything he had, and while he had a true affection for UHall, he recognized years ago that the building had long outlived its purpose.
Parkhill guided Paul Tudor Jones on a tour of the building in the early 2000’s, pointing out the poor conditions that Virginia athletes were enduring in the old building, erected in 1965. It was then that Parkhill convinced Jones to be the major lead donor into building John Paul Jones Arena, honoring his father.
Sampson was right. It was like saying goodbye to a family member or an old friend.
Josh Campbell, president of the demolition company, pronounced that everything went off without a hitch, that the structure moved exactly how the blast experts had designed.
UVA athletics director Carla Williams read the eulogy.
“To the former players … this was your home,” said Williams, who would later scurry off to Philadelphia to watch the men’s lacrosse team defeat Duke in the national semifinals. “I know what that feels like. A lot of people remember the games, but you remember the hard times.
“You remember the sprints, the training rooms, and the injuries and the bruises, and the homesickness. This facility was your home. We don’t take that for granted. Thank you for being here today. We know what this facility means to all of you.”
Williams especially thanked Sampson and Staley for their support in giving their blessings to the end of an era.
“When I first met Ralph in my office, he had already walked through UHall,” Williams said. “You know we’re going to have to take it down. What do you think? He said, ‘I just walked through and I understand.’ He’s been supportive ever since.”
Sampson, who threw a Friday-night farewell celebration to UHall for many who spent countless hours, days, years of their time in the building over their respective careers, was sentimental about the whole thing after watching the implosion.
“Some of my former teammates and former players showed up last night at Tavern & Grocery (which hosted the party),” Sampson said. “Craig Robinson, Marc Iavaroni, Rick Carlisle, Bobby and Ricky Stokes, and others. I couldn’t come here and implode it without those guys.”
Sampson said that all of the games from his first to his last in the building were all special memories, but what he remembered most was the camaraderie. He pointed out that back in those more simpler times that all of the sports teams, all of the coaches offices, administrative offices, weight rooms, locker rooms, sports training facilities, were all housed in that one special building.
“The weight room was 1,000-square feet and our strength coaches, John Gamble and Bill Dunn, somehow made sure that every athlete got their workout in,” Sampson said. “Those kind of things were the most special, not how we played or who we played, but that building housed over 10,000 athletes in its life. Those athletes got a chance to mix and mingle together. You don’t have that now.
“There will never be another building like University Hall.”
Sampson has been back in Virginia (from Los Angeles) for a month in preparation for the event. He has been over and taken photographs of the various phases of UHall’s demise.
“I could sit down and reflect, and hear voices of people running around the track up there in the stands or running the steps,” Sampson said. “Or going down in the hole with Dr. Frank McCue and the trainers.”
Back in those days, UVA athletes weren’t spoiled with the free gear from Nike or Adidas like many of today’s collegiate athletes receive. Sampson said he and other male athletes received a towel, an athletic supporter, shorts and a T-shirt.
“We had a white T-shirt that had ‘UVA Athletics’ stamped on it, and some pants (short shorts) that you didn’t want to wear anywhere else other than that building,” he chuckled.
Sampson and all his fellow Wahoo athletes realized it was time to say farewell to the grand old arena.
“It’s a sad day for those who played there and for University of Virginia sports, but it’s a great day when the Master Plan comes all into place with Carla and the new president (Jim Ryan), and the national title with Tony Bennett,” Sampson said. “It has been an amazing year. Today is the start of something new.”
UVA hasn’t used UHall for basketball since the end of the 2005-06 season, giving way to JPJ. However, several Olympic sports teams used the facility up until this year.
“It’s etched into our hearts to have played in a place that has been standing for a very long time,” Staley said. “It’s great to hear the guys talk about some of the experiences they had.”
One of Staley’s favorite memories was that one day, the big back door to UHall right off the playing floor was open, and lots of flies were buzzing all around the arena floor during a women’s practice.
“Tammi Reiss (recently named the head coach at Rhode Island) will say it was me, but it was her,” Staley paused, laughing. “A fly flew in her mouth and everybody went into incredible laughter. We had to stop practice and enjoy that moment. It was one of the most hilarious memories I will keep from UHall.”
Staley said that her favorite stretch of games was when the Cavaliers were a No. 1 seed, which meant in those days the NCAA allowed top seeds to play home games in the first two rounds, then the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight, if they were fortunate enough to keep winning.
“The pressure of actually playing the four games and getting there (to Final Fours) with my teammates was great. We created an incredible local buzz,” she said. “It was unfortunate we didn’t win a national championship because we had the coaching staff, the talent, the support. We had what a national championship team looks like, all the ingredients.”
Staley said she’ll remember the people, from coaches and teammates and administrators to the janitors, the cleaning people, the equipment managers, and fans, with which the women’s team had a special bond.
“We had a connection to the Charlottesville community,” she said. “We talked to them after games, they invited us to their homes. We enjoyed friendships and relationships. Even today, one of those loyal UVA fans brings out [South Carolina] team cookies and cupcakes every year … it’s an annual thing when she comes and visits. It is those kind of relationships that are really near and dear to my heart.”
Bryant Stith, the all-time leading scorer in UVA history, now an assistant coach with Jeff Jones at Old Dominion, drove all the way from Norfolk for the event.
His first recollections of UHall was watching Sampson take on North Carolina’s Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, and James Worthy in that great rivalry.
“The one thing that struck me about University Hall and was still my favorite place all four years while I was here, was going down the steps by the ticket office and looking at that iconic picture of Ralph posting up [Georgetown’s] Patrick Ewing (from the ‘Game of the Century’),” Stith said. “I used to sit there and dream and think about all the great memories I wanted to be a part of because of that photo on the wall.”
All that history is gone, but not forgotten. Stith sees the future.
“This day takes on a different meaning,” he said. “When University Hall goes down, all you have to do is look across the street and see how bright the future is for our program.”
University Hall: Nov. 21, 1965 to May 25, 2019.
Rest in Peace, old friend. We will miss you, but we’ll never forget.
